The House Of Orange And Other Tales...

Our yard is lousy with carrots. There are carrots poking up everywhere, all up in our business. There have been carrots in the potted Maple tree. There are carrots growing on the side yard underneath our neighbor's window, where no carrots should be. There are carrots in all of our garden beds. I can tell you that carrots seeds will survive in hot compost, and that unless you want a farm of them, do not put flowering carrot plants in with your food scraps...

Unfortunately, they taste really bland. I keep waiting to pull them all up and take them over to my friend Leslie, feed them to Pie and Jake, her two horses, and be done with it. The rogue carrots are white...

Fred read that all carrots were originally white, yellow, and purple, and that the orange varieties were developed by the Dutch, as a tribute to King William I of Orange, aka, "William The Silent", who led the revolt to gain independence from Spain in the 16th century. The orange carrot had a better taste, and it was adopted it as the Royal vegetable in honor of the House of Orange.



Believe it or not, Britain's Carrot Museum (I know, that is really weird), disputes this and calls it a myth. I, for one, love that story and I'm sticking to it.

I planted all sorts of carrots about a month ago - Cosmic Purple (really cool with orange insides and very yummy), Red Dragon (also delicious), and the classic Orange Danvers. I just mix up a bunch of seeds in one envelope and plant away. I love that you don't know what you're going to get until they come up out of the ground! You wouldn't believe the looks on my tiny pals Jasmine, aka, "Sprinkles", and her brother Malik's faces last spring when they pulled up carrots that were NOT ORANGE. They couldn't believe it...if you have kids, this is a sure way to get them into carrots. The weirder the better, but the white ones, I'll tell you, are best left for the 15th century and soup stock.

XOXO
Yvette