Collecting harvest samples

 

23 January

Helped collect carrot samples today. Unfortunately because there had been recent rain there was quite a lot of soil stuck to the carrot. We had to remove that soil back at the shed so it didn’t affect the fresh weight. Mary (casual worker) and I ‘polished’ each individual carrot, and there were a lot! Once they were clean, they were weighed, the tops were cut off and the leaves were counted. The roots were chopped up to dry.

The harvest: flags mark each plot

Each sample was put in a bin to take back to the shed to process

Sometimes we found unusual carrots...

 

Helped collect the beetroot samples ,too, today. Back at the shed they were weighed, and a sub-sample taken off. The remaining sample was cut from their leaves and kept for diameter measures later. The sub- sample had the root cut from the leaves. The leaves were sorted into 3 piles: healthy leaves, dead leaves and damaged leaves (there had been spray damage last week so this was measured). The leaves had their areas measured on a very clever machine that used mirrors. Each root in the samples and sub-samples then had their diameters measured.

Another full day!

Note to self: wear gloves when dealing with beetroot!