Touching toes and tickling bums

At the risk of receiving a torrent of ridicule that no man should ever be subjected to I thought I should recount the totally brilliant way I've discovered to get my stump carrots out of the sand beds with as long a tail as possible. I reckon carrots displayed with as long a 'whip' on as possible look far better than those where it has broken off only a few inches below the stump. My bed is only about 24" deep and I find the tail often breaks off half way down or even just below the stump end whilst you're pulling upwards as it anchors itself into the subsoil. These look a bit naff in my eyes when 'benched'.

When pulling my stumps the other night I decided I wanted a way of checking they were near as dammit all the same length so I hit on the idea of sinking a core hole next to each carrot. I was able to get my hand down and feel for the stump end of the first carrot which I used as my template by marking my arm with felt tip pen where the sand surface was.

I then tried to feel for carrots where the depth to the stump end meant the mark on my arm matched the one i'd just pulled and so on. Here I am demonstrating my 'test tickle'. It reminds me of something I used to do but my memory isn't what it was and I can't remember what.

Those that were slightly longer or shorter to the stump were left in the beds to grow on for later shows. I was then able to carefully feel the thin tap root down as far as I could reach, gently extracting it from the core of compost as I went so that I could gently pull the very end away from the subsoil. It was then a very easy task to pull the whole carrot dry and reveal a very satisfying long tap on each one. You do however need to be a supreme physical athlete like myself to perform this task as you have to contort yourself into the shape of a shitting dog for several minutes.


All my Sweet Candle were barely at 20 weeks so I was dead chuffed to see how much they'd stumped up. These will only get better as they go past the 22 week mark that most growers recommend for Sweet Candle. Also I only needed to pull 10 to get my set of 5 plus two spares to take to the show, so I now have over 60 to go at for Harrogate, Malvern, Westminster and Derby so I'm looking forward to using my Smithyveg unpatented carrot's bum tickling method in future weeks to get even better sets of stumpers.