carrots

In spite of the cold spring and the lack of rain for six weeks, I harvested a lovely variety of carrots this year.
I was surprised to find that although they were all planted at the same time, the different varieties produced a huge range of sizes and resistance to bugs and disease.

I found that carrot top size is no indication of how long the roots will be.  the longest tops didn't translate to the longest roots.
But what did make a difference was distance between each plant.  Those varieties that had poor germination and therefore had lots of room between them (thinning is backbreaking work that I always put off until never) were much much bigger.

I found the purple carrots had the fewest disease problems.  The white carrots had a bit of damage from carrot rust fly larvae.  My theory is that the darker carrots are harder for the larvae to find in the soil.  The white ones must shine like beacons.

One variety, a red carrot, had more disease problems than the others.  The one at left had rot right in the middle of the root.

That weird yellow bunch of nodules is probably the result of root knot nematodes. These plant parasitic roundworms attack the roots of many vegetables.  The recommendation I found is to treat the soil before planting the seeds with a different type of nematode:  Steinernema feltiae.
Because only one variety seems susceptible, I will instead just avoid that variety in future!