St. Valery Carrot (orange) and Amarillo Carrot (yellow)

We harvested our first four carrots a couple of nights ago.  We weren’t sure if they were ready or not so I pulled up a couple and was pleasantly surprised, they were definitely big enough to eat and looked very pretty.  We planted two varieties this year, Amarillo carrots which are a light yellow color and St. Valery carrots which look like a standard carrot but so far have been a little wider than the Amarillo carrots.

We planted carrots here around May 20, 3 rows to our 30 inch bed, after they sprouted I thinned them out – about 1 carrot every 2 inches, and we had great success with them germinating although I missed quite a few when I was thinning them out, which caused some of our carrots to be too small to use. They have flourished this summer, and we should have plenty of carrots to use as we have been getting some from our CSA as well.

We cut one of each up and ate them raw, and they were both sweet and juicy, Jeremy thought the Amarillo carrots were a little bit sweeter than the St. Valery carrots but I didn’t think I could tell a difference between the two.  I put him to a blind taste test and he couldn’t tell either.  Both varieties taste so much better than the carrots you get from the supermarket and carrots have now become Jacob’s favorite vegetable along with roasted beets.  I think we are going to cut some up and freeze them to use in stir fries, etc. during the winter.