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ets as seeds breathe like us, and store in a cool place, vermin free, ready for the sowing time. Readers may recall my notes years ago, when I mentioned a Kilham pea called "Jackson's Greybacks", well I hear it's still on the go, maybe even older that "Autocrat."
It's carrot time again, and a matter of picking the variety. In the old Blue Book of Gardening, 1939, Carter's listed 18 varieties, now in Marshall's catalogue, we see 9, yet in one commercial growers list I noted 14, so where does one go for a good carrot? The early ones are those short ones rather like dainty fingers; these are strains of either the French frame carrot, which is very short and round, or strains of the Nantes or Amsterdam type. The modem names include: Valor, Junior, Rocket, Nandor, and Delphi, to name a few. The longer carrots are usually hybrids, of the Berlicum shape, a medium to long root, red cores and most tasty! For a long Show carrot the variety St. Valery is usually grown, it has those long pointed roots. Chantenay types are long stump rooted, and with a red core.
I tend to get my crop attacked every year in the garden with the carrot fly, and intend to try those so-called resistant varieties, Sytan and Flyaway, Nantes types. I am very envious of those lovely clean even roots we see in the supermarkets, but admit they mostly lack the flavour of the soil-covered roots that are also on sale in many shops. If I still get carrot fly damage this year, then it's away to the shops I fear, an admission of defeat after years of trying.
The carrots that had the best flavour I have ever tasted, were grown in the garden at a house on Nightingale Row. Just which variety they were, I will probably never know.
Dick Robinson
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