And, well, that’s how this one usually goes! We’ve been waiting for a good frost or two to harvest our carrots. I guess we technically got one, but we didn’t quite mean inches of frost!
Carrots are one of those crops where they benefit from a little bit of frost and cold temperatures. For that reason, they’re usually among the very last crops that we’ll harvest each season. We strongly prefer this, so it’s worth it to us to wait on our harvests each season.
In fact, you can see this phenomena with many crops. In the root veggie world, this “winter sweetening” also happens with turnips, rutabaga and beets. You also see it in the cole crop world, for example with Brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli and a lot of leafy greens. You also see it with potatoes, but that’s usually not a desired trait with them. (Sweet potatoes are a different thing entirely!)
What’s happening here is the plant is converting starches to sugars. During the growing season, the plant builds up a fair bit of starches as one of the building blocks for energy and growth. During periods of cold, the plant converts these starches to sugars. Which, coincidentally, is also what contributes to these plant’s exceptional cold tolerance. Sugar water freezes at a lower temperature than regular water, thus aiding the plant avoid cellular damage from freezing.
We discussed plant’s mastery of chemistry earlier this season. This is yet another example of this where our plants use that mastery as a means of survival. As far as we know, plants don’t have “sentience,” but given all that I’ve observed, I’m not certain that I’d 100% commit to that theory, either.
Curiously, there’s actually been study on the topic of plant sentience. Given that some plants can demonstrate anticipatory action and the apparent awareness and reaction to their environment, a lot of that question comes down to the actual definition of consciousness. We won’t even pretend to be smart enough to have an opinion either way, but surprisingly this topic isn’t exactly “settled science.”
Oh, and we realized we do have one more crop we didn’t mention that’s still remaining. We often don’t get to eating all our green onions each season. So, we grow them out and most seasons we’ll harvest them late in the season like this. From here, we’ll chop them up so we can dehydrate or even freeze them. Nice to have a good amount of green onions for toppings throughout the winter!
Garden life is starting to get a lot harder up here. We weren’t exactly expecting this, but also aren’t surprised by it either. This is why we’ve been on a tear for the last month to get our garden harvested and be done with it. It’s sudden and often comes without warning.
