My favourite carrot

[gray]

I have grown both dragon and napoli, a hybrid but it does good for me and tastes great. It is the one called candy carrot. Dragon is good too. I really liked it.

I grow my carrots on a three foot wide by twenty two foot bed that I make with a wood form. When I get through filling the form the bed is ten inches thick of fluffy soil.
When I am half filled up in the form, I take my bagging mower and cut a bag of alfalfa out or an eighty foot square patch I started four years ago. I spread the mowed alfalfa in the bed and finishing filling with soil. The alfalfa is just the nitrogen kick carrots need. Ferdzy is right. NO MANURE carrots hate it. They fork and get hairy and all sorts of stuff.

I grow mine in fall through winter and spring. Of course the winter grown ones are best.

In that three by twenty two foot bed I put 4000 seeds. You start harvesting as baby and end with some pretty big ones.

[louisiane]

I am afraid that I have to agree with you. When saving seeds, especially carrots and beets, growers have to be very careful to grow only one variety each year so that there will not be accidental cross between varieties. Some people do not care about these precautions. Another reason why there are some differences is the fact that open-pollination brings pollen from wild carrots as well.

With the Oxheart crossing that you are experiencing, did you try it with the Early Scarlet Horn? Just curious..

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I go to great lengths to make sure that my varieties get all crossed up with each other. I'm as happy as can be if 3 to 10 varieties of beets or carrots cross pollinate each other. The 1 in 300 naturally occurring bean or pea crosses that I can identify per year are a cause for celebration.

[jondear]

I found a crossed bean this year. Unfortunately it was in the part of the row we were picking to eat. I only got three seeds.

[louisiane]

Joseph, please develop more on this, I want to know your reasons.

In the seed preservation programs, the rules are very clear and if we want to offer a specific seed variety, we have to make sure that special care is taken.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

louisiane:

I am keenly interested in developing varieties for my own specific garden. I live in the hinterlands, on the very edge of where gardening can be considered a viable activity... I suppose that you could call me a 1% gardener: 99% of gardens are at lower elevation than mine. 99% have a longer frost-free growing season. 99% have higher humidity and less sunlight... So average varieties created for average gardens do not work for me.

I have to develop my own varieties for many crops if I want any harvest at all. But I can't take a variety that is lacking genetic diversity, and keep it pure, and expect it to adapt much to my garden. It will always do poorly. But what I can easily do is to plant 3 to 10 mediocre varieties together, and let them cross pollinate, and plant the offspring. The genetics will get all jumbled up, and so in a few years I will have grown hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of new varieties. Some of those new varieties will thrive on my farm. So I save seeds from the best families and replant. Year by year my crops adapt to my way of doing things, and to the weather, and to the bugs, and to the soil, and to the weeds. That localization to my garden is not possible with pure inbred lines. Survival-of-the-fittest and farmer-directed plant selection only works well if there is a lot of genetic diversity to start with.

I share my seeds widely. They are valuable to people who want populations with lots of genetic diversity so that they can work on their own projects to develop locally-adapted varieties. My seeds are not of use to mega-farms who need to harvest every plant on the same day, and have it be exactly the same size, and shape, and color, and taste (bland). Sometimes my seeds thrive the first year in far away gardens, sometimes they do poorly. Either way, they contain enough genetic diversity that there is likely to be something that will eventually thrive in new locations, or contribute useful genes to a more well adapted local population.

I call my way of doing things "landrace gardening". It's the traditional way that agriculture has been practiced for it's entire history other than the last 60 years or so.

The best thing to me about landrace gardening is that I get a deep emotional and physical attachment to my food. I taste most every plant that I save seeds from. That means that my crops get perfectly attuned to my taste buds. My muskmelons are smelly as can be. Aromatic perfume disguised as a fruit. Soft and mushy as anything without a hint of graininess. Oh my! I love them dearly. They are the perfect fruit for me. It's spoiled me though, I can't get within 3 feet of a bowl of cantaloupe in a restaurant. What an injustice to the fruit. So disrespectful to do that to a plant. And so it goes with each crop. My squash are selected for dry flesh, bold colors, and robust flavor. I do not select for the bland, watery, colorless fruits that are so common in the grocery store.

The easiest way to sell vegetables at the farmer's market is to offer the same boring bland-tasting varieties that the mega-farms grow because that appeals to the widest market segment. But I don't grow primarily for market. I grow primarily as a sustenance farmer so that I can feed myself and my family. I get to develop my own varieties that are everything I ever wanted in a vegetable. The easiest way to get started with that is to not keep varieties pure, and to allow them to mix up their genetics so that I can have more options for choosing the perfect fruits and vegetables.

[louisiane]

Wow! This is so powerful and interesting! Finally, I can talk to a real gardener!! I have been gardening with old french heirlooms because they were listed a long time ago and they were grown essentially for french tables. We know about french cuisine, it is part of my origins. No hybrids on my table. I have been saving my own seeds for many years and I am 65 years old.

Where is your garden?? You sound very much like Sepp Holzer - permaculture...

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I grow in the desert mountain valleys of Northern Utah. Elevation is about 5000 to 6000 feet. I have a few experimental crops planted at up to 9000 feet. The phenomena that most affects my gardening style is the crystal clear skies during much of the growing season. This leads to intense radiant cooling at night and a short frost-free growing season. It also creates brilliant sunlight and high temperatures during the day and extra-low humidity levels.

French heirloom beans. Hmm. I tasted some of those for the first time last growing season.

[philagardener]

There I am in the 99%, again. Lots of company, 'though!

Joseph Lofthouse, you always take us to new heights :>)

[nicollas]

Are there other 'oxheart type' carrot varieties ?

thx

[12540dumont]

From King Seeds (thank you, you know who you are) I really liked their "Red Cored Chantenay, Orange Jumbo and Berlicum". From Yates Seed I really liked "Egmont Gold" & McGreggors "Top Weight". All of these were gifted to me from the same person. I found all these to be excellent in Heavy Clay Soil & held up well through the very hot weather I've had this season.

[billw]

Here is an example of my Oxheart type carrot (I call it Ox Cart) in F3.

[richardw]

Looks tasty Bill,what varieties went into that cross??

[flowerweaver]

Wow-- billw that's an amazing carrot! Just one would make a meal.

[billw]

I can't claim too much of the credit since I'm just rejuvenating the genetics of a carrot that already had those traits. It is the original Oxheart crossed with mostly St. Valery and Parisian Market (and probably also a bit of our mongrel carrot, since I didn't isolate it). That and a few years of selection has shaken out the serious off-types and the small, spindly, and most of the misshapen carrots. I seem to have introduced a problem with cracking that wasn't present in Oxheart, so now I have to try to get rid of that.