When to Plant Carrots

Planting time for carrots is set by your frost dates, not by the calendar month. Sow directly in the garden about 2 weeks before your last frost, as soon as the ground is workable. From there it takes roughly 70 days to the first harvest. Carrots is a hardy crop, and it keeps going about 28 days past a light frost, which is what makes a fall crop worth planting. Pick your zone below for exact dates, or find your zone by ZIP if you are not sure which one you are in.

Carrots convert starch to sugar in cold soil, so fall carrots taste noticeably sweeter. Under a straw mulch they hold in the ground well past the first hard freeze.

Fall dates are counted backward from your first frost, not forward from a sowing date. Take the 70 days carrots needs, add about two weeks because growth slows once days shorten after the equinox, then subtract the roughly 28 days carrots keeps going once light frost arrives. That is 56 days before your first frost. The coldest zone where this still works on the averages is Zone 3a.

For the whole-garden version of this arithmetic, see the fall planting calendar by zone, and how to read and stretch your first frost date.

Carrots grow well next to onions, garlic, radishes and lettuce. Onion scent is believed to mask carrot root fly, and carrot scent returns the favor against onion fly, a widely practiced pairing. The full grid for all 24 crops is in the companion planting chart.