Cool Carrots

Carrots are definitely Adam and my favorite vegetable we have grown in the garden.

Oooh. But, I do love tomatoes.

And, growing our own garlic is pretty cool.

Oh… and having lettuce straight from the backyard is kind of awesome.

Oh geeze. I can’t forget about how great it felt to slice into that first spaghetti squash either.

Okay, so it’s hard to pick just one, but carrots… are a (one of many) favorite(s).

Carrots have also been a favorite of any guest to the garden.

When we had photos taken last month, the photographers were blown away with how great the carrots looked.

So was Adam’s mom when she stopped by to pick some this summer. She laughed as she pulled carrot after carrot with his sister, Amanda.

Amanda described pulling the carrots from the ground as “magical.”

And, when Stephanie, my friend from Chicago, visited for a weekend I think she felt the same way. She excitedly pulled so many carrots from the ground I wondered how we were ever going to eat them all fast enough. … Cue the veggie dip!

Summer 2013 was the first year we grew carrots and both Adam and I were blown away by the amazing flavor in our homegrown carrots versus the carrots we had been eating our whole lives. The flavor of a carrot is best right after it is pulled from the ground. In fact, some say the flavor diminishes within hours of being harvested.

The good news is that carrots don’t typically last much more than two hours at my house anyway.

But, this is bad news too. In 2013, we only planted a half of a garden bed in carrots. They were all ready mid summer and then they were gone.

So this summer, with one year of carrot growing experience under our belts, Adam and I decided to see how we could extend our carrots into the fall… and, at this rate, we should be good for the winter too!

Carrots are planted straight into the ground and they need good, light soil to penetrate the earth as their roots grow. They are pretty hands off throughout their growing process needing normal amounts of water, sun and a little thinning when the tops start sprouting.

This year, we planted carrots in a couple different beds in different rounds to extend our carrots throughout the growing season. It’s currently a couple weeks out from Halloween and we have plenty of carrots still in the ground… and I am in no hurry to get them out.

They do need to come out of the ground before the ground freezes solid (or good luck getting them out ’til spring…), but they are incredibly cold weather resistant and can eve handle freezing temperatures. Carrots are full of natural sugars and those sugars act like an anti-freeze in the cold weather so that ice crystals cannot disrupt or damage the carrot. In all our reading, we have also learned that freezing temperatures actually make carrots sweeter!

We are still frost free, but it’s likely only a matter of time until we can find out first hand.

I have also blanched and frozen some of our carrots throughout the late summer and early fall. Blanching and freezing is one of the easiest things that you can do to preserve vegetables from the garden.

Here is how I do it:

Clean, peel and slice carrots into small coins, discarding the tops and ends.

Place carrot coins in a pot of boiling water for about two minutes.

Remove the carrots and immediately cool carrots in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process.

Drain and dry well. Lay coins out on a cookie sheet and set in freezer overnight.

Working quickly, remove the carrot coins from the cookie sheet, put into a gallon ziplock bag and place in freezer. Use within a year.

I am excited to have my carrots, preserved at the peak of their freshness, for chicken noodle soups and vegetables soups all winter long.