I planted rainbow carrot seed: yellow, orange & red. Until now, they've all been fine. Yesterday I unearthed these weirdos. Anyone seen this before? Are they diseased? It's happenong primarily to the red carrots.
If I had a mad gardener twisting my arm I would have to say some form of nematode. An interesting point about the inevitable calls for compost is that the type will matter. The bodies of the nema are comprised of chitin whereas the sea based composts are full of chitin as well. Shrimp shell compost for example is full of the stuff. The biodome that develops to impact such compost will be aggressive toward eating the very components of which your problem is made
I believe that Eileen may be right on track here. I would have to do some dissecting and looking around. At any rate, a few years back I had something similar and I planted some Tagetes minuta plants in the little strip — the following year they did not return. If the Tagetes actually did help I cannot say for sure, but this type of Tagets is known to help with these worms and some unwanted grass sorts.
One other useful detail about nema and RKN is how they replicate in temperature terms. They grow like plants, slow in the cold, as long as 90 day cycles, and 20 day cycles here in our heat of summer. By catching them in transition between the 3 phases of their life cycle, you can highly decrease their numbers. You will not stop them as they go too deep, but you can make them insignificant to a large degree. Their eggs are an example, being wrapped like little dragon eggs, impossible to damage. But as they emerge you can impact them. This will be most effective in warm soil, with multiple treatments to catch wave of eggs hatching. Tilling and uv and other exposure helps also. Freeze them in the upper soil, they are deep for their safety.
More than you know! That latest star trek show literally uses a soil creature for space-time travel! Only its the size of my Chevy! Elbon Rye as an overseed will help fight nema.
