Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gardening

How to clean carrots from your garden for a tasty meal

Cayla Leonard
By

Carrots are a popular vegetable, whether raw as a snack or cooked into meals. Growing carrots is fairly easy, including preserving their seeds, but what do you do once they’re ready to be harvested? If you’ve ever wondered how to clean carrots, here are some easy tips for you to follow for the freshest garden goodies!

Recommended Videos

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

25 minutes

What You Need

  • Carrots

  • Cutting board

  • Knife

  • Vegetable brush or scouring pad

Many carrots in a stack without their greens

How should you clean carrots?

Cleaning carrots is easy! Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Place your carrot on a clean cutting board.

Step 2: Cut off the top of the carrot.

The part of the carrot we eat is the root, which stores nutrients for the leaves. If the tops are left on, they’ll continue using the moisture in the carrot, which leads to dry carrots.

Step 3: Run the water in your kitchen sink until it is lukewarm.

Step 4: Place the carrot under the running water and use the vegetable brush or scouring pad to scrub. Be sure to get all sides of the carrot and scrub from all angles.

Step 5: Repeat the process with the rest of your carrots.

Tips for cleaning carrots

Step 1: Avoid using any bleach or soaps, as these can soak into the vegetable and make you sick when you eat it.

Step 2: Wash your carrots only once you’re ready to eat them.

Washing can strip away some of the natural protections carrots have, which makes them spoil slightly faster. If this isn’t possible, be sure to dry carrots thoroughly with a clean towel before storing them in the refrigerator.

Step 3: Avoid peeling your carrots until you're ready to use them.

Peeling your carrots can certainly help them aesthetically, but in most cases, it isn’t necessary. If your carrots are organic and fresh, you don’t need to peel them.

Step 4: Save any peels or scraps for vegetable stock, composting, or dog treats.

Carrots and carrot tops in water

What to do after cleaning your carrots

Here's what to do with your carrots after cleaning them:

Step 1: Make use of the tops.

Once the tops are cut off, they can be used as compost or stored to make vegetable stock. However, the tops don’t last quite as long as the carrots, so it’s best to use them quickly.

Step 2: Keep your carrots away from apples, bananas, pears, potatoes, or any other fruit or vegetable that produces ethylene gas.

Ethylene gas is naturally produced by some plants, and it causes fruits and vegetables to ripen faster. This is really useful for the plants and for you if you’re trying to encourage your bananas to ripen faster, but it is a hindrance when you’re trying to store vegetables and fruits for longer periods of time.

Step 3: Consider pickling carrots.

In addition to traditional carrot storage methods like submerging them in water or in the ground, you can also pickle your carrots. There are a variety of recipes to do so, and you can tinker with them to create the exact taste you enjoy. The basics of pickling are vinegar and sugar in a jar with the vegetables of your choosing.

Carrots are an interesting and versatile vegetable, and there are so many options for what to do with them. Now that you know the best ways to clean carrots from your garden, you can focus on how you want to eat them!

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Cayla Leonard
Cayla Leonard
Contributor
Cayla Leonard is a writer from North Carolina who is passionate about plants.  She enjoys reading and writing fiction and…
Blazing stars will fill your summer garden with color: A liatris care guide
Growing and caring for liatris
Tall purple liatris (blazing star) with butterflies

There are many wonderful plants you can add to your summer flower garden for stunning color, from tall and bright sunflowers to short and sweet zinnia. If you’re planning your garden now, you should definitely consider adding liatris, also called blazing star, to the mix! This tall, drought-tolerant, native perennial has stunning purple flowers. It’ll even attract butterflies. Here’s everything you need to know about planting and caring for liatris.
Planting liatris
You can plant liatris bulbs in the spring or fall, but you can transplant mature plants during any season. Choose a location with full sun and well-draining soil to plant your liatris in. Blazing stars can tolerate some light shade, but they won’t thrive unless they get at least 6 hours of sun each day. Spacing is important when planting liatris, as they can grow to 2 feet high and 1.5 feet wide. Plant your liatris bulbs 12 to 15 inches apart so they have plenty of space to grow.

In addition to having well-draining soil, it should also be average or poor. Many plants prefer soil that's rich with organic matter, but liatris has an unusual quirk! The flower stalks will sometimes bend or flop over if the soil is too rich.

Read more
Take advantage of hydrangeas’ color-changing quirk – how to get beautiful blue hydrangeas
Make your soil acidic to turn your hydrangeas a beautiful blue color
Hydrangeas with blue flowers

Hydrangeas are known for two things -- impressive, showy flowers and their tendency to change color based on the pH of the soil. This makes them highly appealing, but also unpredictable. If you don’t take the soil into account, your bright blue hydrangeas could turn out to be pink or purple instead. With careful planning, you can take advantage of this quirk to ensure your hydrangeas are the striking shade of blue you want them to be.
Getting started
First, check what variety of hydrangeas you have. Not all hydrangeas change color! Bigleaf hydrangeas, especially the mophead and lanceleaf cultivars, are the ones that change color. However, white hydrangeas of any variety will not change color.

Test the soil’s pH before you get started. This lets you know how much you’ll need to change it, or if you need to change it at all. If your soil pH is already between 5.5 and 4.5, it’s acidic enough to turn your hydrangeas blue.

Read more
From gerbera daisies to roses, here are dog-friendly flowers to grow in your summer garden
If you have a curious dog, these nontoxic flowers are for you
Brown dog on a bed of roses

Pet parents know that dogs can be curious creatures. There are few things sweeter in life than watching a dog frolic in the yard, but that sweetness can quickly morph into anxiety when you see your pup digging up plants and nibbling on foliage with reckless abandon. But even if you have a fur baby who likes to take a bite out of everything, you can still enjoy a beautiful garden full of flowers.

If you're on the lookout for dog-friendly flowers, you've come to the right place. Ahead, we've gathered a list of nontoxic flowers that you can grow around pups. As always, you'll want to keep an eye out for your fur baby — even if these are nontoxic, your dog may still experience an upset stomach if they nibble on them!

Read more