CARROTS are a great thing to grow here at our cool, high elevation, especially in our deep raised beds with rock-free, rich garden soil. Need I say more? A few varieties have been grown here. At this time my favorites, which produce the best carrots for storage and eating fresh are Napoli F1 and Mokum F1. I’ve tried a few different colored carrots: of these the Purplesnax F1 and Yellowstone OP have done the best. Red Samurai OP gave me a few nice carrots, but most of them bolted. I tried some open pollenated carrots in 2022 (Rodelika & Yellowstone) to save the seeds, overwintered them in my cold closet & replanted them in the spring. I saved those seeds 2023 and will plant some for 2024 to see how well they do. My first try at saving carrot seeds!

Although many of my veggies are started indoors in soil blocks, carrots are not: carrots are direct-seeded in the ground around the end of May. The actual days-to-harvest are not listed here because although some carrots can be harvested and eaten earlier, I leave most carrots in the ground well after first frost and harvest them sometime in October before the ground freezes. I have not recorded the dates they were first harvested and eaten (usually while tending the garden watering or weeding).  

In 2020 the pack rats got to all my carrots in late August, gnawing off the tops and leaving the tops laying in a mess. The carrot tops did grow back some, but all carrots harvested were much smaller than they’d been in previous years.