In Russia, people began to grow carrots since ancient times, and even then they knew how to save the harvest all winter. Since then, storage methods have not changed much - all the principles have remained the same, just the conditions have improved. What is the best way to save carrots until spring?
To preserve the carrot harvest until spring, you need to harvest it correctly
To preserve the carrots throughout the winter, they must first be dug up properly. It is better to do this in dry weather, because wet vegetables are difficult to peel from the ground and dry much longer.
For scooping up carrots, it is best to choose a small garden trowel so as not to damage the top layer of the carrots.
After the crop has been dug up, it should be dried. It is best to do this on your front porch or balcony in warm weather. But if it is cloudy or raining outside, then you need to lay a dry bedding in the room, for example, a newspaper, put the vegetables in one layer and let them dry for a couple of days.
After the vegetables have dried, you need to clean them of the soil residues and cut off the tops at a distance of a few millimeters from the carrots.
Then comes the brute-force process, which must be taken very seriously. You need to carefully select healthy roots. Cracked or scratched ones are best consumed in the near future, as microbes will get into the damage, and this will lead to the process of rotting and death of the entire batch of vegetables.
How to keep carrots in the cellar all winter
To better preserve carrots all winter, the room temperature should be at least -3 degrees and not higher than +5. And the humidity is about 90%. Before you put vegetables in the cellar, you need to tidy it up well, because any mold or rotten product can ruin all the work. And it is best to disinfect the room with a sulfur checker.
There are many ways to store carrots in a cellar. You can put it in a plastic bag with several small holes in the bottom, through which condensate will escape, you do not need to tie the bag. Do not place the bag next to a wall at least 10 cm apart and use a stand or shelf to prevent the carrots from lying on the floor. This method is the easiest, but, alas, not the best.
For the next method of storing carrots, we need sawdust from coniferous trees. It is necessary to sprinkle the sawdust in an even layer in some container, barrel, box and put the carrots on them in one layer, and on top of the vegetables you need to pour coniferous sawdust again. The substances contained in sawdust of coniferous trees will prevent diseases and rotting of carrots.
This option is not the cleanest, but it is considered effective - this is the best way to preserve carrots all winter. If you have already had experiences when carrots rotted in the cellar, then use it. Dilute the clay solution in a bucket and bring it to a fluid state. Then each root crop is immersed in a solution and let it dry. Then you put it in a basket or box and place it in the cellar.
This method is similar to the previous one. It is necessary to crush the chalk into powder and cover the carrots with a thin layer, you can say powder. The properties of chalk will prevent harmful bacteria from multiplying. If you have a large amount of onion skins, then this is also an option to keep your carrot harvest throughout the winter. You just need to put the root vegetables in a bag with onion "clothes" and lower it into the basement or cellar. The onion skins will absorb excess moisture and prevent decay.
