Medwyn Williams advises on producing seed from carrots, drying shallots and celery care
Geoff Blake, by email
Medwyn says: This is dependent on what type of carrot you're thinking of producing seed from. Very simply, you can produce seed that will be true to the mother plant from open-pollinated varieties but not from hybrids as they will give you a proper Heinz 57, a real mixture of size and shapes! Generally all the exhibition long carrots that I'm aware of are reselected from an old Sutton’s variety called 'New Red Intermediate' and, therefore, an open-pollinated variety.
I've no doubt that the newer reselections, such as the one we now sell, are vastly different to the original and if it was named today it certainly would be more in keeping with a 'New Long Red' rather that 'New Red Intermediate'. With the stump carrots for exhibition, most of the modern varieties, such as the current winning selection 'Sweet Candle', are F1 hybrids, so it’s not worth putting them down for seed.
There is, however, an old variety worth persevering with called 'Chantenay', these are non-hybrid or open-pollinated varieties. You can put these down for seed production and, with careful selection of the mother plants, you could well improve. 'Chantenay' is a very stumpy variety and, prior to the newer hybrids coming on the scene, this was the sort of variety winning at all shows. To produce your own seed you lift the carrots and then select a minimum of six in order to maintain the vigour within the strain.
Plant them up in a bed inside a greenhouse or tunnel or in pots or other suitable containers. Never try producing seed from a stump and a long variety in the same greenhouse as they could well cross pollinate and spoil both original selections. Use good-quality compost as well as some liquid feeding during the season as they'll be growing away for at least 10 months before you can gather the seed.
■ Follow me on Twitter as I grow vegetables for my display at Malvern – @medwynsofangles.