Features of storing carrots and tips for growing

When you have already harvested the main harvest, severe winter cold weather sets in, you should take care of such an important point as storing carrots. Indeed, if certain recommended conditions are not met, you can part with the high-quality products for which enough time and effort has been spent. So what can be done? Let's figure it out.

It should be remembered that carrots are among those root crops that are quite picky about the conditions of effective storage in winter in their original form, without losing their beneficial properties and vitamins. Unfortunately, carrots are more susceptible to disease infection than other vegetable crops, mainly through the air.

Pay particular attention to the correct temperature regime during the first months of storage. If the temperature rises to at least 4 degrees, then this will cause the germination of root crops, which, consequently, will cause a decrease in the level of keeping quality, therefore, the room allocated for storing carrots should be properly cooled and the air should not be stale - to establish a system of air circulation.

There is an increased sensitivity of this culture to the level of air humidity - for carrots it is simply necessary to maintain its high value for the stable resistance of carrots to diseases, otherwise it may simply wither and lose a kind of immunity. The most optimal temperature regime for maintaining is considered to be an air temperature from 0 to 1 degrees, and the air humidity should be at least 90-95%.

Opinions differ as to how exactly to organize the laying of carrots, taking into account the fact that it is not too compacted, there is no risk of mechanical damage and wilting.

Often, boxes made of dense materials with a capacity of 15 to 20 kilograms are used as containers for storing carrots. For stable preservation, the carrots laid in such boxes are sprinkled with a uniform, but not too thick layer of sand or earth moistened in advance - this way, the risk of drying out of root crops is eliminated and, thanks to a kind of covering material, the necessary moisture level will always be maintained. Boxes filled with carrots should generally be stacked up to 2 meters high.

One option is to store carrots in stacks close to the floor or on racks. In this case, the carrots are also laid in rows, followed by dusting each row with a thin layer of moistened sand (about 2-3 centimeters). Roots should be placed with their head facing outward.

Regarding the topic of protection against diseases that a vegetable may be susceptible to, it is better to sprinkle it not with ordinary sand, but with a mixture of it with a small amount of chalk, about 1-2% of the total volume. You can also experiment with lime, but it, in turn, must certainly be extinguished. A good effect is shown by liming, as well as the processing of root crops with clay. It looks like this: the roots are immersed in a clay mash, similar in consistency to sour cream, or in milk of lime, followed by a drying process with increased weathering. The bottom line is that the protective layer formed on the surface of root crops plays the role of a kind of crust, which in turn protects the vegetable from most external influences of a destructive nature, wilting and disease.

If you do not want to store carrots in boxes or simply do not have them, then you can always put the finished products in polyethylene bags or bags - they can easily provide the carrots with the necessary air humidity, as well as carbon dioxide and oxygen. The general safety of root crops also increases. The only thing is that the bags should be installed vertically and not tied, because in any case, access to oxygen is required.

In order to better understand the carrot issue, there are several useful tips that should definitely help a novice gardener:

- The most suitable precursors for carrots are crops such as cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and potatoes. Soils on which beets or cabbage were grown are also allowed, but they are already a little less suitable.

- The content of nitrates in carrots is characterized by their location in the socket head, as well as in the core, if the weight of the vegetable exceeds 300 grams. The permissible level of nitrate content in carrots is about 400 milligrams per 1 kilogram of wet weight.

- In order to harvest an early harvest, as mentioned, carrots should be sown in the fall season before the first frost. Remember this.

- A high content of carotene in carrots is noted in such varieties as Losinoostrovskaya and NIIOH.

When harvesting carrots for the winter, you need to think in advance about the possibility of creating the necessary conditions, the availability of containers, space, its ratio with the volume of your products that you are going to store - it may also happen that the harvest will be too much, and there is simply nowhere to put it. In this case, attract family and friends to help - who will refuse fresh and natural vegetables?