[intraclast]

Hi everyone,  I haven't visited this forum properly for a year or so and have spent a pleasant couple of hours reacquainting myself with it whilst I recover from a Christmas flu.

We had a good crop of carrots this year (Sciroco (F1 I think) chosen to match my old car!). In the past we haven't had a lot of luck leaving them in the ground (too many opportunistic slugs) so we pulled them up in autumn to store them.  We put them, dirty, in fish boxes full of sharp sand (slightly damp) and left them on the patio next to the house.  This seemed to work a treat except that they kept growing! new green (or yellow due to the lack of light) foliage grew along with wispy feelers from the roots.  They stayed nice and hard and tasted totally fresh, however I'm convinced that they shrank!  I can't find much info about this method of storage, I think I got the idea from Jamie at Home.  Should I have cut off the bottom of the carrot before we put them in to stop them growing?

I'm thinking I should have moved the last remaining box in somewhere warmer now, as its been freezing for goodness knows how long, I expect the contents will be frozen too!  I've been told I'm not allowed to go outside though so I'll have to wait until I'm recovered before I can find out!

[DD.]

I think the problem is that they should really have been cleaned & thoroughly dried before storing.

Here's a good article:

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/edible_gardening_plus/50989

[intraclast]

Thanks, that was an interesting read.  I can't remember why but we acted under the impression that we needed to get them in to storage as soon as possible, maybe we just in a hurry! 

The article talks about the importance of airflow, does this mean that a fish box is a far from ideal container?

[DD.]

In all truth, I'm not an expert on this, just that it came up a few months and I did a bit of Googleing and came across that article.

I'm sure some will be along who's actually been there & done it.

Here's the previous thread:

http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=43706.msg513561#msg513561