In Shakespeare's day carrots were mostly served whole and came in shades of pale purple, red, white or yellow, which meant of course that given their natural shape they were regarded as aphrodisiacs, or at least as a signal that what Blackadder referred to as "rumpy pumpy" might occur, within a discreet garden banqueting house or afterwards. This was, after all, the age of the codpiece. Subtlety was not on the menu, either in culinary matters or in clothing, though come to think of it our modern jeans might well shock even the Tudors.
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I'm not sure what a Tudor cook or feast master might think of the modern practice of cutting carrots into sticks, or any other shape for that matter. Then again, carrots were smaller in Tudor times - the giant orange blighters we grow now were developed by later Dutch market gardeners. The Tudor carrots were also probably tougher than ours and went to seed sooner. (I am trying not to think of any metaphorical significance in that.)
Many years ago I accepted that our household would never be self sufficient in carrots, not with a small horde of wombats who were taught by one small, determined wombat that carrots are delicious and humans can provide them. Nor have we been able to teach the local wombats that if you bite a human's leg you will not be given a carrot. But the wombats only get supermarket carrots, lots of crunch and little flavour. I have yet to see any evidence that wombats are gourmets. They are more like small furry vacuum cleaners, eating methodically till the food is gone.
We eat supermarket carrots too, usually in soup – homegrown carrots are so rich in carotene and other goodies that adding a couple to tomato soup makes it defiantly orange.
But when we do eat home grown ones, they are almost always round ones, with various names like or Mini Round Paris Market, Tom Thumb, Round French or Ronde de Nice. Each of them gives much the same result: a fast growing carrot that will be ready for Christmas dinner if you plant them in a sunny fertile spot and water well. They are sweetly flavourful, crunchy, tender, and everything a carrot should be. Round carrots also don't need deep soil so if you fail to dig, as I do, you will still get well-formed carrots. Any long variety of carrot grown here tends to develop two or even more tough and straggly legs, or a shape that you don't need to be an aphrodisiac seeking Tudor to find mildly obscene. You need to be a much more dedicated gardener than I am to grow long, perfectly shaped orange carrots.
To get the perfect long carrots you need well dug soil, finely cultivated so that there are no lumps to make the roots fork. If carrots can't force their roots into the soil they'll grow upwards instead, or turn bulbous or fork. If your soil is poor or shaley, above ground beds are best, so the carrots get more "legroom" before they strike the tough bits.
Smooth out the soil before you plant carrots, no matter what variety or shape you choose, otherwise the seed may all wash together. It is very hard to sow carrot seed thinly and evenly - you often get great clumps that need thinning. Try mixing the carrot seed with dry sand, or even dry tea leaves. (This keeps away ants as well).
Cover the carrot seed with the finest possible sprinkling of soil or compost - no great clumps that will smother it. Water often and lightly - if you water too hard you'll wash the seed away - and if you don't water the thin layer of soil will dry out and kill your young carrot shoots.
The best soil for growing carrots has been well manured for a previous crop like lettuce or celery. If you have totally unprepared soil dig the soil at least 30 cm deep and sprinkle on half a cup of organic plant food or old hen manure for each square metre.
Carrots will inform you if they have been mistreated, as long as you learn their language. If they fork, they are complaining that you didn't provide them with deep friable soil. If your carrots have hairy roots they've been grown in soil that's deficient in phosphorus. Pale carrots may have been grown in phosphorus or nitrogen deficient soil - though some varieties are paler than others. If your carrots vanish before they get to thumb height they have either been eaten by snails – snails love young carrots - or overwhelmed with weeds.
Carrots need excellent weeding until they are mature - then if they're planted close together they'll keep the weeds out themselves. I some times throw in radish seed with our carrot seed - the vigorous radish seed breaks up the soil for the smaller carrots and helps keep snails away. But that involves remembering to pick the radishes before they overwhelm the baby carrots.
If you want to make sure you carrot bed is weed free, dig it well; remove weeds, then cover the dug soil with clear plastic before sowing carrots. This encourages weeds to germinate. When you are ready to plant your carrots take off the plastic, "scratch" the soil, then plant.
Carrots are never sold by variety name in supermarkets (why not, come to think of it? If we name apple and potato varieties, why not carrots?) so most people don't realise that different varieties taste... well, different. The best tasting carrot isn't necessarily the deepest orange one - in fact deep orange carrots may be bitter or insipid.
If you are plotting a crop of carrots (pun intended) try several varieties. Mark the name of each (I have yet to remember to do this and invariably forget which carrot is which). Work out which you like best and which suits your climate best (the two may not be the same) - then stick to two or three varieties a year with maybe one new one every year for interest. There are many choices for the home gardener, like Western Red, Topweight et al.
Carrots can be picked as soon as they are big enough to bother with. I always eat the "thinnings" - the ones I haul out so the rest can grow big. Remember though that carrots taste sweetest after the first frost and they are most tender and crunchy when young.
Take the tops off carrots if you are going to store them in a cupboard or in the fridge - they stay plump longer. The carrots look lovely with their ferny tops but the root keeps feeding the leaves and the carrot shrivels much faster. I take the green shoulders off too - that also seems to help the carrots last better.
If you want to present a bunch of carrots, leaves and all, to a friend stick the carrot roots in a bucket of water, so they stay plump. Don't keep them there longer than 24 hours.
If you've previously had a warm welcome when you arrived with a bunch of roses, try arriving with an armful of home grown carrots. You may need to coax your hosts to try them, as they almost certainly look as perfect as those in the supermarket. But just like human bodies modified by plastic surgery don't have the flavour of ones that have evolved their own character, homegrown carrots may not look perfect but will be rich in flavour.
Anyone who has eaten home grown carrots will probably decide the symmetrical supermarket monsters are best served only to wombats.
I suspect our wombats would agree.
This week I am:
* Treading on lawn daisies. According to tradition, when you can step on two with each foot at once it's truly spring.
* Watching the buds on tree after tree break into leaf or blossom.
* Possibly, maybe, hopefully, getting the vegetable beds ready for tomato plants and other spring veges. This year I plan to stick mostly to tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkin and vast numbers of melons (I hope), all of which adore stinking hot summers. Note: I have dreamed of having vast amounts of melons many times but never actually achieved it.
* Hoping that the wallaby which has just delicately eaten a camellia petal by petal, then moved on to young salvia leaves for dessert, appreciates the varied menu in the garden.
* Discovering that our potted thymes needed much more water than we gave them over winter; am topdressing and deep watering some of them, replacing others. NB Lemon thyme doesn't give you the flavours of both lemon and thyme, just insipid thyme. Sniff thymes well before buying.
Breathing in spring.
24-carrot recipes
Carrot and beetroot salad
6 grated peeled raw large carrots, or 15 round ones
1 cup grated raw beetroot
½ cup finely chopped parsley
1 tsp French mustard
1 tb olive oil
1 tsp good vinegar, balsamic or red wine
2 cloves garlic, crushed
A little salt if you wish
Mix everything except the carrot and parsley and leave overnight so the beetroot softens a little. Add the carrot and parsley just before serving so the beetroot doesn't discolour the carrot. It won't change the taste - just spoil the combination of colours.
Glazed carrots
This is good for insipid supermarket carrots. It turns home-grown carrots into something sublime. Boil six sliced large, peeled, sliced carrots or 15 small whole round ones with not much water, 1 tb butter or olive oil and a good glop of honey – a glop is a generous tablespoon. Boil till almost dry. The carrots will be sweet and even more richly coloured and won't taste honeyish unless you've overdone it with a strong variety like leatherwood.
Carrot and chervil soup
6 grated large or 15 round carrots
6 cups stock (chicken or good veg stock)
1 onion finely chopped
4 shallots, chopped for 10 minutes
3 tbsp butter or olive oil
3½ tbsp of chervil, chopped
Saute onion, shallots and carrot in the oil or butter on low heat till the onion is soft - do not brown or it will be bitter.
Add to the stock in a pan. Simmer for 10 minutes.
Add three tablespoons of chopped chervil, reheat and then add a dash of cream and a little fresh chopped chervil on top.
Carrot and ginger cake
125g butter
100g brown sugar
125g self-raising flour
2 eggs
1 dessertspoon treacle
2 tsp ground ginger
2 dessertspoons crystallised ginger, finely chopped
About 6 large or 15 small round carrots, peeled and grated
4 tbsp ground almonds
A little cream - about ½ cup - if it seems dry. This will depend on how moist the carrots are.
Melt the butter, add the treacle and sugar, and stir well. Take off the heat, stir in the eggs and then add the other ingredients. Moisten with a little cream if necessary.
Bake in a slow oven for an hour or till a skewer comes out clean (this will depend on the size of the cake tin.)
Leave plain, or spread thinly with lemon icing when cold.
Lemon icing
Add a dash of lemon juice to icing sugar, with one tablespoon of butter for every cup of icing sugar. Don't add too much juice at once in case it gets too runny - just add more as necessary.
