Hello fellow community members,
We are looking to have a wide variety of carrots available this year in our seed package. If you have carrot seeds you would like to contribute, please submit only open pollinated varieties or those you are confident do not contain genes for cytoplasmic male sterility.
Visit Contributing Seeds – Going to Seed for more info. You can get shipping details and a postage paid label at https://forms.gle/WY7YyZbDWTgRGyyd9.
Seeds need to be received by November 22. I can’t wait to see what interesting varieties end up in our packages this year.
While in France there was a woman from Mali, Africa that adapted carrots to her location, which was hard for carrots to set seed in because of hot long days and no cool winter, as far as I understand (I’m not a carrot person). She started out doing variety trials, then a friend encouraged her to throw all the varieties together and let them cross. Now she has a reliable carrot population for her area.
She gave me some seeds. Are they of interest to people for the GTS mix?
She said they likely wouldn’t set seeds well in northern climates.
Carrots take a long time to seed, plant them in October, harvest some when large enough. Leave a few in the ground and they go to seed by April or May. A grower needs a dedicated space for an extended time. If we get a frost, the greens die back, but the ground doesn’t freeze, the roots will grow greens again with the flower spike. Ive had the best luck with yellow root colored carrots.
Was there a specific problem @julia.dakin your thinking of?
I had a hard time getting carrots to overwinter and make seeds. I tried for several years, and this was the best year so far. I scattered most of the seed as soon as it dried down by just cutting the stalks and shaking them all around. Carrots came up all over the place but 75% or more died in subsequent drought. The hurricane brought some rain just in time. It has frosted a few times already and one light freeze, but the carrots look really good.
That’s interesting that they respond that way in your climate. Here they just keep on growing in frost or even light freezes. It takes very cold, like 20 F or below to actually kill the tops and even if the ground freezes the roots are still alive and sprout back up as soon as some warmth returns.
I should be more specific…the tops get frost damaged leaves but the center greens dont completely die. It could be that the chickens hoped the wall and chewed on them too…lol. There is still green leaves alive in the center. I just know they go through a loss of green tops over our winter months. I will be sure to observe better this year. Some years it doesn’t frost, and others we can get three days in a row that freezes and damages most everything. I dont have a grex as of yet, I have just grown about 20 different varieties over the years and some are better at making seeds, and I didnt know why. I hadn’t paid very close attention, just knew it took overwintering to get the seed. Im used to big bushy greens, we like them in soups. Some varieties dont make the seed spike, those just stay in the ground until it gets really hot and get woody. I leave them to decompose and help build the soil.
I do put them in with companions, peas, dill, radish, lettuce, mint, sorrel, marigold, broccoli and basil. I had also started with amended soil, composted wood chips and horse manure. Now, two years post application, the layer of compost has broken down considerably and I just add earthworm castings once or twice when seedlings are up 4 inches and around February. My thinking was to support microbial soil life that supports the plants and the compost was readily available. Now its alot of material to move, even for a small garden.
The first picture is of a warmer spring inside the garden, and on a warming trend into summer. I keep the ground covered…in the background it looks like a brassica that has seeded.
I had only saved seed from carrots once or twice because it did take a long time and took up space in the garden. I have sourced heirloom seed to focus on and gotta wait and see what grows this fall season. I planted about three weeks ago.
Yes, I found that certain varieties did better with a cold snap in order to produce seed. But generslly speaking, we dont get cold enough or freezing temperatures every season, its quite random. But I didn’t observe specifically for the trait. I just grew what I had, luckily got afew seeds, and saved a few seeds. Anne’s guide is really well put together. Ill try some roots from each variety in the refrigerator this season to see if they produce seed.
