Anthony Valdez, age 13, of Tucson, Ariz., for his question:
Can I grow my own carrot seeds?
Yes, indeed you can produce seeds from your home grown carrots and from most other garden vegetables. What with rising prices and shortages of most supplies, this is an excellent idea. Most of these seeds can produce healthy crops for you next summer. However, carrot seeds take longer and require the patience of a true gardener.
The carrot is a biennial vegetable, which means that its life cycle takes two growing seasons. Through the first season, it sprouts a ferny green top and puts down its carroty root. In the normal course of events, it is pulled up, beheaded and prepared for the table.
However, if left to carry out its own plans, the top dies down and usually the root survives the winter buried in the ground. When spring returns, the nourishment stored in the root is used to sprout a new green top. This soon becomes a tall stem with a feathery umbrella of fine seeds. When ripe, the seeds will scatter and most likely produce a crop of volunteer carrots the following season.
As a methodical gardener, you will prefer to organize this routine rather than leave it to the haphazard methods of nature. Since plants inherit features from their parents, you will want to select seeds from the carrots you prefer. What's more, your helping hand will plant those seeds in properly prepared soil and just where you want them to grow.
To the untrained eye, all the carrots in your crop may look more or less alike. But when you study the individuals in the row, you see that some are superior. Select a few of these for your parent plants. If your winters are mild, leave them in the ground when the rest of the crop is harvested. If your winters are severe, transplant them into containers and keep them in a garage or in a coolish cellar.
Next March, prepare a pocket of soil and enrich it with organic compost. Add some well rotted oak leaves and bark, plus a handful of wood ashes to discourage carrot loving insects. Watch the flowering stem and the dainty sprays of seeds and be ready to capture the ripe seeds before they sow themselves.
If you rub the dry sprays in your hands, the fine seeds will fall out and you can blow away the fragments of chaff. Place your splendid seeds in a pie pan and let them dry thoroughly in the sun or a warm room. Store them through the winter in a sealed envelope properly labeled. Next spring you can sow them and expect a healthy crop.
Peas and beans, cabbages and cauliflowers, beets and lettuces produce seeds at the end of their first season. You can dry and save seeds from selected plants and plant them the following season. Just one word of advice. Make sure you save them in properly labeled packages or containers or you may be astonished to find a row of onions where the lettuces should be.