Muscade Carrots… Not for the Rabbits

My daughter and I harvested a row of muscade carrots this morning.  They are absolutely crunchy and delicious!  They would have been even sweeter if I hadn’t waited so long to pull them, but they are still worth writing about.  I ordered the seed packet from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.   According to them, the muscade carrots are a North African variety and rare. 

Harvesting carrots. My daughter dresses herself in her favorite outfits every morning. You never know what the day will bring.

The muscade carrots are a large carrot variety. They have a delicious texture.

After we harvested the muscade carrots I realized they are really large carrots.  I figured they would be good juicing carrots.  When we tasted them we decided there’s no way we would juice them.  They’re way too good.  We will enjoy them uncooked and crunchy.  My kids won’t eat carrots when they’re cooked, but they’ll eat them all day long if they’re raw. (Especially when they grew them.)  I was the same way when I was a kid.

Muscade carrots.

We take the tops off the carrots and rinse them with the hose before we bring them inside.

We cut the green, leafy tops off the carrots and feed them to our bunnies.  The leafy tops are toxic to people but very nutritious for the rabbits.  

A few years ago, I put our harvested carrots in the refrigerator without cutting off the leafy tops and I found them all soft and inedible the next day.  I wondered why the carrots from the grocery store lasted so long in the fridge.  I learned that when the green tops are cut off, I can store my carrots in my refrigerator for several weeks.   Click here for a link on storing carrots through the winter.

All the muscade carrots we can carry.

We’re in zone 9b, so we don’t even attempt to grow carrots in the summer here.   Carrots get bitter and bolt in hot weather. (Cold increases their sweetness.)  However, we grow them every year during our fall and winters.  We find them very easy to grow.  Gardens Alive sells an organic heat tolerant variety called Danvers 126.

We plant our carrots about 3-4 weeks apart so we’re not harvesting a million carrots all at the same time.  We find it interesting and fun to grow different varieties.  It’s priceless to pull a carrot fresh from our garden, rinse it in the hose and walk around our yard crunching on it.  Back to nature!

Come grow with us!