Tuesday, September 3, 2013

The Case of the Confused Carrot

Herewith a seedy tale:

This is a carrot plant.

It's an Atomic Red variety that I planted in my garden this year.
About two dozen grew. I'm okay with that as my husband has carrots out in his garden. They are destined for the freezer while mine are destined for the table now.

Or they were.

I was surprised to find the other day one of them had gone to seed.
Carrots are biennial. They aren't supposed to go to seed in their first year of life and I had no intention of keeping them around long enough for it to happen.

Bemusing as it is, I am tickled silly over it whilst husband is beside himself. He's always wanted carrot seeds from actual carrots as opposed to a package.

We don't know why it happened. It's near some parsley, also a biennial, that I left in from last year in order to get the seeds. Perhaps it gave the carrots the idea.

However it happened, it is there, it exists, and a few more of the carrots are setting seeds as well. We will collect them and see what we get next year.
Meanwhile,  we've eaten a few of the non-seedy ones. They are tasty though none of them have turned red on us yet.



8 comments:

the Bag Lady said...

Carrot seeds! Way cool. I also had one that was going to seed, but it got pulled out by accident. Must check for any more.

Leah J. Utas said...

If one did, then others might.

messymimi said...

How neat! Not being able to grow anything but crabgrass myself, i'm always fascinated with plants, and growing, and how other people do it, and what the plants look like in different stages.

Crabby McSlacker said...

I'm like messymimi (and wish this was facebook so I could "Like" her comment) and do not have a green thumb, so I admire all you gardeners. I had never even pondered the existence of carrot seeds; I thought carrots just appeared out of thin air in the produce department.

Leah J. Utas said...

Messymimi, you'd be beside yourself if you ever saw out front yard. Mike has a wide variety of experiments out there and even borrow tweezers to do some hand pollinating.

Crabby, many of them taste that way.

Hilary said...

Very cool. Keep in mind that I know very little (0K, nothing) about growing carrots but I got curious and looked it up. It was your remark about the carrots not having colour that makes me wonder about the possibility of them (or the carrots from which these planted seeds came) having cross-pollinated with Queen Anne's Lace. See #3 at this URL. http://ars.usda.gov/Research/docs.htm?docid=5235

I know that Mike and you really know your stuff and I don't, so I hope you don't mind my asking about it. It just made me wonder.

Leah J. Utas said...

I'll have Mike read this when he has time. Our carrots are orange, though. It's that they haven't turned red upon cooking.
Meanwhile, I've eaten wild carrot. Small, white, starchy, yet cool in that they were wild carrots.

Bossy Betty said...

Atomic red!!! Oh. Oh. Now I have to go shopping.