It’s raining, precisely when it shouldn’t be, at harvest time. We needed it earlier but got drought instead, and ever since Spring farmers and gardeners have been coping with a strange and none too friendly growing season. But at the moment I’m rather a jolly person because I did it! At least I think I did. Short of a germination test I have finally, after 3 years, managed to produce mature carrot seed. For those who are unaware of this, carrots are biennials, meaning they produce seed in their second year of growing. In central Alberta it gets a might too cold in winter to grow carrots for two years. We dig them up and store them for winter eating, replanting new seeds every spring. I have seen the occasional missed carrot pop up and grow some foliage, but have never seen a volunteer carrot flower. So for 2 years I planted nice looking last year’s carrots from my cellar, ones with a bit of greenery showing at the top, and watched them produce flowers but never mature seeds. This year I planted one carrot indoors in a deep pot, then planted this well started carrot outside in late May when it had warmed sufficiently to plant the rest of the garden. The flowers grew, and this time the flower heads produced seed. Voila! Magic"
There’s a good video called “How to Collect Carrot Seeds” by Gardener Scott. He explains the process of picking and cleaning the seeds in clear detail. Last year I collected a few and followed his method to clean them. A few of those seeds did germinate when tested, but they were small. I have much higher hopes for the seeds I’ve grown this year as they look quite mature.
I also planted a beet this year - they too are biennials. I think maybe I’ve succeeded in producing beet seed as well, but they don’t look as good as the carrot seeds and it’s my first try. I plan to collect and save tomato seeds as well, an easy process for which there’s also a good YouTube video. I’ll save seeds from my butternut squash (I’ve already stored away 14 lovely squashes), zucchini, and many flowers - marigolds, poppies, pansies, snap dragons. Cucumbers were a bust this year, as were beans and peas. They just didn’t want to come out of the ground and by the time they did it was too late to produce much of anything. So no seeds there. Oh well, Alberta is next year’s country and every year presents new challenges.
mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, Sept. 1, 2021
