There’s nothing quite like carrots fresh out of the ground. Too bad in Saskatchewan you can’t have them all year round.
Or can you?
When Craig Dobko tells people he digs fresh carrots through the winter, he gets a lot of quizzical looks, but he swears, and has photographic evidence, that he’s not crazy.
“This silliness started 35 years ago when my parents moved off the family farm into Yorkton,” Dobko said. “They loved to garden but like everyone had a hard time keeping vegetables into fall and winter. Ukrainians have gone through famines so it is taught to grow a big garden. Dad used to dig his carrots and bury them under a pile of grass clippings and then just before Christmas he would dig them out. Sometimes he had luck and they were okay and sometimes they froze.”
One year, while Dobko was working full time at the hospital and part time farming, he didn’t have time to dig his carrots and the ground froze so he just buried his carrot patch with leaves and lawn clippings. A large snowfall hit and he forgot about the carrot patch until he ran out. At that point, he wondered what state the garden carrots were in and dug them up. Lo and behold, he found they were just fine and thus a quirky garden habit began on the Dobko farm.
He describes his technique as follows:
1. Plant your carrots (I like the little fingerling) in a block. Last year my block was three feet by 20 feet.
2. Grow them just like normal, do not thin or pick, your goal is to have as many in this block as possible.
3. Just before freeze-up, cover with dirt to bury those ones that have poked out of the soil, the soil carries the heat from the ground. Otherwise, if exposed to the air, they may freeze. Add two inches of dry leaves over the green carrot patch. Cover with three inches of styrofoam and a couple inches of leaves, then cover with plastic vapor barrier and bury the edges of the plastic with dirt. You need a good air seal.
4. I try to use Styrofoam pieces that are four-feet wide by two- to three-feet wide as when removed that is how many carrots you will be digging.
Last week, Dobko said he had a three-foot square patch of carrots left and was planning to dig them Monday.
