by Everyone knows that carrots are propagated by seeds – their small “seeds” are usually bought in bright bags at a garden store, sown in beds in the spring or before winter and wait for a harvest of strong, juicy orange root vegetables for 70-130 days, depending on the carrot variety chosen.
But carrot seeds can not only be bought in a store, but also obtained from your own garden, which will save you money next season and allow you to cultivate your favorite variety, so as not to look for high-quality seeds from a trusted manufacturer on sale again.
The agricultural technology of growing carrots is not complicated, but if careless summer residents do not follow certain rules (low humidity against the background of heat, untimely sowing, recurrent frosts, lack of moisture, dense plantings, etc.), the vegetable can go into bolting, which usually upsets gardeners very much. However, if you want to grow your own carrots for seeds, this is exactly what you need! Let’s figure out why.
Growing carrots for seeds
If you don’t know, carrots are biennial plants. In the first year of life, they form a rosette of leaves and a root vegetable (for which the vast majority of people cultivate them), and in the second year, they form a flowering seed bush of branched stems and seeds.
How does carrot bloom? Instead of a rosette of delicate feathery leaves, strong branched shoots appear on the plant at the beginning of summer, and then complex umbrella-shaped inflorescences of creamy-white small bisexual flowers bloom, attracting bees (yes, there is even carrot honey!). At the end of summer, dried “baskets” with fruits – small (3-5 mm long) brown seeds of elliptical shape – form in place of the umbrellas.
“Shooting” is the transition of the plant to the second phase to the detriment of the first, i.e. the carrot quickly moves from the usual biennial to an annual cycle. Root crops are also formed, but small, hard, dry and tasteless – all the nutrients go to flowering and seed formation. There are even varieties and hybrids of carrots that are more or less prone to this process in the first year of cultivation.
Carrot seeds contain many essential and fatty oils, as well as some other valuable compounds, which is why they are used as raw materials in cosmetology, pharmacology and aromatherapy.
Hybrid varieties (marked on the bags with the letter F and the generation number, most often F1) are suitable for growing carrots for seeds. They do not inherit the qualities of the mother plant. In addition, when growing a specific variety of carrot for seeds, you must strictly observe the so-called spatial isolation – this plant is prone to cross-pollination, so if wild carrots or carrots of any other variety grow nearby, you may end up getting something completely different from what you would like.
Growing carrots for seeds is not difficult – you only need large, smooth, strong and healthy roots of the desired variety, grown last season. It is advisable to store them in a cool basement in containers with dry sand, in no case allowing the carrots to dry out and wither. When cutting off the tops of such a root crop placed for storage, you need to leave petioles 1,5-2 cm long so as not to damage the central bud.
At the end of winter, these stored carrot roots (“mother plants”) are placed in a warm place and wait until they begin to sprout. Then cut off a “tail” at least 5 cm high with sprouts and plant it in a flower pot with universal soil for growing (however, if the container allows, you can plant a whole carrot). At the very beginning of spring, when the tops grow and get stronger, the earthen lump with the plant is transplanted to a garden bed – choose a sunny place without drafts. You can throw a little compost and ash into the planting hole beforehand, and after planting, be sure to water the bed generously. Planting such root crops in open ground can be done as early as the end of April, depending on the climate in your region. Since this is already the second year of life for the crop, the carrot will sprout an arrow and bloom.
Several pieces of varietal carrots “for seeds” can even be simply left in the soil in the fall, after harvesting, if you are confident in the weather conditions of your region and believe that the root crops in the beds will not freeze or rot over the winter.
Caring for carrots growing “for seeds” is not at all difficult, the main thing is regular abundant watering and, if necessary, protection from diseases and pests. Fertilizing such growing carrots is usually not necessary, but in the budding phase you can fertilize the plants with ash.
Carrot seed collection
Already during the formation of buds, small inflorescences that form on the lateral shoots of carrots should be removed – let all the “power” of the plant go to the large apical central umbrellas.
You can wait until the seed baskets form in the open ground, but if you are afraid of missing the ripening moment and losing the seeds due to shedding or being carried away by the wind, you can tie the ripening inflorescences with gauze. You can also carefully collect (cut) the umbrellas when they begin to turn brown, and ripen them in a dry, ventilated room. When the umbrellas dry, collect the seeds from them with your hands, which will easily spill out.
After this, the collected seeds can be sifted through a sieve to remove any “garbage” – remnants and fragments of twigs, scales, villi – then scattered in a thin layer over a flat surface and dried.
Storing Carrot Seeds
Store carrot seeds in small paper or fabric bags that allow air to pass through, always in a dry, dark, cool place. For convenience, indicate the carrot variety and the year the seeds were collected on each bag.
Correctly collected and dried carrot seeds, when stored in the right conditions, do not lose normal germination for 2-3 years.
Next spring, you can plant carrot seeds you collected last season in your garden in the usual way. First, discard the “unsaleable” ones by pouring warm water over the seeds and leaving them for 10 hours. Those that float on the surface after the time has expired are unsuitable for sowing and can be thrown away. High-quality seeds should be laid out on wet gauze or a cotton pad and left for 2-3 days, periodically re-moistening. After this, the seeds will develop small roots – a sign of readiness for sowing.
If you are keen on the idea of growing your own vegetable seeds so as not to have to look for the right variety in the store, you will also find our following materials useful.
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