Carrots, Different Colors, Shapes, and Sizes, All Nutritious
If I were a carrot, I would be up at arms; in surveys worldwide, it always comes in second to the potato in popularity. The potato is a delicious and nutritious vegetable, easily adaptable to many ways of cooking and varied recipes, no doubt, but the carrot’s virtues are plentiful as well. Like the potato, the carrot comes in a multitude of eye-pleasing colors: orange, white, yellow, red, and maroon to name a few. While carrots do grow in the wild, most are familiar with the cultivated carrot that most commonly makes its way to the world’s dinner tables. There exist several hundred varieties of carrots with over fifty different kinds of seeds readily available. Carrots are extremely rich in nutritional value and are such hearty growers; no backyard garden should be without them.
Of the two large subdivisions of the cultivated carrot, Eastern or Western carrots, Western carrots are the most popular grown and can be divided into three smaller categories by length. Short-rooted varieties mature the quickest and are harvested earliest. The most common commercially grown carrot variety is the medium-rooted type and the deepest growing, long-rooted variety demands the most thoroughly worked soil and requires the longest time to grow and mature before harvest. Depending on climate and geographical location, a particular variety may be more adaptable to your backyard garden. If growing in containers in an artificially lit, climate-controlled area, the only limits that could apply would be size and length of carrot, of course dependent on the room your containers provide. Thumbelina and Chantenays, both shorter growing varieties in both length and maturation, are excellent choices for spatially limited, container gardening. Chantenay’s taste especially sweet, with a brilliantly rich orange or red skin that maintains quite a crisp crunch and provides its eater with the essential Vitamin A needed for excellent healthy vision.
All carrots, regardless of color contain vitamins and minerals that are extremely useful to human health. Orange carrots contain beta carotene, processed by our bodies as Vitamin A, and is essential for healthy eyes. Yellow and red carrots contain lutene and lycopene, respectively, both helping fight against macular degeneration, lung disease, as well as a variety of cancers. Purple carrots contain anthocyanins that help with healthy heart functionality as well as aiding in blood clotting capabilities. Each color of this special vegetable provides necessary components to helping keeping a body healthy. Color of carrot is determined by variety, but deepness of color is affected by the amount of water added from your garden hose reel with more water lessening the richness of color the carrots contain. Water should be added faithfully, while never overwatering, in order to keep nutrition at its peak.
Proper respect should always be shown to the potato for its hearty addition to any meal, but for its nutritional value and aesthetic beauty, the carrot will always reign supreme!
About the author: Jon Bassfarm is an Internet content writer who enjoys researching and writing about many subjects including garden hose reel and landscaping.
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