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How to Grow Carrots in Winter

by Bill Brikiatis

Updated: August 6, 2010

Maine farmer Eliot Coleman has written not one but several books on using season extending structures and protected culture for year-round vegetable gardening. He grows a wide variety of vegetables at his farm (Hardiness Zone 5A) in his unheated hoop houses (a.k.a. polytunnels). But winter carrots are his most celebrated crop.

Sweet winter carrots, as he calls them, are harvested in the coldest part of winter. Keeping them in the ground through the cold of winter sweetens the carrots so that they transcend store-bought or even fresh, summer-grown varieties from your garden.

The late February harvested carrots are even sweeter than the ones pulled earlier in the winter. But once the crop starts growing again in March, they lose their flavor.

Growing Carrots in Winter
Carrots grown in winter are so sweet kids prefer them to candy.

So how do you grow carrots in winter? The trick is to start them in the middle of summer and cover them with a hoop house just when the weather starts to turn cold. This keeps them from freezing solid in the ground during the winter.

The cold weather forces the sugar from the carrot greens into the roots. The result is the sweetest carrot you’ve ever tasted.

Related: A Hoop House is a Tomato Growing Machine.

Kids like these carrots better than candy. Hard to believe. I know.

Let’s take a sec to get the legal words out of the way. This article may contain affiliate links. That means if you click and buy from my partners, I will make a tiny amount of money at no cost to you. This in no way affects my recommendations.

Coleman has even experimented with using insulation to extend the WINTER in his hoop houses so that the cold harvest season will stretch into March.

Can you imagine that? Making winter longer so you can harvest more carrots.

Unfortunately, it didn’t have the desired effect. The carrots and the surrounding ground froze, harming the flavor of the carrots.

Related: Grow Millions of Cucumbers in a Hoop House.

Eliot Coleman’s method for growing carrots

If you would like to grow carrots in winter, here’s how he does it:

Variety: Grow Nelson carrots, a frost hardy variety that results in better tasting winter-harvested carrots.

Planting Dates: Sow seeds during the last week of July or first week of August in hardiness zone 5A. If you are in a different zone, adjust the planting date as necessary.

Soil Preparation: Grow oats and peas as cover crop and turn it under one month before planting carrots.

Hoop House: Cover the carrots with an unheated hoop house in late October.

My Hoop House

Extend the Growing Season

All my articles on hoop houses, cold frames, indoor growing, winter sowing and more!

Harvest: Pull carrots in December, January and February. As carrots begin to grow again in March, they lose their sweetness.

One word of caution for when you grow carrots in winter. If you have voles or mice, they will certainly eat these carrots right out of the ground. So you have to get rid of the varmints first.

Related articles:

  1. Better Tomatoes with Walls-O-Water
  2. I Shopped for Hoop House Kits. A Review of the One I Bought
  3. Book Review: Eliot Coleman’s Four-Season Harvest

Suburban Hobby Farmer is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

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Filed Under: 2. Intermediate -- A Little Difficult to Complete, Hoop House Tagged With: four-season gardening, greenhouse

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Meet the Blogger

Bill Brikiatis

Hello! I’m Bill Brikiatis. I started this website in 2010 to help you get better at growing organic food in your backyard.

I’ve been growing fruits and vegetables for nearly all my life. And I'm over 60.

That’s not to say that I don’t make mistakes. I make plenty, then I write about them so both you and I get better at growing great things to eat.

You can read more about me and Suburban Hobby Farmer on my about page.

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