The Crafty Cultivator

Continuing with my vegetable specific updates on which varieties I have chosen to grow this year, this episode is all about Carrots.

Red Cored Chantenay

Sown on June 7th
“An especially good variety for heavy soil. Reddish-orange with indistinct core. Shorter, thicker with a crunchy sweet flavor. HEALTH TIP: Carrots contain more vitamin A than any other vegetable. Raw, they provide important dietary fiber. Excellent for dicing!”

Purple Haze

Sown: June 7th
“‘Purple Haze’ is the only imperator-shaped purple carrot. It’s purple exterior with a bright orange interior will keep it’s color when raw in salads or coleslaw and cooked quickly in a stir-fry. When cooked in water, the purple colour will fade. Delicious and tender with a sweet flavour. Kids will love eating it!”

Scarlet Nantes (seed tape)

Sown: June 7th
“Very popular nearly core less variety. Tender, bright orange flesh with delicate flavour. Repeat sowings every 2 weeks until mid-summer for continuous supply of fresh carrots.”

Kalidescope Mix

Sown: June 7th

Burpee seeds doesn’t provide a huge description for this mix packet other than this: “This variety produces five colors-20% each of: Atomic Red, Bambino, Cosmic Purple, Lunar White, and Solar Yellow.”

Little Finger

Sown: June 7th

“Deep dark orange roots. Early variety. Half long variety”

Atlas

Sown: June 7th

“Improved, early maturing ‘Paris Market’ type; Tasty bite-sized carrots which are fast to mature; Good freezing variety”

Nantes Touchon

Sown: not yet

“An extremely high quality, long type of carrot. Bright orange flesh, nearly core less. Sweet and juicy. HINT: for best flavor, harvest when roots are not more than 2″ in diameter.”

Tendersweet Long Hybrid

Sown: not yet

“Very long 8-10″ roots. Uniform in size, with superior taste and color. Thin to 2″ apart when seedlings are 1.5″ high. Repeat sowings every 2 weeks until mid-summer for a continuous supply of young carrots.”

I am happy with the large selection of carrots I have chosen this year. I also have a few seeds left over from last year of “Ibiza” and “Early Nantes”. They will probably make it into a mixed carrot bed as soon as I get another area dug in the garden for them. I will work on a dedicated carrot update, but until then, follow along in my Greenhouse Garden Updates.
If there are any varieties you think I should try for next year, just leave a comment and I will work on finding them over the winter.

To catch up on the previous “Varieties” posts, here are the links: Peas, Beans, Beets, Potatoes.