I looked at those links. I am interested in going that route. But first I have to get regular carrot varieties to produce seed somewhat reliably first so when I bring the wild carrots, they will be able to mix.
I am thinking I would like to dedicate part of my garden as a seed garden and the other part as a production space. That way I get to experience harvest now and build for the future without harming one or the other. I feel like I am driving with my brakes on.
I meant planting the roots for seed. They donât need to grow that much, but they could use any period that is suitable to start rooting and be more ready when temperatures allow them to grow. It really doesnât need to be warm even as they prefer cool. They even grown in fridge if left there for too long. Sowing seeds might be a problem if it gets cold enough for them to get cold treatment which would make them bolt before making proper root. It might be that you donât get that kinda temperatures often, but if you have a season that already works for growing roots I would use that.
I usually combine production and breeding by thinning the weaker/less desirable individuals and leaving the best to reproduce. Carrots are a bit of a pain in this regard since you canât tell what the roots are doing in terms of shape, size or flavour unless you dig them up.
Your conditions sound horrific for carrot growing. They were hard enough to adapt to my subtropics. Our summers are either too hot and dry or hot and wet for carrots to survive, so I adapted to growing them as an autumn sowed annual that flowered in spring before conditions got too extreme. Your conditions with volatile winter freezes plus extreme heat in the summer seems very challenging. Do any biennial species at all grow wild around you? Maybe it isnât a plant lifestyle that works in your ecosystem.
Taking a more ephemeral annual apiaceae and selecting it for bigger roots could be a better strategy. Coriander comes to mind as there are already strains with larger roots in circulation. Why spend all those years breeding an inferior carrot when you could produce a completely novel superior coriander/etc instead?
Thatâs a good question. I am in the process of slowly educating myself about the vegetation around me here in Mississippi. I have recently come to the understanding that I live in a weird period in history where I, and most other people, eat almost exclusively food that is foreign to our environment. Nearly every type of food that is buyable doesnât grow naturally here on its own.
I could walk a mile through the woods and not recognize a single edible thing this time of the year. I can recognize wild blackberries, which are awesome here. But they come in a very limited window of time. I have seen a wild persimmon tree before. Iâve also recently discovered what greenbrier is and that itâs edible.
None of the major food crops that originated in the Americas come specifically from the US Deep South, as far as I am aware. They seem to have originated in different climates and traveled here through trade.
I have met many Choctaws, and they seem to be just as detached from where their food comes from as any other people in this modern time.
I have seen claims of some varieties being attached to Indian tribes. I tried the Texas Indian Moschata and Choctaw sweet potato Moschata this year. Both were losers for me. I think the vast majority of real landraces that were cultivated here are lost or diluted.
So to answer your question, I am currently unaware of edible, native biennials. I have never seen a wild carrot plant here. There are probably a lot of them that I havenât discovered yet. Most of the native edibles here are perennial to my current knowledge.
Our winters donât get too bad. We probably get 7 to 10 days a year below freezing. It rarely gets below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Itâs weird. We might get a freeze in the middle of November and be sitting at 60 degrees at Christmas. Then have 3 straight days of temps in the 30 degree range on the first week of January. You can never tell whatâs going to happen here.
I am definitely not getting a seed harvest from my summer carrot experiment. I do have maybe 15 carrots that survived. They are very healthy looking now the temperature is nice and moderately rainy.
I hope to get seeds next spring or summer from those as well as other carrot beds I have planted.
I would like to share some exciting news about carrot seeds we will be offering in the 2024 seed collection. We will be offering a mix of carrot seeds that contain at least a dozen varieties. Each seed packet will contain a good chance to receive seeds from at least 5 varieties, with some less common in the mix.
I plan on leaving some in the ground and selecting the best I can by viewing the shoulder. I may carve a small piece off the shoulders and taste test. Unfortunately I wonât know the length of the carrot this way. I believe doing it this way will reduce the stress the carrots experience and may be the factor that enables successful seed.
Probably 50 % of these carrots will be pulled out of the ground at some point. I will be able to thoroughly observe and select the highest quality to be replanted.
Almost none of these carrots have reached full size. I wonder if I should have planted earlier. Also, it seems like carrots grow super slow right now.
The image above with the highlighted lines is here to illustrate how I planted the different varieties. I have about 30 varieties in that bed, each having its own small row. In this way I will be able to hopefully select the best from each variety and move the best from each variety in a jumbled cluster to set the stage for maximum cross pollination among the best I have. Fingers crossed 
The 2 images above show the survivors of the summer carrots that failed to go to seed after being put in the fridge.
After I got the usda grin denial email, I felt hungry for carrots. I pulled up half of them. They all taste good from my samples. I will leave the rest of them to go to seed and plant cucumbers or something in the spring and let the vines leave the bed.
Very nice and diverse carrots Austin :-). Bravo
I have sent an email to the king of carrots.
I wonât post his reply directly because it wouldnât be proper, but I will let you know in a general way what he said he he replies.
Mr. Goldman let me know I need to grow carrots 80 to 90 days before vernalizing for best results and vernalize in fridge for about 10 weeks. This methodology should also allow me to get carrot seed start to finish in one year.m, like between frost dates.
I am growing cilantro now, a couple varieties â not for the root though.
I have attached an image of parsley root. The big one is parsnip I think. Going to move that out of there. I am more open minded to growing new things but eating them, thatâs a different story. I donât know how I am going to eat these. I am afraid to take a raw bite due to expected disgust. I suppose I should get over it and maybe make a soup. This is a few different varieties. If I like them, I will replant the top ends.
These are top ends of carrot I replanted after harvesting almost all of the root. Basically, it looks like I am getting away with cheating. Itâs like a bartender that drinks all his liquor.
This is the state of affairs on the vernalized carrots, still no flowers, even after about 45 days of fridge time + my winter. They REFUSE to go to seed! I have to admit. There was one that started to produce a long stalk a couple months ago. I think it was a flower stalk. Unfortunately, it looked so weird that I confused it with a weed and pulled it up. I replanted the root, but I donât know if it pulled through or not.
This is my main carrot bed. I do have 2 other beds. One I planted about a month ago, and they are just coming up. Another is mature but less so than these in the above image.
I will pull some of these up and put in the fridge for about 10 weeks. Hopefully, May and June temps are not too hot for carrot reproduction phase. I will publish my research on that soon on the âHot & Humid Climate Optionsâ thread soon.
Those parsley roots werenât bad! I shaved them with a potato peeler and boiled them. They tasted like a blend between potato and inferior carrot. Definitely worth improving! I am planting most of the tops, including my shavings and cutting discards.
These are better tasting than radish and turnips, no spicy or nasty aftertaste.
Parsnips are best roasted in the oven in my experience, especially if you are roasting a meat for dinner, lamb, whatever, letting the chunks of parsnip, potatoes, carrots roast on the fat in the pan until they caramelize the sugars somewhat is the way to go. A bit of salt and pepper and you are golden served as sides on a plate with some roasted meat.
To be clear, I am growing parsnips and parsley root, but the image of the cooked roots and description of eating quality was about parsley root only. The parsley root I have tried has tasted about twice as good as the parsnip.
