Is it necessary to write about carrots, considering there is only so much one can do differently in the way one grows them? Why grow them at all when you can get them so cheaply in any store? Maybe it’s the sheer excitement of how they’ve turned out this year that makes me compelled to mention them.
If, like me, you’ve always felt growing them was a waste of space and effort, you might change your mind after trying the so called “rainbow” carrots. It’s not a variety in itself, rather a collection of different coloured varieties which can really surprise you, as it did me. Red, yellow, purple (and I mean seriously purple!) next to your more standard orange kinds. They are simply great fun to pull out and taste remarkably delicious fresh out of the ground. Sometimes it might mean the difference between a dinner left half eaten and a plate emptied with great joy!
How we grow them:
They go directly into drills, and you don’t need to be too fastidious about spacings mentioned on seed packets as you can always thin them out as they grow and throw the thinnings whole into whatever veg bowl you feel like eating in the meantime. In fact, this is one of the things my children love sowing themselves and I let them wholeheartedly, maybe with just a tiny bit of help with drawing a straight-ish drill in the compost.
It’s a great idea to prefill the drills directly with plenty of water before sowing. Covering the seeds with the dry soil after that will create a capillary break above the seeds, which helps to keep the moisture near them, where it matters most. This is particularly useful in dry spring like ours this year or when the weather gets warmer and evaporation is more of an issue.
We also covered our sowings with garden fleece as it was mid-April (we are in zone 11 - last frosts are expected in the last week of April, and boy they really caught up with us this year!). The fleece has the added value of keeping the moisture in as well as keeping the ground warmer. Later we swapped the fleece for a “veggie mesh” sheet we were trialling, to deter volunteer seedling samplers such as birds (or even our children for that matter...).
Seed packets often tell you to leave considerable space between each row of veg like carrots. Parsnips are another type of veg like this and if you’re trying to grow them in a small garden, a small raised bed (3 by 4 foot in our case), you might be disappointed with how little can actually go in it. I am definitely always desperate to fit as much in my space as I can. On this occasion I trialled alternating rows of carrots and parsnips.
Parsnips take a looong time from sowing to harvest. The ones we sowed in April won’t be ready until later in the autumn and we will then trial “storing” them over winter in the ground. So they will “occupy” that bed for nearly a year, which is two growing seasons in my mind. Sowing carrots in between the parsnips means I get to fit more rows in the bed overall by placing them closer together, resulting in more crop over time, even if there’s less of the particular plant (I suppose this was our version of inter-planting).
Our rainbow carrots were sown in mid April in a brand new raised bed* at the same time as the parsnips, but they grew much faster (twice as fast) and did not compete for root space when their roots started swelling. They were ready to pull out from late June through July, with little to no disturbance to their neighbours which are still in the early stages of growing abundant foliage but with tiny roots.
One thing I did not want to find is signs of carrot root fly, a common pest whose caterpillars mine into the roots. To my surprise I found no evidence of its activity in any of the carrots, and that’s despite having to remove the veggie mesh in late spring as the growing leaves rendered it insufficient in size. It seems that thanks to closer spacing of rows the combined foliage was crowded enough to prevent some pests from reaching the soil. It also likely helped retain moisture in the bed for longer through effective self-shading. That is at least my lucky theory which will no doubt need to be verified.
How we eat them:
Rainbow carrots really updated the traditional cooked and buttered side dish for us (just look at them!)
But aside from the usual way I make carrots at dinner time (that is of course if they are not devoured fresh and raw before!), I was pleasantly surprised to find out the green leafy tops can be enjoyable, too. They are perfectly edible and nutritious, but might challenge your taste buds at first due to increased bitterness. Depending on the variety and plant maturity, you might also find the texture slightly more spiky or hairy than you’d like in food. Both these things are said to be greatly reduced by blanching (gentle cooking or wilting in small amount of water) but I’ve found this to result in not so great a taste, and if I wasn’t convinced, I knew I had no chance of getting my family converted.
Then one day we were making macaroni and cheese for lunch and the softer, younger carrot leaves found their moment to shine. They came in place of parsley. I love to add parsley to anything with cheese, particularly pasta, which to me always tastes ‘incomplete’ without some green garnish. I’ve always considered parsley impossible to disappoint, but carrot tops really surprised me most deliciously! I chose only soft leaves, no stalks, chopped them thinly and threw into the dish at the end of cooking. Then I added some more fresh leaves onto the plate.
Try it and let me know what you think!
* About a month before sowing, we put in a new raised bed directly on trimmed grass. We lined the grassy bottom with plain uncoloured cardboard and filled the bed with some top soil and a lot of compost. Aside from this initial process we did not dig or disturb the soil. The carrots had no trouble going down deep and only a single one forked. Go figure...
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