Ever wonder why the CSA boxes contain large carrots and baby carrots? These carrots are of the "lil' finger" variety and you can see that not all of the lil fingers grow at the same rate. Most of the varieties that we plant are open pollinated which means they come from breeders that have not manipulated the parent plants to produce hybrid crosses. Basically the plants are just left to flower and produce seed on their own and then the seed is collected. There are advantages and disavantages to using open pollinated seeds. The downside is that there can be a good deal of variation in the size a vigor of the plants but overall the crop is pretty good. The upside is that when these plants produce seeds, we can plant them next year and get a pretty good crop again. On the other hand, Hybrid seeds produce a very uniform crop the first year, but if the resulting seeds are collected, the next years crop will have tonnes of variation and not be nearly as vigorous as the previous year. Sometime hybrids produce very little viable seed at all.
Growing open pollinated varieties and saving the seeds, is the first step to breeding new varieties of plants that are better suited to growing in our climate. So that one day, we will have our own Callaloo Carrots, that thrive in sandy organic soil during hot Indian summers, and grow quickly under our clear skies and warm spring weather, yet can withstand sitting in the a trough of cold air for a few hours in the early morning.
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