Storage Carrot Harvest

The recent temperature fluctuations are really keeping us on our toes!  We are looking ahead to the next few days and the new projected lows mean that we are refocusing on winterization and harvest.

We did have time to finally finish assembling our caterpillar tunnels, thanks to the very last morning before frost which also had no wind.  In the past, we have put plastic on those tunnels during light wind (not easy, though do-able).  This time we decided to combine two of our tunnels into one extra-long one, so still conditions were necessary in avoiding the plastic becoming an extra-long kite.  All of our caterpillar tunnels have names (not numbers- that would be too easy to remember) and historically have been named after farm dogs or human crew… but for this new extra-long tunnel we are considering “Mega Tunnel”.

The main outstanding harvest task is carrots.  Since carrots are insulated from frost by being in the soil, we’ve been focusing on tender, above-ground crops for the last few weeks.  Now that we don’t have an insulating blanket of snow here anymore and are looking at even lower daytime and nighttime forecasts, its time for carrots to come out.  The biggest concern, aside from the “shoulders” of the carrot’s tap root becoming frozen, is that the green tops will be damaged.  We store carrots without the greens because the greens decay more quickly and either stain or cause the root to decay.  But the greens are vital during harvest, because that's how the harvester picks them up out of the soil.  We nearly have the amount we need, so a crew is working on the last few beds now.