Boy Holding a Carrot - 1738
Francois Boucher1703-1770
• Pastel on buff paper
• Helen Regenstein Collection
• The Art Institute of Chicago
Unknown artist
Carrots originated in Afghanistan
and possibly northern Iran and Pakistan.
Daucus carota sativa
We grow:
Artist (Heavy Nantes)
Bolero (Heavy Nantes)
Napoli (Early Nantes)
Nelson (Early Nantes) &
Sugarsnax (Imperator)
The carrot was brought to by colonists
to the New World, where it escaped into the wild and became
Queen Anne's Lace.
Queen Anne's Lace is wild carrot which interpollinates
readily with carrot and occurs in disturbed ecological areas
(such as roadsides and vacant lots) all around the world in
temperate regions with adequate moisture.
Les Pettits Mordent Des
Carottes - Paul Gavarni 1804-66
There is a round variety of
carrot about the size of a beet. They taste the same as regular
carrots.
Unknown artist
Availability: Mid-July
through October
Days to Maturity: 70-80 days
Approximate Yield per 10 feet of row: 10
pounds
Per Person Requirements:
Fresh: 5-10 feet of row
Preservation: 10-15 feet of row
We enjoy digging our carrots in November, December and January
to have a fresh treat when there is snow n the ground. By
covering the carrot bed with a firm layer of straw and then
protecting this with a sheet of plastic, the carrots stay
sound through the winter. Our parsnip bed receives this same
treatment.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was
not very fond of carrots. Neither is Ping.
arrots
are native to Afghanistan. Red, black yellow, white, purple
- these were the colors that carrots started out with. Everything
but orange.
Carrots were first cultivated in Afghanistan in the 7th century,
and they started with yellow flesh and a purple exterior.
It was the Dutch who developed the orange carrot, and the
French in the 17th who most likely developed the elongated
carrot, ancestor of the ones we eat today.
The English brought the carrot to the New World. There were
originally red, purple and black varieties of carrots that
contained anthocyanin pigments.
The yellow, and eventually orange varieties of carrots were
developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, they contain no
anthocyanin pigments, but rather carotenoids which are responsible
for the yellow and orange color.
Today there are new red and purple carrot varieties available
that contain anthocyanin pigments.
"Carrot" is the
common name for some members of the Umbelliferae, a family
(also called the parsley family) of chiefly biennial or perennial
herbs of north temperate regions.
Most are characterized by aromatic foliage, a dry fruit that
splits when mature, and an umbellate inflorescence (a type
of flattened flower cluster in which the stems of the small
florets arise from the same point, like an umbrella).
The seeds or leaves of many of these herbs have been used
for centuries for seasoning or as greens (e.g., angelica,
anise, caraway, chervil, coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, lovage,
and parsley). The carrot, celery, and parsnip are vegetables
of commercial importance.
P Blume, Vegetable Dinner, 1927
Oil: 64 x 76 cm
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington DC
The
common garden carrot (Daucus carota sativa) is a root
crop, probably derived from some variety of the wild carrot
(or Queen Anne's lace). In antiquity several types of carrot
were grown as medicinals, and in Europe carrots have long
been grown for use in soups and stews. The custom of eating
carrots raw as a salad has become widespread in the 20th cent.
Carrots are a rich source of carotene (vitamin A), especially
when they are cooked.
Several types of carrot have also been cultivated since ancient
times as aromatic plants. Some are still planted as fragrant
garden ornamentals, such as the button snakeroot and sweet
cicely. A few members of the Umbelliferae produce lethal poison;
it was one of these, the poison hemlock, that Socrates was
compelled to take. The water hemlock is also poisonous. Carrots
are classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida,
order Umbellales, family Umbelliferae.
Quirijn van Brekelenkam (1653) Man spinning and Woman
scrubbing carrots.
arrots
are a very old plant.
Fossil records show that fossil pollen of 55 million years
ago belonging to the carrot family. The wild carrot, from
which all cultivated carrots have come, is a noxious weedy
plant. It was first used 5,000 years ago in Afghanistan as
a pale, black, red, green, or purple root.
The carrots enjoyed by the early Romans were yellow or white.
The familiar orange carrot was not known until the 1500s in
Holland when patriotic farmers bred the carrot to grow in
the color of the House of Orange by crossing the yellow and
the red carrots, thus giving us the vegetable that is rich
in carotene.
The
Greeks called the carrot "philtron' and considered it to
be a 'love medicine' and it was touted as an aphrodisiac. China,
India and Japan had established the use of carrots as a staple
by the 13th century, spreading on to Europe and England where
they were valued no only as food, but the fragrant leaves were
used to decorate and also worn on hats and clothing.
The carrots that we see in the store are far removed from what
they were a mere 70 years ago. They have been hybridized to
produce the short, wide, blunt root that makes a superior product
without the waste of the long tapered root of its ancestors.
Carrots are considered to be 'the best' vegetable for balanced
nutrition. Many treatments for chronic disease such as cancer
and arthritis use the regular consumption of large quantities
of carrot juice as an important part of the treatment protocol.
Carrots are famous for their high vitamin A content. They are
also rich in vitamin C.
Consumption
Outside
the US and Canada which consume Imperator type (long, thin)
carrots, the rest of the world consumes shorter, thicker-rooted
conical (Danvers or Chantenay type) and cylindrical (Nantes)
carrots.
Carrots
are worth approximately $300 million per year to US growers,
with over half the production in California. Nutrition * Carrots
provide 30% of the vitamin A in the US diet.
Vitamin
A is synthesized in the human metabolism by the breakdown of
carotenes, the orange pigments in carrot roots. Vitamin A itself
occurs in meat, liver, eggs, milk, and other animal products.
Over-consumption
of vitamin A can be toxic to humans but over-consumption of
carotenes is never toxic since carotene breakdown is well-controlled.
Over-consumption of carotenes or carrots can give the skin an
orange tone but this is not harmful.
Quiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam,
The Vegetable Stall 1665
Canvas: 47.0 x 38.1 Oil on oak panel
Levi Wells Prentice (1851-1935) Still Life with Cantaloupe,
Tomatoes, and Carrots
Oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches
Vitamin A deficiency is a significant world problem, especially
in the developing world. The magnitude of human suffering
from Vitamin A deficiency is comparable to that of protein
deficiency and second only to caloric deficiency.
One
crop of high-carotene carrots (twice the US carotene content)
on one square meter of land produces enough carotene to
provide an adult with all the vitamin A needed in a year.
Domestication
of carrots took the following path:
900 - 1000 AD: Purple and yellow carrots had been spread
from Afghanistan to the eastern Mediterranean.
1300s: Purple and yellow carrots in western Europe and China
1600s: Yellow carrots in Japan
1700s: In addition to purple and yellow, white carrots were
reported in Europe with an orange type first reported in
The Netherlands and adjoining regions
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Spring, 1565
Pen and brown ink; contours indented for transfer; 22 x
29 cm; Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna
Quirin Gerritz van Brekelenkam
c1640s - 1668 Family seated round a kitchen fire
Today: Orange carrots predominate world-wide although some
white types persist in western and eastern Europe (for livestock),
some red (not orange) in Japan, some yellow and purple in
the Mideast, and some purple, yellow, and red from Turkey
to India and China
If you have the good fortune of having a garden plot, carrots
will keep in the ground all winter.
Otherwise, they can be stored in dry sand in a "'root
cellar," which is, for city folk, a cool dark place set
aside for winter storage of root crops.
arrots
are native to Afghanistan. Red, black yellow, white, purple
- these were the colors that carrots started out with. Everything
but orange. 
arrots
are a very old plant. 
Outside
the US and Canada which consume Imperator type (long, thin)
carrots, the rest of the world consumes shorter, thicker-rooted
conical (Danvers or Chantenay type) and cylindrical (Nantes)
carrots.
