I have a ton of Queen Ann’s lace in close proximity to garden, too much to control reasonably. Is that a problem for saving carrot seed?
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It might result in stronger plants which you could select from. They may not taste great in the beginning but I think it could be a good opportunity.
You could also try to find bulk carrot seed and spread it outside of your garden where the Queen Annes Lace grows in an attempt to improve the edible quality of the wild population while at the same time reducing the chances of it supplying pollen to your garden carrots.
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Yes, you can build a pollinator exclusion cage and purchase clean flies. Otherwise, the queen Anne’s lace will eventually swamp your carrot genes. Queen Anne’s lace is edible but I would try it before I committed to it. Or maybe carrots are just something you should buy or trade for seed for.
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Since Carrots taste better after frost, do Wild Queen Anne’s Lace Carrots also taste better after frost?
Also Breeding Carrots for the tender peeled shoot as a veggie? or for the Edible Seeds as a Spice?
Would the wild carrot genetics hurt these other edible uses or no?
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Queen Ann’s lace foliage has a very strong carrot aroma, I’ve used it as an herb. The roots are skinny, stringy, chewy things not good for much of anything, with no sweetness at all. It grows in my area but not much of it immediately near the garden.
It also does not bloom at exactly the same time as my carrots, but I don’t remember right off which is first. Also, carrots bloom for a long time, and you can control that to a degree by removing any flowers that you suspect may have coincided with the QAL. The plant will just grow and bloom some more.
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Interesting stuff to think about. I will have to pay more attention to the bloom time as well.
Even after frost has hit them?
I wonder if you could also eat & cook Wild Carrot Flowers? Imagine making that into a new vegetable? It be cool if harvesting becomes a way to stop unwanted crosses.
Do your own research but I’m pretty sure carrot flowers (maybe more so for QAL?) can have an abortificient effect. So careful if consuming if you have any possibility of being pregnant.
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I don’t know about QAL roots after a frost, I’ve never dug one up then but strongly doubt they would be any better. It would be hard to forage for them too because the tops have completely died back before it gets cold. You would have to grow it on purpose to know where it was. It never occurred to me to eat the flowers, but they don’t sound good. The carrot aroma is extremely strong in the flowers, so much so as to not be appealing and that I imagine would overpower anything else it was cooked with. The only thing I can think it is good for is to use the leaves to add a little carrot flavor when you don’t have any carrots.
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Always! I just did a lil research & found the Wild Carrot Flowers can be French-Fried according to EatTheWeeds. What do you think?
So perhaps as a dried grounded spice? Forager Sam Thayer says the peeled Spring Shoot-stems make a good vegetable, more sweeter & tender than the roots. Makes me wonder if Cultivated Carrots are better for this?
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I suppose a person could dry and save QAL leaves as an herb, but a little bit of flavor is all it is, unlike domesticated carrots which are actual food, and you could do the same thing with their leaves and flowers if you wanted too. Comparing QAL to carrots, carrots are better for everything, Sam Thayer can eat QAL if he wants, I’ll stick with carrots.
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And the fact that it could be mistaken for the deadly Water Hemlock.
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That’s what I was hopeing for, If cultivated carrots do everything better than QAL wild carrot I’ll stick with growing cultivated carrots. I just thought wild carrots had better shoot/flower/seed flavors.
Anyways how would you go about tasting the carrot root but also saving seeds? Do we just drill out a little hole & eat that? Should we seal it back up with mud or let it test disease resistance? If Shoot Flavor is directly influenced by Root flavor, can I just select for shoot flavor & get super tasty carrot roots that way too? It would be a lot easier than drilling a hole into living carrot roots.
Have you tried peeled shoot/stems of cultivated carrot? Cuz if Cultivated Carrots are better in everyway, that should apply to the shoots as well right?
or Cicuta spp. (Water Hemlocks). I think it’s safe to say any gardener forager eating Apiaceae plants (Wild or Cultivated) must know the Poisonous Apiaceae in their region at the very least.
Nothing would suck more for a poison hemlock seedling to show up among your carrot patch.
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When I say they do everything better, that’s just my opinion based on the fact that from what I tell, carrots are good to eat and QAL isn’t. I didn’t know eating carrot stems was a thing, I might have to try that but still, I’ll stick with carrot instead of QAL.
To select for good flavor, size and so on in roots I’ve read about and tried a couple different ways. You can harvest the carrot eat most of it and later, replant the top with growing crown intact. Or you can dig and taste the bottom end and immediately replant it. I’ve had a very high failure rate with both of those and for several years had considerable difficulty in getting carrot seeds. I actually have a bunch of carrot tops buried in leaves inside an old cooler right now. I’ll try again and plant them a bit later this winter or spring,
What has worked is panting carrots when carrots plant carrots. When the seeds dry down, I plant them straight from the umbel. Planted in summer, although I have to keep them watered a lot, they make a great harvest as fall weather sets in. I can’t taste them, but I know what the ones I like, look like, so I carefully dig around with my finger and expose the top to take a peek. Any extra good-looking ones, I leave for seed the next year, we eat the rest That has worked much better for me than replanting whole or partial roots.
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I only learned eating carrot stems from foragers, No gardener I’ve heard from ever talks about it. Makes me excited to try Peeled Carrot Stems & compare wild vs domesticated Carrot stems side by side.
But isn’t that when the carrot root has put all the energy into making seed thus dead? I remember even foragers say not to harvest carrot roots after the plant has gone to seed because the root is too fibrous with a woody core (Even from plants without a stalk the core is woody & Stringy).
Or are you saying even in this state the flavor remains & that’s what you select for, knowing that exact flavor will be present in the following generation?
I was hoping the Peeled Stem Flavor translates into Root Flavor cuz Pruning off the stem won’t kill the plant, it will just delay flowering as it trys sends another shoot to replace the one I harvested. Imagine how much easier that would be?
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Ah I see, so you just eat one and save the seeds of the ones that look just like it? Is that really enough to breed carrots?
I really want to try eating carrot stems to see if Stem selection translates into root selection. I hope you get to try it. I haven’t seen anyone test this theory, I would’ve tested it myself if I hand land to grow on.
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Pollination is highly localized. A carrot is most likely to be pollinated by it’s closest neighbor, and much less likely to be pollinated by something outside the garden. Doing perfect weeding within the carrot patch itself is much more important than weeding the whole neighborhood. You might find that queen anne’s lace flowers at a different time than domestic carrots. And even if there is a tiny amount of crossing, it’s easy to weed out.
A caution with carrots, is that if you plant F1 hybrid carrots, or carrots with male sterility, then all of the pollen will have to come from queen anne’s lace.
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