Carrots Are Us
A seed story 
Bathing beauty.
Carrot and photo, Kristina Young.“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”
I ate my first carrot straight out of the ground as a child visiting my aunt and uncle’s farm in Quebec. They lived almost an hour from their small town and planted most of the fresh food they needed – corn, tomatoes, peas, raspberries, and so much more. I loved the ritual and wonder I felt each day when it was my turn to get the eggs from the chicken coop or pick the wax beans for dinner.
In all the places I have lived and backyards I have tended as an adult, I have always planted a small vegetable garden. I love learning about different plants that will grow in the different climates and their needs, pests, and preferences. It is a singular pleasure to walk out to your own garden and pick food for that night’s dinner. Or straight off the tree.
Kristina Young in her backyard garden holding a huge harvest of carrots seeds, with her prolific, healthy peach tree standing in the background.
Photo: Lauren Muscatine.
When was your first carrot harvest? I harvested the roots first in August 2014, then in July or August each summer afterward from 2015–2020, all from self-seeded growth. I didn’t harvest them in 2022 or 2023 and let them go to seed for the first time this year.
Moving to California in 1996 opened up my gardening world in ways I never expected. From the first home I lived in with a huge lemon tree in the backyard, to working for an artist in Oakland from whose studio window we picked ripe avocados, I knew that I was hooked.
Now I live in Napa with my sweet husband, Israel, and an elderly gentleman cat, Stanley. In our small backyard, we have four raised beds where I plant vegetables, flowers, and herbs. In 2014, I decided to plant carrots and purchased seedlings from Big Ranch Farm, one of my favorite family-owned places to get plants in Napa that, sadly, closed in 2022.
What variety of carrot did you grow?
I believe they are Danvers 126.
When did you plant them? I bought them from Big Ranch Farm as seedlings in 2014 and planted them that same spring.
The carrots were delicious and apparently self-seeded each summer because they kept coming up on their own year after year. We did not amend the soil for a couple of those years, as we normally did with compost and a couple bags of new (organic) dirt. So, the carrots that grew that year did their best in compacted soil and took on all kinds of personalities in the process. As we harvested each bunch, natural arrangements and groupings formed which we then photographed, including, “Seals on the Beach,” “The Lovers,” “Mama and Baby,” and of course, “Boy Band.”
Carrots with personality (top to bottom, l to r): ‘Seals on the Beach,’
‘The Lovers,’ ‘Mama and Baby,’ and of course, ‘Boy Band.’
Photos: Kristina Young.At the end of each summer, we’d usually let them go to flower because the bees loved them so much. This summer we let them go even longer and watched the seeds develop on the long stems after the flowers finished. The flowers look a lot like Queen Anne’s lace and are great: light, airy additions to any arrangement.
Delicate and lacy, carrot flowers attract pollinators, particularly bees. When mature, they curl inward; thousands of tiny seeds disperse as they dry out.
Photos: bigyields.blogspot.com, prepareyourark.blogspot.com, Lauren Muscatine.How to save carrot seeds. A film turorial by DIYseeds.org.
After a couple months, I watched the flower heads start to curl in on themselves and the seed clusters form in their place. Then the plant began to dry out as the seeds seemed to require all of its energy to form.
Each cluster had many, many small seeds, each with small prickly hairs on them making them look like the small thistle-looking seed pods we called ‘hitchhikers’ as kids. When walking through a field at the end of summer, they would stick to any nearby soft material – socks, pants, backpacks – which seems a very ingenious way to scatter one’s DNA near and far.
I have never seen carrot seeds before this or even really thought about them. Where are the seeds on a carrot anyway? Not in the root, which we sort of think of as the plant’s “fruit,” the edible part. But there they were by the handful, waiting to fall to the ground or stick to passing friend and replant themselves for next summer.
This summer I harvest thousands of carrot seeds and knew just who to call to help spread them around: Lauren from the Napa County Seed Library! I collected a huge bag full of carrot seeds and love to think of them growing next year in other backyards and providing that delicious first bite, straight from the soil.
What growing tips do you recommend?
Carrots like full sun. I added new soil, compost (made at home from scraps), plus chickety doo doo when I first planted them.
I have added other plants in that box over the years as well, cherry tomatoes for a few years, then last spring I changed to flowers (Lobelia) that came up again this spring. Each spring I add more soil, compost, and maybe some organic fertilizer when I plant new veggies and flowers.
My garden is 100% organic, I don’t use pesticides or herbicides. Can’t believe the carrots have grown in our garden for nine years now!
