Carrot cavity spot

What you see

Small, sunken, elliptical grey-brown craters across the surface of the root, usually a few millimetres across, running crosswise. The carrot is otherwise sound and only shows the damage when washed.

Conditions

Wet, heavy, poorly drained soil and long seasons in the ground. Worst in a wet autumn on clay, and worse the longer the crop is left to stand.

Treatment

Nothing to treat. Lift the crop rather than leaving it standing in wet ground, wash, and cut out the marks - the carrot below is fine.

Prevention

Improve drainage or grow in raised beds and sandy soil. Do not over-irrigate. Lift maincrop carrots before deep winter wet rather than storing them in the ground.

Months: September, October, November, December, January

Plants

Carrot, Parsnip

Remedies

Mulch

The thing people get wrong

This is the disease behind the belief that home-grown carrots simply do not keep. It is not a storage problem at all - it happens in the ground, in wet soil, and mostly in the last month the crop stands there. Lifting three weeks earlier, into sand in a box, turns an unsightly crop into a good one.