Carrots happen to be one of our family favorites. Here are some questions that came up during this growing season:
How not to break my carrots when I harvest them?
I have a clay type of soil. Digging them out was a problem at the beginning because they would break while I would be trying to get them. Using a pitchfork turn out to be very helpful.
In this video you'll see how:
What are all those hair (roots) they have?
I guess it is the nematodes who are responsible for giving some hair to my carrots. They are tiny worms who feed on them by sucking the juice of root vegetable and the remaining scar brings hair to them. When the time to clean the veg garden will come, the good thing to do is to bury marigold at that spot. Marigold exude a chemical that kill the nematodes, so you may have less of them next year where you bury them.
Should I leave the carrot longer than the DTM (days to maturity) in the soil to harvest them bigger?
Not sure, to me, with the variety I grow (Little Finger), I found that letting them longer expose them to more nematodes attacks and that they didn't taste as good as the harvest at DTM time.