Last fall we had a sudden freeze and it caught my carrots unharvested. I'd harvested some of them but there was about 5 gallons of carrots still in the bed. I was super bummed when the ground froze, and I could not pull the rest of the carrots. This happened once before and the freeze thaw cycle of winter turned all the carrots to mush by spring.
Last fall I thought it might still warm up and let me get at the remaining carrots so I put 2 folded tarps over the bed for insulation - to keep it from freezing even more solid. But it stayed super cold for almost 2 months with temperatures even down to around 0 degrees, and I gave up hope on the carrots.
Then last week I peeked under the tarp and found that the carrots had survived. Crunchy sweet carrots there for the harvesting! They are in such good shape that I only harvested about a 1/3 of the bed and left the rest for later in the spring.
Whhooooo hoooo freshly harvested garden carrots in the spring!
I'm thinking that the tarp insulation kept the carrots from thawing out during the freeze thaw cycles of late winter and that this kept the carrots from turning to mush. It's a theory anyway, and I know they did freeze solid.
Patrick
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