Worms in winter carrots

Just digging the rest of my winter carrots and notice that some of them have one to two inches of the blackened shoulders hollowed out and filled with tiny grey worms gorging themselves. Green tops are missing. It does not look like carrot fly or wireworms.

What are they? What to do about it?

I have photos but am unable to get them downloaded from my computer (my computer problem).


Worms in carrots photo. Hoping it appears.

Hmmm, looks like they are having a grand feast! The soil we have has a lot of clay in it so holds the water in the wet season. In our garden boxes we have amended the soil with more sand, but they can still get quite wet. It could be your carrots just started to rot, perhaps after getting frosted, or frozen during our cold snaps, and the bugs moved in once they thawed. And likely any bugs, the good worms and the pests all need to feed.

We usually remove any overwintering vegetables once they start to look like the outer leaves are starting to rot, or it looks like the soil is going to freeze. Good luck!

Thank you for your suggestion Gordon as I had not considered that possibility. Only 3 carrots were infected so that may be the case.

I also have a lot of very tiny grey worms that curl up when disturbed in all of the garden soil in my raised beds, in my general garden and also compost bins. I cannot find an image for them on the Internet. Anyone have a name for them?

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Stay tuned, May 16 Linda Gilkeson is going to be talking about garden pests at our next general meeting, which will be by zoom. If you can take some photos and send them to me with your questions about them, I will make sure she gets them.

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Thank you Gordon but I think I identified the “worms”. Not worms actually but tiny millipedes.
I also found 3 larvae (over 3 cm in length mahogany coloured larvae of climbing cutworm). Suggest we all be on the outlook for those.
Linda Gilkeaon’s “Natural insect, weed and disease control” book was very helpful.

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