[oldcow]

At the end of the season I protected one of my raised beds with a plastic cover to hold the herbs in, and I forgot to remove some carrot plants that had not grown enough during the summer. Yesterday I went to clear out the bed, and lo and behold, most of the carrots had grown to an edible size! It was quite a surprise, since I had not watered them or done anything else in the bed since October.
The interesting thing is, these carrots (Little Finger variety) tasted way better now than the ones planted at the same time but that grew quicker and were eaten 2 or 3 of months ago. The "winter grown" ones had a lovely, slightly nutty taste I have never had before! Is this the norm (in which case I'll do the same next year) or just a coincidence?

[Kleftiwallah]

In my opinion.  .  . slow growing veg' seem to have more flavour, or does it just seem that way because you've had to wait for them !  I found a few carrots under a thatch of chickweed and they tasted better than the ones I'd dug up earlier.     Cheers,   Tony.

[arugula]

We're still picking small carrots which went into the ground a bit on the late side and didn't grow enough before the cold spell. They taste great!

[Trikidiki]

I left my carrots in the ground under an Enviromesh cloche.

Some of the big ones have now split, one or two have a slug hole in, but the majority are fine.

After the weather we've had so far I think they've done well and it saved digging them up and storing in sand.

Everyone says parsnips and brussels need frost to taste any good, why not carrots?

[jondav]

I had a same experience with potatoes,or should I say peelings,I put my well rotted compost into strong plastic sacks,a few months later I noticed strong potato plants growing out from these bags,I left these ,just out of curiousity,when I pulled these up at the end of november, I had some lovely new potatoes,

[mick thomas]

Funny that you should mention forgotten crops. I put some pelleted carrot seed in that a friend gave me september time .I fleeced them to deter carrot fly and forgot about them. Covered in snow over the winter and with a thaw beginning of this month I decided to remove the fleece and see just what had happened to the little critters. Didn't just fine young crunchy carrots but also popping up every foot along the row a garlic that I had put in to deter the fly. What a bumper surprise carrots and edible sized garlic in the middle of Jan. Climate change is here to stay, with a little help from fleece.

[gobs]

It is quite normal. Carrot is a late harvest/winter root crop originally and by and large.

The fast growing varieties are the novelty here. Of course, you have them in the summer too, but overwintering in soil is very normal, in fact, the best way to store them albeit the slugs.