This can’t be good. I understand nature isn’t always pretty, the dark side always lurking just out of sight, hidden from the light of day… But really. This is too much. Hair and bumps on my carrots? Dare I say, warts?
It’s what they look like. At least that was my first impression when my son hauled the harvest in. They were a huge mess of warts and hair and reminded me of some gnarly old man in a horror movie (or book!). It was not what I had in mind when preparing our salads for dinner. I was envisioning gorgeous fat smooth orange beauties. Sure, a little hair never hurt. Can always strip it clean from the length of them (ouch). But these fellas?
No siree bob was I touching them! ICK. And scrutinizing them further, wondered if a brave attempt would even be worth the trouble. Once the bumps and hair were skinned from them, there would hardly be anything left to speak of. Nah. These are compost food. The pile out back has been hunkering for a little beta carotene and here’s its chance to swallow them whole. And make fresh dirt. Mother Nature is a beautiful creature, isn’t she?
For those of you wondering what on earth happened to these golden babies, it’s probably due to a couple of things. Water for one. I’ve been having the hardest time with my sprinklers this season and more bound and determined than ever to install that soaker hose system I’ve been thinking about. You see, if you water too much, your carrots can crack and split. if you water too little, they can develop small feeder roots that shoot from the main root in search of water. Helpful little buggers, aren’t they? Bumps are probably hair that actually had a chance to grow a bit. 🙂
Too much fertilizer can cause the same hairy problem and I have a hunch that this may be part of our problem as well. I say “our” because speaking of helpful, my kids tend to water and feed without restraint. They don’t understand there’s a happy medium to be found. They hear fertilize and they fertilize. Vacation didn’t help, either. We may have left our bounty in the soil longer than necessary.
Huh. It’s a process. Or learning curve–something which I tend to slide down the front side of more often than I care to admit! So here we sit with no gorgeous carrots for my salad. And it’s dinner time. *sigh*
Thanks for posting info on the blistered carrots. You call them bumps or harry bumps. I have the same problem. It’s probably due to over watering. Because I have not added any fertilizer since planting them. I do water them daily however.
I have found a few normal carrots, but many of my fully mature carrots have these annoying bumps.
Thanks again for your input.
Thank you very much. I have a similar problem with growing my carrots. I have started watering the carrots every alternative day for the past few days because of the high temperature.
For the past few days, I have been searching for the solution to why the carrots are ugly with bumps on them. And, I think it is because of too much water that I have got to know from this post.
I will probably change the interval of watering.
Actually these bumps are more likely caused by root know nematodes, rather than water or nitrogen.