At the End of the RainBow

Every year since I've started gardening I've grown carrots.  In the beginning it was whatever generic orange carrots a stumbled on but, now that I've discovered the myriad of gorgeous colors and types available I can't go back to just orange.  

Growing a variety of colored carrots for me is not just about the beauty I'm a big fan of restoring more variety in the vegetables in our lives.  Personally I've never seen anything but orange carrots at the grocery store how dull.  I've found in growing colorful carrots many sceptics who believe I am straying from my organic goals and planting some crazy GMO carrots.  Sadly this is just a result I believe of that boring orange supermarket carrot craze.
 Orange was not actually even an original carrot color, carrots originally came in purple, red, yellow, and white the orange carrot turns out was actually a result of some Dutchmen crossing the yellow and red carrots together.  Okay so back to gardening, this year I grew Nutri red, orange bolero and a lovely rainbow mix that had yellow, purples and white. 

GROWING CARROTS

I usually put my carrots in around April  they don't mind a little bit of cold and the earlier they go in the sooner you get to eat them right.  Carrots like soil that's not to hard so they can grow straight and deep, if your soil is heavy you might get short deformed carrots.  Carrot seeds are tiny and take a little bit longer to germinate, I find it helps to dampen the soil well before planting so that you don't wash the little seeds away.  Once carrots get going tiny little shoots will come up after a couple of weeks it's good practice to start thinning these very thick rows of sproutlings out, so carrots can form large straight carrots.  If you don't thin chances are you will still get carrots but small, short ones.  I like to wait until the carrots are big enough to eat the ones being thinned out, it helps ease my mind.  Carrots will continue to grow right into the fall and tast sweeter after some frost.  My personal goal in the coming years is to attempt to make my garden as sustainable and inexpensive as possible, which for me means saving as many seeds as I can for future plantings.  Most people I suspect have never seed a carrot seed on an actual carrot.  This is because carrots are biennials which means they go to seed the second year they grow.  I've covered my carrots this year with a bale of straw to hopefully help them survive the winter so they can grow again in the spring and produce some lovely seeds for me.  I recommend planting some delicious carrots next year and maybe be brave and try some color variety I guarantee you'll fall in love them to.