When you think of what you’d like to grow in your spring garden, carrots are probably on the top of your list. The Mokum Carrot is an excellent contender for space in the garden.
Continue reading to learn about the Mokum Carrot, what it tastes like, and how to grow them for yourself!
Looking for Mokum Carrot seeds? Check availability.
Characteristics of the Mokum Carrot
The Mokum Carrot has been around since the 1970s. It was developed by the Seed Savers Exchange and was named after the street in Amsterdam where the SSE headquarters resides.
The Mokum Carrot is a Nantes-style carrot variety that has won many awards among growers. Some say it’s the tastiest carrot for fresh eating in the late spring and early summer.
What is a Nantes-StyleCarrot?
The Nantes family of carrots are perfect for snacking because they are coreless and have a mild and crisp sweet taste.
Nantes-style carrots are known for their cylindrical shape. They have a rounded root tip and smooth skin, a favorite in culinary dishes.
To take a deeper dive into the Nantes Carrot variety, check out our post All About the Nantes Carrot.
Ways to Enjoy
Carrots are versatile and easy to add to many of your favorite sweet and savory dishes. Whether you’re taking a side dish to a potluck or looking for a delicious dessert for your family, you’re sure to find a delicious recipe using carrots!
The Best Carrot Cake Recipe You’ve Ever Tasted
Keeping Carrots Fresh
Carrots generally stay fresh up to 4 weeks if properly stored in the refrigerator. One of the most common ways to store carrots in the fridge is by cutting the green stems off, wrapping in damp paper towels and storing in the coolest area of your fridge.
If you’re interested in learning about more options, check out our post on How to Store Carrots.
Health Benefits of Carrots
Carrots are full of rich vitamins and dietary carotenoids. Carotenoids are important to maintaining a well functioning immune system, help keep skin healthy, and support the respiratory system.
There are many other health benefits to choosing carrots in your diet. Healthy vision, reduced risk or cancer, and lowering high blood sugar are a few examples of the way carrots may aid in keeping your body functioning the way it should.
What is the Healthiest Way to Eat Carrots?
As long as you aren’t eating large amounts of carrot cake daily, there are health benefits to eating carrots, whether cooked or raw.
Drinking the recommended 8 ounces of carrot juice (unless you’re pregnant or nursing!) each day has incredible health benefits if you keep up with it. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into the benefits of juicing carrots, how to make your own, and what to look for when purchasing a juicer, check out our post on Carrot Juice.
Growing Mokum Carrots
Mokum Carrots are fun and easy to grow in your garden.
Just shy of two months after planting you’ll be reaping your harvest! Because it’s a root vegetable, harvesting carrots is almost like a treasure hunt because you don’t know what shape or size your carrot will be when you pluck it from the ground.
Grow Zone
Carrots can be grown in USDA zones 3 through 10. You can plant carrots three to five weeks before the last frost date in your grow zone.
Planting Tiny Carrot Seeds
Carrot seeds are very small. It may benefit you to purchase pellet seeds so that you can see where you’ve planted.
If the variety you’d like to grow isn’t offered in a pellet, there are some easy hacks to make planting easier and ensure you won’t have to thin your seedlings too much when they begin sprouting.
If you have the time and patience, unroll a strip of toilet paper and mix a flour and water paste. Using a q-tip make dots on the toilet paper an inch apart placing a carrot seed in the middle of each dot. Once you’ve filled your toilet paper strip, plant it into your garden bed. The toilet paper will decompose and your seedling will be perfectly spaced!
Tending
Carrots will need more water as they continue to grow. But it’s important to not over water them. A quick trick to know if your carrots need watering is to stick your finger in the soil beside them about an inch deep. If it’s moist, no need to water!
If you notice that your carrot seedlings are popping up too close to one another, you probably need to thin them out to ensure your carrots don’t grow together in large lumps.
When and How to Harvest Mokum Carrots
When you know it’s close to the time to harvest your carrots it’s important to begin watching the tops of the root. Once you see it poking through the dirt, the time has come!
Mokum Carrots are brittle and delicate, you’ll need to hand dig them to keep them in one piece.
Where to Buy Mokum Carrot Seeds
Mokum Carrot seeds are a more difficult variety of carrot seeds to find. You’re not likely to score them at big box seed kiosks, so online shopping might be your best bet.
We recommend the amazing selection of carrot seeds offered by one of our favorite retailers, Hoss Tools. Check their page often to see if they add Mokum Carrots to their inventory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hopefully by now many of your questions about eating and growing carrots were answered above. If not, check out some FAQs below!
What should not be planted close to Mokum Carrots?
It’s important to remember that most root crops require high levels of phosphorus to thrive. If you plant more than one root crop like potatoes, parsnips, and turnips in the same area, your yield will likely be much smaller.
Do carrots cross pollinate?
Wild carrot or more commonly known as Queen Anns Lace often cross pollinates with carrots. When this happens, you aren’t able to save seeds for growing future heirloom carrots from your garden.
What is the difference between a carrot and a parsnip?
Parsnips and carrots are both in the root vegetable family, they have similar shapes, and because there are some white colored carrot varieties, it’s easy to get these two veggies confused.
Interestingly enough, parsnips have a spicy flavor with cinnamon and nutmeg undertones. Carrots are generally more on the sweeter side.
Wrapping up Mokum Carrots
Mokum Carrots are just one of many delicious varieties of carrots that you can grow at home. If you’re looking for more information or other carrot options, be sure to take a look at our Carrot Plant page.