Will Isolated Carrots still pollinate?

[Dewdrop]

If I cage the carrot patch to exclude pollinators, will the carrots still go to seed?  Would I have to intentionally introduce pollinators within the cage?  I have no shortage of Queen Anne's lace, in fields surrounding the garden, which I suspect I do not want to breed into the carrot patch.  

On a different note, how do you harvest carrots in hard soil?  My garden is tilled, but the soil tends to get compacted again before it's time to harvest the carrots.    

[diane]

from Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth:

They cannot self-pollinate. The anthers shed pollen before the stigma is receptive. Individual flowers on each flower head open over a long period , thus some of the flowers will be shedding pollen and some will be receptive at the same time. In experiments where all insects were prevented from visiting the plants, only about 10% of the flowers produced seeds. The pollination was attributed to the flower bags rubbing back and forth across the flower heads on windy days.

In areas where Queen Anne's Lace is a common weed, isolation is nearly impossible. Even the carrot umbels inside cages made of window screen must be staked, because bees will cross any flowers that touch the sides of the cage.

Hand pollination is recommended. Bag the flower heads before any flowers open, Then every morning remove the bag and rub a brush or your hand over the flowers and tie the bag back on. Do this for a number of days (or weeks), depending upon how many seeds you are hoping for.

[philagardener]

Another thought, to add to diane 's informative reply, is that many commercial carrot varieties are male sterile and are not able to set seed on their own. As long as you are trying to get seed from an open pollinated / heirloom variety, you should be fine.

To your other question, dense, compact soils will benefit from amendments - compost, cover crops, etc. I've incorporated perlite/vermiculite also to help loosen my soil. A tall raised bed can give you a lot of control over the quality of your soil mix - dig down and then build up to get the height you need for long root crops. Some blue-ribbon growers in the UK even grow their prize winning carrots in long tubes made from pipes, but those require a lot of attention and are hard to scale up.

I've also had good luck with some of the short, wide types like Oxheart - they do well in heavier soils.

[steev]

Oxheart is my go-to carrot; plenty of tender, sweet carrot there.

[Dewdrop]

Thank-you everyone. Do I understand correctly that I am best off securing the blossoms away from the cage walls and also individually bagging every single blossom?

I just realized the it might also be helpful if I have the right tool to help me actually harvest the carrots, or else to loosen the soil near the carrots. Are there any tools that would be suitable?  Would the the tools become damaged in soil that has has stones hidden in it?  Most of the stones are smaller than fist sized, but a few are much larger. 

Is there a technique that is helpful to know in order to harvest carrots beyond simply trying to pull out carrots?  In hindsight I wasn't sure how to loosen the soil without hurting the carrot roots.  I didn't feel like using a large shovel to bring up a giant dirt clump to excavate like a paleontologist searching for dinosaur bones or something.       

[steev]

A garden fork works.