pick carrots
When are carrots harvested?
Looking to enjoy organic carrots in your own home garden? If you have already advanced in the planting process, you just need to know when to pick them.
And we all love to see how that little plant that sticks out of the ground turns into a beautiful, orange and nutritious carrot.
Detecting the right moment is not a complicated task if you have the most precise information and that is what we will talk about today. Will you join us on this tour that will surely be very useful to you?
How do you know when carrots are harvested?
Carrots are picked based on calculations made from planting date, not signals from the top leaves. In general, after 3 months they are ready for consumption and this time can be extended for up to 2 more months, that is, up to 5 months.
A good trick is to clean the upper part, without removing the carrot, so that you can see the size of this area. When it reaches between 3 and 4 centimeters, it is possible to say that the carrot has a good size (although this is not always the case, but it is the safest measure).
Carrots are hardy when they are underground and this allows them to stay healthy even when the winter period arrives. The detail is to ensure that the ground does not freeze because then they could be seriously affected, apart from the fact that the harvest would be very complicated.
How long does the carrot harvest take?
The carrot harvest has different times depending on the results that are expected to be achieved. For example, you may want baby carrots and these will take a much shorter harvest time, around 60 days after planting.
On the other hand, if you want the largest carrots, you have to give them enough time to grow and fatten, and this means between 15 days and a month more.
How is the carrot harvest?
Harvesting carrots is usually presented as a process where you strip off the top green part at once and you have your carrot ready.However, the reality is that this procedure is not as effective because it is very likely that what you will do is obtain the leaves without the carrot.
The first thing is that you loosen the environment of the land so that it is much easier to extract the fruit without hurting it. You cannot do this procedure with water, but by plowing with a small instrument that facilitates loosening the ground.
Afterwards, you will be able to apply force to safely extract the carrots. When you already have your carrots out of the ground you will have to cut a part of the leaves and wash the body to remove excess soil.
Remember that humidity can cause fungi to appear, so let them dry well before storing them.
What is the vegetative cycle of the carrot?
The vegetative cycle of the carrot is variable depending on the type of species in question, although in general they all have some points in common.
- Week 1 to 10: the seed germinates and the cotyledons appear, as well as the first 2 or 3 true leaves.
- Week 11 to 16: Under the ground, the carrot elongates and begins to put on weight. In the upper part the leaves begin to be more numerous.
- Week 17 to 21: optimal period for harvesting.
The carrot is a biennial plant and in the second year you have to leave the carrot under the ground without leaves to get them to grow back and produce flowers. In the end, when they complete the entire cycle (some are annual and others are biennial) they will give as a result the seeds with which you can start a new planting.
Even after they are ready to harvest, carrots can stay in the ground for an additional 4 weeks without any issues.
Of course, this tends to apply to crops that are very large and time is short for the process of extracting, cutting the leaves, and washing and drying the carrots.
If you have carrots in the garden, the best news is that you can harvest them as you need them, so you will always have them very fresh and delicious.
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