When to Harvest Carrots: A Guide for Gardeners

It’s thrilling to pull a carrot from the ground, especially for a child. It’s like finding a hidden treasure! So, how can you tell when carrots are ready to harvest?

After mastering planting and growing carrots, you’ll want to know when to harvest carrots, how to harvest and properly store carrots, and how to save carrot seeds.

At The Heart of the Garden

As you can see in the video, I had a wonderful time harvesting carrots in the garden with my daughter! It was an all-around growing and learning experience.

That is the heart of what MIgardener was founded on. The garden is a place that fosters development, excitement, and childlike wonder. It is a place where people can come learn what real food is and connect with it.

If you want to raise a kid in the garden too, check out MIsprouts, our series of accessible materials for parents who desire to teach their kids about gardening from the ground up:

• 10 Tips to Get Kids Hooked On Gardening

• MIsprouts: My First Garden

• MIsprouts: What is Compost

• MIsprouts: The Business of Bees

• MIsprouts: What’s Inside a Seed

• MIsprouts: What is Good Soil 

Properly Timing Your Carrot Harvest

Carrots usually reach maturity and are ready to harvest about 60-75 days after planting, depending on the variety. Read the seed packet for the specific estimated days to maturity for that type of carrot. 

Plan to harvest your carrots around that time, but know you can’t just go by the packet dates. Although they provide a good ballpark estimate, weather and growing conditions will affect how long it takes them to mature. Instead, harvest when the carrots are ready.

One year, I left carrots in the ground almost twice as long as recommended because they just weren’t ready. The reward was well worth the risk. Here’s the video about what happened when I left carrots in the ground for an extra 30 days.

When Are Carrots Ready

When carrots are ready to harvest, their tops should be lush and green, but they haven’t grown flower stalks. The root shoulder (the top of the root visible out of the soil) should be 1 inch in diameter to 1.5 inches. Picking them too early means thin, small carrots.

Here in Michigan, I can get two harvests of carrots in a year! I plant carrots early in the spring, harvest them in the summer, and then reseed when the hot weather dies down. Then harvest carrots again in the fall.

When to Harvest Carrots

Many gardeners will leave their carrots in the ground until the first frost. You can do that if you live in an area that doesn’t get very hot weather.

Once temperatures get above 90°F, carrots start forming a flower stalk and go to seed very quickly. Carrots are biennials, which means they are supposed to flower in their second year.

However, a temperature shock can cause them to flower even in their first year. Letting them go to seed reduces their flavor and shelf life.

If you do not want your carrots to go to seed, you’ll need to harvest them quickly when temperatures break 90°F.

How to Harvest Carrots

Grasp the whole top of the carrot where the greens meet the root and pull it straight out.
A little trick: if the carrot is difficult to pull out, grasp the top, push it deeper into the soil, and then pull it straight out.

Pro-Tip: If your carrots are very difficult to harvest, that is a sign that you do not have the right soil conditions. Heavy soils can snap or damage the root when you try to pull it. Carrots grow best in very loose soil rich with organic matter. I recommend amending the soil with finished compost yearly to create the ideal soil conditions for carrots.

Looking closely, you can see which carrots are mature and which are undersized before you pull them. You can try pulling the larger carrots and leaving the smaller ones in the soil in hopes that they grow more.

Pro-Tip: If you have a lot of undersized carrots when you harvest them, it may be due to improper planting and spacing. Read our Complete Carrot Growing Guide to learn the best technique for growing big, straight carrots every single time!

How to Store Carrots for Freshness

Proper storage allows you to enjoy your carrots longer. Clean the carrots and store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator to keep them crisp for fresh eating or making carrot cake from scratch!

I use some of the greens in salads or as carrot top garnish. The rest will go in the compost pile.

If you want to store a root crop like fresh carrots long term, keep them in a cool, dark place with high humidity (like a root cellar). When blanched and frozen, carrots can also be preserved for up to a year.

Saving Seed From Carrots

Surprisingly, seed saving is one of the garden's easiest and most overlooked jobs, and carrot seeds are exceptionally easy to save. Really, all you have to do is leave the carrots in the ground for two years, then gather the seeds.

Follow these steps to successfully save seeds from carrots:

1. Leave Carrots in the Ground - Leave some healthy, desirable carrots in the ground or raised beds instead of harvesting them the first year. Just a few carrots will provide you with a lot of seeds! Pro-Tip: If you don’t have room to leave the carrots in the garden, you can pull them when you harvest and replant the carrot root in a container.

2. Let Them Flower - Allow those roots to grow, flower, and go to seed the second year.

3. Collect the Seeds - Wait until the seed head dries out, turns brown, and becomes brittle. When it begins to curl, use sharp scissors to snip off the seed heads. Place them on a cookie sheet from the kitchen or another large flat surface. Pro-Tip: Patience is key. Make sure you wait until the seed heads are very dry and brittle; otherwise, you will have difficulty getting the seeds to fall off.

4. Remove the Seeds - Grasping the flower head in one hand, use your other hand to ruff up the flower head, knocking the seeds off onto the cookie sheet. The dry seeds, which are the ones you want, fall off more readily than damp seeds.

5. Store the Seeds - Gather the seeds and put them in seed saver packets. Label the carrot varieties. Keep them cool, dry, and dark. (Read this blog post to learn more about how to store seeds and the best seed storage containers.)

6. Use the Seeds - Use these seeds to direct sow carrots next season! Pro-Tip: Carrot seeds have a low viability window, so it is best to use them in the first 1 to 2 years after saving them.