My grandson Brian is a real carrot fan. When he sees the feathery carrot tops in the garden he can hardly wait to start pulling up his orange snacks. Kids like discovering buried treasure and I’ve taught Brian how to find the biggest carrots in the row—by looking for the darkest green tops. (Works almost every time.) To get the most of your carrots‘ vitamin A and other minerals, don’t peel them. A good scrubbing with a vegetable brush is all they need.

I try a lot of carrot varieties each year, all lengths and shapes. My friend Ed told me about the Danversvariety which I grow every year. He said it was developed a long time ago in the area around Danvers, Massachusetts. When he was a kid he weeded carrot fields there by hand for a summer job and received $4 a week! Read the rest of this entry »

Description: The cultivated carrot is a biennial plant with a thick, pulpy, usually orange taproot and petiolate, segmented leaves. In the second year an erect stem, branched in its upper part, appears and terminates with an umbel of yellow-white flowers flowering from May till August. The fruit is a spiny achene. The wild carrot, from which the cultivated variety derives, is a common European weed. Read the rest of this entry »