Overwintering carrots?

I have some "Black knight" carrot seed that i plan to sow and harvest this autumn. But i want to save a few to let flower and go to seed its second year--since carrots are a biennial. I have read where my zone 7a would get too cold to leave any in the ground over winter and expect them to come back to life next spring. So how would i go about getting seed from my own carrots? I read somewhere about digging up the root and store in moist peat in a cooler area such as a garage to keep it alive until replanting time, but i am not really sure. Would it be worth the trouble, or should i just keep buying up seed from the same source every time i need more? (i would prefer keeping seed from everything i grow if possible to at least lesson my chances of chomping down on something that is GMO) Thanks.

I have no idea how to overwinter carrots, my ground is so hard growing them is hard enough. However, you don't have to worry about getting GMO seeds, as they are not available to the home gardener and Im not aware of any carrots that are GMO. I hope others answer to give you some ideas but you may want to order more seeds just in case.

i usually just grow carrots in really huge containers filled with bagged garden soil, lol. But since this is my first year with an actual plot in the yard i can grow in, im going to be giving them a shot planted in there.

When I've grown them I've grown them in containers too. Fresh carrots are soooo good.

If you are in zone 7a you should be able to overwinter your carrots by adding straw or similar as a mulch. Here in 6a I am always missing carrots and find they reappear the following spring! If you want the same carrots make sure you are not trying to get seed from a hybrid or the carrot may not come true. In past years I have mulched heavily and been able to harvest carrots for Thanksgiving and into December. Carrots can tolerate a lot of cold weather if protected! Try it and see if it works!

thanks, not sure if 'Black Knight' is a hybrid or not, but i know that is all i would be growing in that space, so no chance of a cross breed going on between them. I have another set of carrots of mixed color varieties growing elsewhere in a 10 gallon sized pot, they called it "rainbow mix". I will get a shot of those as soon as its daylight again :)

i was thinking of mulching the entire garden space with pine needles anyways--if that would suffice

According to DG plant files Black Knight is a hybrid so saving seeds isn't recommended. It does sound interesting though.

kind of curious how they even get the seed in the first place eh? if it doesnt come true, then how do the ones we buy work out? Ive noticed this about any other non orange colored carrot on the plant files also.

I made a "froot" cellar in the veggie crisper, per Alton Brown of The Food Network's show "Good Eats".

I grew carrots in 15 gallon SmartPots.

Layered sand over the carrots in the crisper drawer and turned the humidity down.

You could also dedicate a shelf to a shallow container...

Linda

This message was edited May 24, 2013 5:55 AM

Boy do those look good!

Here is my photo of the rainbow mix carrots i have growing, that i promised last night. Probably have them planted too closely together.

Jmc there are all sorts of hybrid veggies out there. They are usually hand pollinated using the 2 parental lines that have been selected for, for yrs. So no,I don't wonder where they came from at all,it's a business that's been around for years. Rareseeds.com has many non orange carrots that are O/P.

Carrots will cross readily with Queen Annes Lace, which I think is posinous.

yeah i could see that type of cross--since queen anne's is basically a naturalized type of "carrot" around here. Although i havent seen any in my yard for a while--doesnt mean their pollen couldnt float over from someone elses place.

We mulch them in the fall and pull carrots for the dinner table all winter long (just push aside the snow) and into the early spring. The tops of uncovered carrot tap roots will freeze and develop some rot in the winter, in our climate. Once they start to sprout in the spring of the second year it's time to pull the last ones and eat/can/freeze them.

BTW, Queen Ann's Lace is simply a wild carrot (in my experience the taproot is usually white although sometimes reddish or orange-ish) is perfectly edible, not poisonous...but similar looking plants are very poisonous. Never eat a plant that you are not absolutely certain of the identity.

We harvest and eat wild carrots as well as our garden plants.

Thanks Steve, for the clarification. I know something that looks like carrot tops is poisonous but I'm stumped as to what.

1lisac, you are absolutely correct, Cicuta spp. are sometimes confused for wild carrot and can be deadly, (Hemlock, poison parsnip, cowbane). They are superficially similar, but easy to distinguish with a trained eye.

Unfortunately, sometimes people try to make a plant "fit the description" and overlook the obvious...which can be the last mistake some one will ever make. Honestly I'd much rather see someone think Queen Anne's Lace was poisonous, than have them think hemlock was edible.

i do have to agree with 1lisac also.

Pulled one of my "rainbow mix" carrots today, just to see how they are coming along, doesnt look like i have much more of a wait, this one was already about that size they call those "Baby carrots" in the stores. (although the bagged "baby carrots" in stores are just shaved down standard carrots lol.)

well i should say that the Plumped part of the root is more that size, you can see that the rest of the length of the carrot is more like a toothpick, lol