2026 Carrots

[CultivatingEntropy (Ashley W.)]

I didn’t see a 2026 grow reports thread for carrots, so I’m sharing about my carrot journey here! Feel free to move this if there’s a thread I missed.

Carrots are my Achilles heel. I’ve never been more than slightly successful, but this year is going to be my year.

I’m attempting three growing methods, using a combination of the GTS carrot seeds, and 8-10 heirloom varieties that I had on hand. I opted to pre-sprout my seeds this year, because germination never seems to go well for me, no matter what method I try. So they went into my sprout-growing mason jars for two days with multiple rinses per day, then I dumped them into a coffee filter lined bowel, placed another coffee filter on top as a cover, and added a couple of drops of water if they got fully dry. I had about 70% germination in 5 days.

Method #1: Egg Cartons

Saw this method on some random gardening forum. I got 30 count egg flats, used a wide drill bit to drill out the bottoms of each recess, nested it with a non-butchered flat underneath (so soil wouldn’t fall out), gently packed it with my damp seed starting mix which is mostly a composted wood chip/leaf mold/native soil blend with a little peat and vermiculite, painstakingly placed sprouted seeds in each cup with tweezers, sprinkled some dry mix on top, then took it out to the garden and removed the bottom flat, plopped the tray on the bed, and watered it in pretty good. My hope is that this method will 1. Avoid germination failures, 2. Space carrots perfectly and eliminate the need for thinning, and 3. Eliminate weeding. It was a painstaking process to transfer the seeds over, but I could do it comfortably and ergonomically inside, and I think it might end up being faster in the long run if I don’t have to weed or thin. Hoping that the bottom hole is big enough to avoid forking.

Method #2: Standard Row

Real simple here… trenched a row right next to the egg cartons, sprinkled in the sprouted seeds. They were a little damp and clumped some, but it was a real fast process. Looking to compare my overall experience growing them the “normal” way.

Method #3: Landrace Mulched Bed Attempt

I will not touch these. I will not touch these. I will not touch these.

I am going to keep saying that all season and try… really hard… not to touch these

For this batch, I cleared all the organic material (straw, leaf mold, leaves, dead ryegrass, other dead plant material, occasional wood chip) off my bed, sprinkled all the sprouted seeds I had left, covered it all with the more soil-like material, then sprinkled a significant amount of looser organic material over the top. My goal is to NOT.TOUCH.THESE and just see what can thrive in my normal bed conditions, with obstacles to push past and crowding and possibly weeds. Excited about this batch!

I will report back later in the spring on how it’s all gone!

[Angel (Angel Beer)]

2026 Grow Report for Carrots

Hope your carrot year is exquisite! lets post all your wins, losses, questions, ideas, discussions and pictures here.

Keep us updated lookin good

[blommij]

Ensure that the eggcartons remain moist enough. I found that the exposed carton wicks moisture to the surface where is the evaporates.

[CultivatingEntropy (Ashley W.)]

Thank you! I’ll keep an eye on that. Have you grown carrots this way before?

[blommij]

I did and it was a dry spring and I missed watering them enough. did not have much success. others have had success.

[jens (Jensigne)]

I’m interested in your carrot journey! I haven’t seen this egg carton method. I hope it goes well for you.

[KadenceLunemann]

I’ve never successfully grown carrots before either. Yesterday I planted some in ground and in pots to compare how they do. I plan to grow carrots in several places, succession planted, and see what works the best.

[CultivatingEntropy (Ashley W.)]

Carrots are doing nicely. I’m seeing a big difference between beds where I have them planted… These are nice and lush while the others are only 1-2" tall and they were planted the same day, so I’ve got to contemplate the differences between those two spaces.

The eggcrate experiment has gone okay, but I really shot myself in the foot by not filling the crates to the top with dirt. Too much exposed cardboard meant they dried out very fast in the sun, which then sucked the water out of the dirt and dried out a lot of the baby plants. Uncertain if I’ll attempt this method again, but if I do, it’ll be with dirt to the top.

Got some colors showing!

[CultivatingEntropy (Ashley W.)]

Alright, so… Help me out with seed saving for carrots! I poked around and a handful of carrots are already as big around as my thumb, while most are half that size. Those are the lines I want to save! I’ll worry about taste next year, I just want to select for early producing now. Do I just mark the ones I want, leave them in the ground all summer, and do nothing until they flower next spring? Carrots can overwinter fairly reliably in my zone. Or should I be digging them up and storing them for the summer?

[avery.bowron]

It depends somewhat on your goals. It’s early enough that you might conceivably be able to force a handful of the best carrots to produce seed this year by storing them in the fridge for a few weeks and then planting them out again, but that might risk having challenges with drying the seed down in cooler/damp conditions in the fall.

In my experience, carrots store better in the ground unless there’s pressure from rodents, gophers, rust fly, etc. They tend to dry out on me and get rubbery/less vigorous, but I know others have stored carrots in fridges through the summer successfully.

[CultivatingEntropy (Ashley W.)]

I don’t have pressure from pests so I think based on what you’re saying that leaving them in place might work fine… But I’m intrigued by this idea of forcing seed this year, so I would have it to plant in the spring. Have you done the fridge trick yourself? I feel like the top challenge would be getting them to reestablish in the height of summer. I wonder how long it would take to dry down seed. Things don’t get too damp here in the fall, and my first frost isn’t until late October.

[avery.bowron]

I have only stored my carrots in the fridge for a month or so in the winter before planting them back out. I have not tried forcing them before.

[Lauren (Lauren Ritz)]

It has worked for me, but with beets rather than carrots. I’m not sure how long carrot seeds take to mature. There might not be time in the fall.

[gregg_muller]

To store carrots in the fridge you need to be careful about rotting. The roots are prepared by trimming the tops back being very careful not to trim off the meristem. this is to reduce the chances of the leaves starting the rot process. Fun fact: the trimmed roots are called stecklings! throw that into your next conversation. Be careful with how wet they get. For me there’s a bit of dance between keeping them dry enough to not rot, and damp enough to not go rubbery and die. There’s a good description of the process in Navazio’s ‘The Organic Seed Grower’.

This year I tried a mid summer selection of roots, and a month in the fridge, then replanted to try to get an early induced seed crop, but they have taken too long to set flowers, and it doesn’t look like I will get any flowers.

Carrot breeding is a long term project. The biennial nature which i haven’t managed to circumvent really stretches out the timelines. Add to that the mass-cross process which means you get a lot of selfing, then selecting for root shape and colour, (if you don’t want white carrots, NEVER put white in the mix! takes for ever to select against), then the need to select for vigor, and then taste - I still haven’t done a proper taste test-replanting, its taken so long (more than a decade) to work through the other steps. Then there’s the issue of short shelf life for the seed - a lot of work if no-one else takes up the seed and it dies in your fridge for want of refreshing. If there are more pressing projects, I would go for them. But to paraphrase your JFK “we chose to do it not because it it is easy, but because it is hard”. Shoot for the Moon!

[CultivatingEntropy (Ashley W.)]

That’s all so helpful! Thanks for taking the time to give such a thorough answer.

The timeline you’re on sounds intimidating, that’s for sure. I’m not sure what depth of project I’m ultimately undertaking, but right now I just want carrots that will fatten up in a timely manner… I figure I start by identifying and saving seeds from those, and we’ll see where it goes from there. But it’s helpful to temper expectations… With two years for every grow out, this is going to take some time.

I hadn’t heard about carrot seed having short shelf life before. Can you explain a little more about that?

[gregg_muller]

Carrot isn’t quite as touchy as say parsnip, but its not like tomatoes or beans for shelf life. My issue is more that if you leave it in less than ideal storage for a decade or so , then all your hard work is gone. Its not so much the seed’s fault, but our stewardship of it. Dry, cold, dark is the mantra for long seed storage life. Better is to have a community growing it every year or two. However, the biennial nature means the community needs to buy in to tying up a bed for 18 months or so for seed production. Energy put into community maintenance is not wasted energy.

Not trying to put you off, I encourage every effort to grow the slightly more challenging crops to seed. If you don’t have a shot at it, you will never know. But thinking about the issues early on is time well spent. In some ways is just a bit of change to mindset. Push the horizons out a bit further. Tortoise thinking rather than hare thinking. Carrots aint tomatoes .

[avery.bowron]

@gregg_muller

However, the biennial nature means the community needs to buy in to tying up a bed for 18 months or so for seed production.

I’ve had success transplanting my seed carrots from production beds into ornamental beds on the south/west side of a fruit tree in my yard after selection. This helps free up space in my growing beds for the second season. Seed yields may be lower, but I’m also selecting for plants that can tolerate that and I still get way more than I can use.

[CultivatingEntropy (Ashley W.)]

Now that’s a really interesting idea. Do you let them size up fully, or do you transplant once you know you want to save from them? Mine are about a thumb diameter right now. I can leave them where they’re at for the time being (since the other carrots still need to size up around them for us to eat), but they’d have an easier time being transplanted right now before the heat sets in. They’re all scattered throughout the growing bed now so the idea of at least consolidating them is very appealing.

[avery.bowron]

I let them grow a full season in the regular bed, harvest and select the best in the late fall, do selection and then plant them out again. I’ve also maintained them in the fridge or root cellar conditions before transplanting, but don’t find that necessary in my location.

I think moving them now in the active growing season may leave them very prone to drought stress & pest pressure due to the transplant shock. If I were going to try that, I might do it with only a few to see how they respond before doing it with a all your best roots.

[avery.bowron]

After thinning out several bolting carrots that were mostly white rooted from an area where discarded seed from winnowing germinated last fall and overwintered, I finally pulled up one of the ones that hasn’t bolted to see if there’s variation in these crossed seeds. Looks promising & tasted excellent (sweet, good texture, no bitterness).

I look forward to seeing what else comes from this patch and my intentionally seeded areas later this year.