Cosmic Purple Carrot Harvest

We've always planted a number of colorful vegetables - partly for the novelty, partly for the variety, and partly because we've always read that brightly colored vegetables are healthier for you.  Cosmic Purple Carrots are one of those vegetables that we harvested this weekend.  They were big and beautiful.  They probably could have been harvested a couple of weeks ago, but that's okay.  This basket was picked and put in a basket for a photo op from Mr. McGregor's garden before Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter found them.

We gave some of these to a friend at church and he thought that the carrots had crossed with my beets.  Nope, I told him.  That's just the natural color of this variety.

I pulled all the greens off and fed them to the animals waiting on the opposite side of the fence.  They were ecstatic.  The 'green-less' carrots went into a basket after washing the topsoil off of the roots, and we brought the HEAVY basket inside.

We started a big pot of water boiling.  Our goal was to cube and blanch about 3/4 of the basket and save the remaining 1/4 for eating and giving away.  The carrots are too big to chop in our chopper without first cutting into manageable chunks, so that's what I started doing.  That process exposes the big secret of Cosmic Purple Carrots:  They aren't purple through and through.  It's just the purple wrapper that is purple.  The interior is orange like any other 'normal' carrot.

Those chunks were put onto the rack of our handy chopper and POW!  The chunks are quickly transformed into little cubes.  Tricia wears ear plugs when chopping as it gets quite loud.

It doesn't take long.  In three shakes of a cottontail rabbit's tail, the first batch of carrots is cubed and ready to be blanched.  Each batch is put into boiling water.  When the water returns to a boil, we set the timer for 2 minutes.  When the timer goes off, we transfer the cubed carrots into a sink of ice water to stop the cooking process.

When the carrots have cooled, we load into quart-sized zip loc bags.  When complete, we had 10 quart bags full of carrots that will go in the freezer.

These are perfect for thawing out and steaming with fresh parsley, or putting on a baking pan and roasting or making a Cream of Carrot soup with some of LuLu's fresh milk.

The 2019 Carrot Harvest

We planted 3 rows of carrots this year.  One half of a row was some Seeds of Change Carrot Medley.  One half of the row was Danvers Orange and Berlicum Carrots.  Then we had one row of Cosmic Purple Carrots and one row of Atomic Red Carrots.  I like a lot of color on my plate!  Here are the rows of carrots with our 'clean-up crew' waiting for carrot greens to be tossed over the fence.

Here is a nice sampling of the Carrot medley.  There are orange carrots, yellow carrots, white carrots, red carrots and purple carrots.  All fat and healthy.

Some of the carrots have odd shapes, but many are just perfect.  I was a little concerned about them due to all the rain, but all of them did exceptional except for the orange carrots.  About half of them were rotten because I waited too long to pick them.

Here is a mixture of Cosmic Purple and Atomic Red Carrots just after being hosed down.  Their colors really pop after being sprayed off.  Once done, I take the topsoil-laden water and go pour it back in the garden.

Many of the carrots will be eaten raw, roasted in the oven, shredded in cole slaw and for making homemade egg rolls.  The rest will be blanched and frozen.  We decided to blanch some of the Seeds of Change "Rainbow" Carrots since they are so pretty.  Look at the different colors:

We chop them up so they'll blanch evenly.  We have one of those handy chopper things that does a nice job in chopping things up.  It's one of those "As Seen on TV" things that actually works.  Just glancing at the colors, you wouldn't think that these are carrots, but they are.

We blanch them, chill them and bag them up.

We'll put these in the freezer and eat on throughout the year.  In all, we put up 18 quart-sized freezer bags of carrots.

First Harvest of the Carrots - January 2017

Sunday afternoon was a stellar day with brilliant sunshine, blue skies and a westerly breeze.  It felt good to be alive.  I pulled down some of the trellises that the butterbeans and sugar snap peas were growing on in order to prepare for spring planting.  It'll be here before we know it.  I looked over at one of the three rows of carrots I have growing and the foliage was lush and green - just beautiful.

But it's what is beneath the surface that tells the tale.  A quick tug and the earth yielded a nice big fat carrot!

I have a bucket full of rainwater that I washed the carrots off in and the brightness of the orange carrot shines through.  On this particular row I would say roughly half are ripe and ready to be pulled.  Time to get busy.

With all the rainfall we've had lately, I need to start pulling them quickly.  The ground is saturated and when root crops sit in water-logged soil, they rot!  It is not a total loss, though.  I'll cut off the bottom part and we can still use the top.

I thought this was a nice picture featuring a nice bounty of carrots with carrot tops right next to a fat cabbage.  This will make for a nice meal or two for sure.

Normally I plant Berlicum Carrots, Cosmic Purple Carrots and Atomic Red Carrots, except this year my inventory was short.  All I had was some Danvers Carrots (normal orange ones) and a little packet of organic carrot seed blend that came free in a box of Kashi cereal.  I planted them and here is what came up:  Some really strange looking white carrots!  I've never grown white carrots.  They are pretty cool. Tricia asked if they are parsnips, but I don't think they are.

There was at least one Cosmic Purple seed in that blend.  When you pull them and wash them, they really shine!

After I cleaned them up, I put them on the patio table to let them dry before bringing them in.  This first harvest filled a 2 1/2 gallon bucket and we've got plenty to go as I staggered the planting to ensure a continued harvest until spring.  We'll eat a lot of these raw, cook some, and blanch and freeze the rest to allow us to eat carrots all year long.

I'll leave with a photo showing a diverse carrot harvest.

They sure look pretty and I know we'll enjoy eating them, too.  If it continues to rain, I'll have to pull the rest of them even if they are on the small side to keep them from rotting in the ground.  I need to move some more topsoil into the garden to raise up the ground level.  That is a good project for this spring when the ground dries up.

Pulling Up Carrots

With spring weather upon us and spring planting already underway, it becomes imperative to begin harvesting some of the winter crops in order to make room for beans, corn, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, okra, etc.  That would include harvesting three rows of carrots.  I had already harvested some carrots here and there, but Saturday was a beautiful day for pulling the rest of the carrots out of the ground.

Of the three rows of carrots, one of the rows were Atomic Red variety, another was Cosmic Purple variety, and the final a normal orange Berlicum Carrot.  Our carrot crop was the worst crop we've had in 3 or 4 years in terms of yield and of quality. The size was just not like in previous years.  I blame that on a couple of things. First we had 9 inches more rainfall than in average years.  It was very wet and I planted all the carrots in the lowest part of the garden, so the soil stayed too wet resulting in stunted carrots that didn't really grow well.  Don't get me wrong, we will eat them all - even the baby ones.  Homegrown carrots are so sweet.  Seriously. They don't compare to store-bought.  It's like a whole different product.  

Let's go to work.  What I do is I use a shovel to loosen the soil around the carrots and then I pull them up by the carrot tops. 

A couple of nice carrots in the process of being pulled up

I have a bucket of rainwater handy and I wash the fresh-pulled carrots removing the topsoil.  Later I'll pour the topsoil-laden water on top of my young potato crop that needs a good watering.  That way the topsoil will stay in the garden versus being washed down the drain.

Cleaning the carrots

The photos don't really do them justice, but these are Atomic Red carrots.  They are the prettiest, in my opinion, because they have a reddish tinge and are sort of translucent. 

Atomic Red Carrots in rainwater

Here are the Atomic Red carrots after washing.  Yes, the cows were more than happy to take the greens off my hands.  All the cows, the goat and even the chickens made quick work of the carrot tops that I tossed over the fence.

These are the Cosmic Purple carrots.  Now, these are a little deceiving because they are not purple through and through.  It is just their skins that are purple.  The center is orange like a normal carrot. Still they are interesting looking.  All three varieties taste the same to me - outstanding.

Cosmic Purple Carrots

After the initial cleaning in the rainwater buckets, I laid out the harvested carrots on our picnic table bench and our garden wagon.  Then I sprayed them off with a water hose to get any remaining dirt off of the carrots.  Once they're dry I'll bring them inside and we'll begin eating them and processing them using several different methods.

The second carrot bath

In what ended up being a visual feast, I gathered a colander full of different varieties and sizes of freshly picked carrots.  I like this picture.

A colorful colander

With the warmer weather, our lettuce is going to start bolting, so we've been eating lots of salads with fresh sliced carrots.  We'll blanch and freeze some and we'll also show you another neat way we preserve our delicious carrots a little later this week.

Harvesting Carrots 2015

Right between the row of Russian Red Kale and the row of Bull's Blood Beets, we have 3 rows of carrots, each with a different variety planted on it.  The last row has Cosmic Purple Carrots, the middle has Atomic Red Carrots and the first has normal (boring, I guess) Orange Berlicum Carrots. The purple carrots seem to grow faster and get big and fat, so I've been pulling a few of those up to enjoy.  We only have half a row of them left.

Today I planned to harvest all of the carrots that were prime size on all three rows so I grabbed some five gallon buckets and got situated.  We've had some rain lately so the ground was moist and easy to pry the fat carrots out of the rich soil by hand. We have had years where it was dry and that makes pulling them hard, and you end up breaking some of the carrots off in the ground.

What's left of the Cosmic Purple Row

The greenery on the carrots was beautiful, but you never know what's underneath the greens and the soil, until you start pulling.

Carrot Greens on the Atomic Red and Berlicum Rows

I would say carrot pulling is back-breaking labor, except it's not.  I started in the morning after milking and weeding and I wasn't in a rush.  I had a glass of grape juice, it was cool and overcast, and I could hear the chickens clucking and singing the little song they sing after laying an egg.  Of course the cows meandered over and began softly lowing, begging for the greens.  It was a peaceful morning, no fuss, no deadlines - one of those days that you thank the Good Lord you are alive to enjoy.

Another reason it is not back-breaking labor is because I'm literally sitting down on the job.  We have a handy little garden chair on wheels that is the most perfect carrot-pulling apparatus known to mankind. We originally purchased it for my grandmother, Bumby, so she could plant her caladium bulbs in her flower beds in comfort.  She enjoyed that so much.  She had a green thumb for sure. When she passed away, we inherited the garden chair and it is a nice reminder of her and her love for rooting around in her flower beds.  The seat has a lid that you can lift up and store all sorts of gardening supplies in it.  As I pulled the carrots, I'd just roll forward.  Lazy, I guess, but that's what weekends are for.

The Rolling Garden Chair

Here are some fresh pulled Cosmic Purple Carrots.  They are not purple through and through.  Just the outer skins are purple.  When you cut into them they are orange on the inside.  When you cook them with a little water, they turn the water purple!

Here are some regular orange carrots.  Unremarkable and boring, I assume, but they sure taste good. The carrot tops (greens) are a favorite of the cows.  I'm told they are good for human consumption if you juice them, but we've never tried them.

And finally, here are the Atomic Red Carrots.  They are red through and through. The beautiful red color is sort of translucent and beautiful to look at when you cut them.

After I'd heard enough begging I began to carry handfuls of carrot greens to the cows.  You can only see Rosie's ear in the top left hand corner of the photo as she opened her mouth and ate the entire bunch whole, leaving none for her daughter Amy, to the right.  No worries, there was more where that came from.

Gluttonous Rosie

After pulling out all the nice sized carrots, I had two overflowing 5 gallon buckets and a smaller bucket absolutely full.  There are a lot more carrots that still need a week or two of growing time before they are ready.  My problem is that I don't thin out my plants.  If I did, the carrots would be of uniform size, but I have an idiosyncrasy that I can't bear to pull up a perfectly fine plant prior to harvest. That's okay.  There's no rule that says that carrots must be uniformly sized and perfect. They all eat the same.  Now that we're done harvesting, I soak them in water, scrubbing the dirt vigorously. I save all the top-soil laden water and go dump that back in the garden.

Buckets 'O Carrots

The Cosmic Purple Carrots kind of sneak up on you.  When you pull them from the ground, they are dull and dark colored. When you wash them, they ABSOLUTELY POP with gorgeous color.  You almost need sunglasses to look at them.  We've always heard that the more colorful things are the more healthy they are for you.  If there's truth to that, these must be like the fountain of youth!

The Majesty of Cosmic Purple Carrots!

The carrots sure do clean up nicely.  There's something else that needs cleaning up after a morning of carrot pulling - my hands!

Dirty Hands

Psalm 24:3-4 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

3 Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?

And who may stand in His holy place?

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,

Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood

And has not sworn deceitfully.

I'd best get busy then.