Winter carrots

We love our winter carrots, but I have to admit that because we've gotten so much snow in the past 10 days, I've been a bit lazy shoveling off the cold frames. Of course, the temperatures have also been frigid and I'm a big believer in the insulating properties of snow on top of a frame when temperature plunge.

But, since I just got a request for cold frame carrots from the kids, I went up and dug out the frames to pull a dozen sweet Napoli carrots.. As you can see, we do have quite a bit of snow, so it took me a few minutes to locate the exact spot of the frames! There were also quite a few deer tracks meandering around the buried garden beds.. in fact, yesterday morning, as we were getting ready for the school bus, two deer wandered through the backyard and stopped for moment to observe the crazy humans staring at them from the window. Darn deer!

Anyway, if you look closely at the photos, you'll see the carrot tops still look pretty good. I often fill the frame with shredded leaves in early winter for extra insulation, but because it was so nice this year, I never bothered. There is a crust of frozen soil at the very surface, but the shovel sunk down into the earth very easily and out came the carrots! They're a good size - most are about 6 inches long, making them the perfect size for snacking.

Check out the following photos sent in by Pete from New Brunswick who is winning the 'snow-off', as they are very close to breaking their all-time snowfall record.. keep that snow Pete! We have more than enough here!

Happy Gardening!