QUESTION: Does a carrot grow from using another carrot? What’s the procedure to best re-grow carrots?
ANSWER: While a root of carrot do not produce another carrot within its body, it can produce a carrot plant which if given water, light, and sub-50F temperature for ventilated areas will bloom small flower and tiny brown seeds. When you wish to do this process specifically with whole carrots placed into soil dishes about half an inch deep.
The location should receive full sunlight, loose soil that is well drained works best. Maintaining moisture without saturation is crucial. Green sprouts start to show in a couple of weeks alongside flower stalks. Allowing full maturity leads to flowering paths and seed production that can be harvested for future use ensuring new carrot plants in the next growing season.
To preserve the seeds of your carrots, cut and remove the flower stalks after they have bloomed and insert them into a brown paper bag. Keep this bag in a dry location for a few weeks. After some time, shake the bag to separate the seeds from their stalks.
Next, eliminate all of the debris so that what remains is pure seed. Each piece of plant material should be discarded separately without adding any more plant parts. At this stage, you can either store the seeds in the same brown paper bag or transfer them into a glass jar as long as it is air tight. In whichever container you choose, mark it with the provided name and date and keep it refrigerated.
Carrot plants grown from saved seeds may not provide consistent results due to multiple factors. Cross bred carrots would be defined as hybridized carrots which are produced from two varieties of carrot plants. If you had multiple types of carrot plants, there are chances these could also be cross breeded ones which lack stability along with dependable features.
As long as your seeds were not cross pollinated with different carrot varieties, you can be certain that they will grow true heirloom. Cross pollination from even wild carrots like Queen Anne’s lace makes the seeds you can obtain hybridized and thus no longer pure.
The most difficult part of cultivating carrots from seed is germinating the seeds. Carrot seeds require light soil, consistent moisture, and moderate temperatures in order to sprout successfully.