Long Blood Red Carrot Seeds (Daucus carota)

Daucus carota

Long Blood Red Carrot, improved blood-red carrot: this old 19th-century variety has a rare quality among colored carrots—its deep red-orange flesh retains its color after cooking, whereas most purple varieties fade in the pan. That is reason enough for it to have made a comeback in chefs’ kitchens.

Characteristics:

• Long-lasting color: purplish-red skin and deep red-orange flesh that withstands cooking.
• Highly flavorful: more intense and sweeter than classic carrots.
• Long, conical root: approximately 20 cm, evenly tapering to a blunt tip—it really is a long carrot and requires deep soil.
• Reproducible heirloom variety.

Sowing advice:

• Exposure: sunny.
• Soil: loose, light, deep and free of stones—its 20 cm root must be able to grow straight down, even more so than the Nantes, which is a half-long variety. In heavy or stony soil, grow it on a mound or in a deeply loosened bed. Avoid fresh manure, which causes the roots to fork.
• Method: for early carrots, sow from mid-February to the end of March under cover or in a cold frame. For summer harvests and storage carrots, sow from early May to the end of June. Always sow directly in place, in 1 cm-deep furrows: carrots do not transplant well. See how to sow your seeds.

Care advice:

• Thin to 5 cm, preferably in the evening, immediately removing the waste, whose smell attracts carrot flies.
• Water regularly and evenly to prevent the roots from splitting.

Harvest advice:

• Harvest as needed. Autumn carrots can be stored throughout the winter in a sand clamp, in a cool place.

Beneficial pairings:

• Sow it in alternating rows with onions or leeks: their scents confuse one another and mislead their respective flies. See vegetable pairings in the garden.

Benefits for biodiversity:

• Leave one plant to go to seed in its second year: its large white umbels attract hoverflies in large numbers, whose larvae devour aphids.
• Like all umbellifers, it is a host plant for swallowtail caterpillars.

Uses:

• Its ability to retain its color when cooked makes it a visual asset: roasted, in a velouté or mashed, it keeps its spectacular color. Excellent raw, grated into a salad.

Harvesting your own seeds:
Leave a few roots in the ground over winter: they will go to seed in their second year. Harvest the umbels when they turn brown and close up into a bird’s-nest shape. Beware of cross-pollination with wild carrot and other varieties. See saving your seeds.

Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose reproducible, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to sow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.

An heirloom carrot that keeps its color all the way to the plate.