This weather – what a blast! Yeah – a miserable, frigid, freezing, sub-artic blast! What a crock! Alaska has warmer temperatures than us.

And – look at the calendar! Exactly one month since Christmas! Well, actually, one month since Black Friday! And if memory serves me correctly, that Black Friday was pretty much all white!

And look again at that calendar! We’re already approaching the end of January – the bitter end – figuratively and literally! Pretty soon we’ll be turning over to a new calendar page. So cheer up! That means that we’ll be eagerly awaiting Pauxitawny Phil on Ground Hog Day – February 2. Surely he’ll promise us an early spring, after all that we have been through this year! We deserve an early spring! (Wishful thinking!)

At any rate, for the past few episodes we have been talking about a bunch of really hot (not frigid cold) vegetable varieties to spice up our gardens this year. We’ve been talking about some new wild, weird, and wacky vegetable varieties.

So today, let’s pick up the ball (and it’s not a snowball) and keep going. Let’s consider carrots! Everybody loves carrots! Gotta love them – full of beta carotene carrots!

Carrots are relatively easy to grow. They come in various sizes and shapes and even colors. According to a little blurb in the Harris Seed catalog – carrots were developed from Queen Anne’s Lace. Some people call Queen Anne’s Lace a wild flower; others call it a weed! At any rate, carrots have been around for centuries. They usually come in several regular carrot shapes.

The Imperator carrot is long, smooth, and slim. The Nantes carrot is also slender, but the end tip is rounded. Some people call the Nantes stump-rooted. The Chantenay (oo-la-la – sounds French, doesn’t it?) are broad at the tops, tapered in the middle (you know, they get narrower), with rounded end tips. There is also a variety called Danvers. They have a conical shape, having well-defined shoulders and tapering to a point at the tip. They are somewhat shorter than Imperator cultivars, but more tolerant of heavy soil. Danvers cultivars are often pureed as baby food.
And then there are the specialty shapes. There are the perfectly round carrots – real gourmet carrots. These varieties have names like Thumbelina or Parmex or Parisienne (ooh, I love that French!). You can pick these puppies (les chiots, more French!) at ½ inch in diameter, or let them stay in the soil until they get golf ball size.

Hey, what a great gift idea! Give that golfer in your life some gourmet golf ball sized round carrots! Just when you thought you’ve seen it all – unique round carrots! Par for the course!

Don’t go looking for those round carrot seeds at your local seed racks this season. (Actually those seeds for the round carrots are not round – they look like regular carrot seed!) These specialty seeds can only be found in a few mail order seed catalogs – like in Johnny’s, or in Pine Tree, or in the Vermont Bean Seed Company (yes, they carry more than just bean seeds!)

At any rate, here is another really cool innovation! Baby carrots are now the current rave. Baby carrots – super sweet, super cute, and super expensive. Why cut up a full sized carrot into carrot sticks? Just think – you can buy those cute, ittsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny baby carrots at 4 times the cost of regular sized carrots!

Well, just think again, now you can grow your very own baby carrots! Stoke’s Seeds, located in beautiful downtown Buffalo, NY, has invented baby carrot seeds. This new Stoke’s development is called Baby Sweet Hybrid.

Here is what the catalog description says:

• “Baby Sweet Hybrid – 49 days”

• “The ultimate high quality mini-carrot for early harvests.”

• “Skin is very smooth” (well – duh – it is a baby, and babies have smooth, tender skin!)

• “Bright orange extensions” (Bright orange extensions??? Is that what they are calling the baby carrots??? Or does that mean they have extra body parts???)

• Ahem – “Bright orange extensions (?) with rich internal coloring and tiny cores.”

Sounds pretty terrific – right? Well, before you order a few pounds of this particular baby carrot (350,000 seeds/pound) and plunk down some serious money (yes, this baby carrot seed is more expensive than regular carrot seed!) . . . . Consider this – we’ve run out of time for this week. More on cool carrots next week!

Hey – Remember – Eat Smart New York!

And – Bye – Talk to you soon!
D