06/17/2026
Here’s the story of the carrot at FPF.
After tilling in a cover crop, we prep our planting beds with clear plastic coverings and irrigate. The plastic and the sun heat the soil to over 120 degrees killing w**d seeds before they can even think about germinating. For our scale, this is a crucial step in order to save several thousands of dollars on labor hand w**ding later on.
After we have solarized the bed tops and cultivated the pathways we remove the plastic. We like to give the clear plastic about four weeks to kill all the w**d seeds. Next, we direct seed the carrots and keep them well irrigated until they sprout.
If we are growing fall carrots, that means we have solarized our beds in the summer, so we end up with a field that is 95% w**d free. In the spring the beds have more w**d seeds because the solarizing is less effective in cooler weather. That means we need to hoe the bed tops 2 or 3 times to help keep the carrots growing faster then the w**ds.
After about 3 months the carrots are ready to harvest! We sell them as bunches until they reach maximum size in the field, after which we dig all that remain and put them into cold storage until we sell more.
