We left the carrots in the garden a little too long this year. The plan was to overwinter them in the garden with a layer of straw to insulate them but the straw just blew off in the wind and our poor carrots were not protected.
We dug up the carrots today but found that the soil was frozen, so we are experimenting now. We layered the carrots in moist sawdust and are going to be checking on them in a few days to see how they are doing. We only dug up one row out of 5 to use as our 'prototypes'. If in a few days the carrots are rotting because they were frozen before storing, we will dig up the rest, blanch them, and freeze them. If the carrots we brought in today are storing well then we will do the same thing with the rest of them.
Some of the pointers for storing carrots in sawdust is to make sure it is not new sawdust, but use stuff that has been sitting out for a while. Also when layering the carrots, make sure they are not touching one another. That way if one of them starts to rot it won't spread to the others. We cut off the tops of the carrots(into the orange) to keep them from sprouting. Now we are leaving the covered box of carrots in a cool place that is not going to freeze and not get too warm.The whole time we were digging these up my son Luke was eating them. I couldn't have planned a better snack. :)
