I grow carrots in my little backyard veggie garden. In the last three years I haven’t had to buy carrot seeds… I let the carrots provide them for me. Here’s the top-secret, fancy-schmancy procedure…

1. Plant a lot of carrot seeds, water frequently, and wait for the plants to grow.

2. Pull up a few plants whenever they seem big enough and/or you need some carrots.

3. In summer, get busy and forget about the garden for a week… or five.

4. Now, notice a few plants have bolted and begun to bloom.

5. Cut most of the pretty Queen Anne’s Lace-like flowers for indoor enjoyment.

Carrot blooms: Pretty AND Practical

6. Back in the garden, the remaining flowers will mature and go to seed. Like this…

Such an awkward, in-between stage

7. And later, like this…

Yike, it hardly looks like a flower cluster any more.

8. And finally, like this…

Carrot seeds. NOT alien bugs.

9. Collect just one or two medium-size clusters to plant at will. Between those seeds, and the ones that fall to the ground without your knowing it and sprout on their own, I can almost guarantee you will have plenty of carrots for the next season.

10. If you want to be really organized, plant or scatter carrot seeds in patches, a few dozen at a time, every couple of weeks. Around North Texas with our mild winters, carrots grow year round. A little frost doesn’t seem to faze them.

Now you are back at step 2, pulling up carrots as needed and letting a few plants go to seed during warm weather. Repeat indefinitely.

I love how nothing in a garden needs to go to waste. You can even pull up the spent plants and compost them to improve the soil, or use them to mulch around the rest of your plants.

Thanks for reading!
Jan
PS: By the way, the top-secret procedure works for lettuce and other crops, too. As a matter of fact, I have a couple of nearly-ripe grape tomatoes out there, sprouted from a grocery-store tomato that got too soft to use. Waste not, want not!