Carrot patch is coming into bloom now with the central umbels of the earlier varieties in full bloom.
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Looking great!
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My carrots are flowering now. The roots were the winners at a community taste selection last fall were I invited any guest for the event where Joseph came to speak to bring their carrots.
At the same event we did a mix of grexes. I had crosses about 7 cultivars, and two other colleagues had done the same. Then we mixed all our seed together and gave out to attendees that were interested to grow diverse carrots. I hope we’ll get to see some interesting results this year.
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This is awesome! I’m impressed.
Oooh, do carrot flowers attract ladybugs? If so, that would be a great reason to plant them right next to brassicas! Most of my brassicas get covered in scale aphids during my hot dry summers. (They do tend to survive just fine, and I’d rather harvest them in winter when they’re sweeter anyway, which is a time when the aphids are gone, but that coating of scale aphids over lots of the plants through the summer is kind of gross.)
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I can’t speak to that more generally. In this case upon closer inspection these flowers attracted ladybugs because they had a minor aphid infestation themselves. I suspect the ladybugs will manage it just fine (the flowers are not showing significant damage) and move on to my other aphid susceptible species later.
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Cool, makes sense!
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It’s still a week until the Fourth of July, but my carrots are looking like fireworks these days. Flowers are just starting to set immature seeds on the earliest umbels.
A wide diversity of pollinators have arrived. Which is fun to watch and great news for successful crossing.
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Ladybugs prefer umbels (such as carrots) or flat flowers (such as sunflowers) because they’re not designed to go inside a flower. You want to provide a habitat for the adults so they will lay their eggs nearby.
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Planted seed from 4 different sources. Noticed some are bolting on year 1, and it’s only the GTS seed. No big deal, but interesting.
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I also noticed That I had a few GtS seed Bolting this year. Usually it is because of environmental issues. So that says to me that not all varieties are meant for my area.
I’ve also had a lot of the gts carrots bolt this year, the red core carrots I grew next to them only had 1 bolt.
Extra interestingly I planted an early and a late bed and only the early bed had any carrots that bolted.
mine were planted on the late side, perhaps end of june? We had first frost already so not the best time to bolt
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I put my carrot seeds out a month or so ago, and nada. I’m wondering what is wrong with my bed, b/c none of the seeds are sprouting! I’m so frustrated with those beds. Here in central texas, I think carrots are a fall/ winter crop as we have years we never freeze past mid-20s or even warmer. I’m gonna have to do something, I put out more seeds of different things last week, so hopefully something will grow in them.
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It takes about about a month to sprout. The seeds need to stay moist the entire time. This can be accomplished in many ways. I keep covered with a sheet till they sprout. You could also use a board or cardboard. If you need more help let me know.
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Hmmmm…. I think about how I might do that. We are still very warm and dry, so I might need to step in, cover or somesuch. Or something!
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I am still processing the seeds I harvested this year, but will have a large crop and can send some in for the GTS offering.
I discarded the very smallest seeds from the secondary umbels after multiple screenings, thinking they would be less viable/vigorous, but boy was I wrong about that.
I scattered them under my asparagus patch on the off chance that they germinated, and I guess now I’ll be selecting on this population for putting on root growth over our relatively mild winter.
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My yard looks like this where I winnowed mine.
