Carrot foliage question

[horticultural_hobbit]

This is proper naïveté. I've sown some Ideal carrots, proper sized carrots after the Paris Market ones. I was wondering, since i don't want to poke at the carrot. How high does the carrot foliage have to be, before carrots can harvested. With the Paris Market carrots, they are diddly anyway, and there was lots of leaf. I harvested diddy things with massive leaves...

[Potstubsdustbins]

You can usually see the carrot showing slightly above ground or you could have a gentle furtle with your dinky.

If you find you have lots of greenery and small carrots a good dose of potash rich feed will help.

Colin

[cptncrackoff]

you could have a gentle furtle with your dinky.



Colin

Thats not very hygienic, i'd use a finger!!! lol

Seriously though, you never really know whats going to be bellow the surface, i pulled an absolute cracker earlier, the one next to it looked just as good on the top, it was only 3 inches long and forked into about 6 different points.
jon

[binley100]

furtling with dinkies and pulling crackers ........no wonder my carrots aren't growing I'm doing it all wrong

[cptncrackoff]

I've cheated and grown two rows in the greenhouse, avoiding the dreaded fly, theyve done really well, and 100% fly free so far, the ones outside, although resistant and in raised beds, i'm still getting fly in one out of 6-8 roots.

[horticultural_hobbit]

S'like reading a Monty Python sketch!

Cheers, Colin. Even with the dinky one's, didn't often see the shoulders. Really did have to furtle. Was all too depressing digging out little stumpy chipolata things. Hence the "Next time can you grow normal carrots." I don't think growing in containers helps. But nice to now about shoulders and potash

[Aberdeenplotter]

My long exhibition carrots have tops no more than an inch high and perfect roots ermm all of four inches long. Stunted by a late frost in May and never recovered. As to the question, pull a couple of sacrificial roots to check for size, the wipe them on your jeans and eat them. It's what GYO is all about.

[horticultural_hobbit]

AP, that don't work so well with Ma. She clocked me for diddy carrots, that she couldn't peel properly, and pencil thin pointless radishes(the freebies from the mag). Pops, on the other hand, shrugs his shoulders and munches.

I really don't mind. Learn something with every leaf

[Florence Fennel]

I've developed a kind of "feel" for carrots. If I can't see any shoulders, I give a gentle, tentative pull. If it feels firm I continue to pull. Seems to work somehow!

[Two_Sheds]

Ma... clocked me for diddy carrots, that she couldn't peel properly

They don't need peeling ! Just a scrub with the nail brush perhaps

[horticultural_hobbit]

I know that! And tried vehemently to tell her that. Just doesn't translate very well into Bollywood-ism. S'like trying to tickle a Vulcan.

[Florence Fennel]

I would never have been able to persuade my Burnley born late mother that carrots did not have to be peeled, so I do know what you mean! She also boiled vegetables for hours to make sure they were "done".

[Dead Dogs]

I just thin them or to be accurate SWMBO thins and uses my carrots, tops and all.