Description of the variety Caramel
Carrots of the Caramel variety belong to the early species. From the moment of germination to harvesting, an average of 70-110 days pass. Suitable for growing in open and closed ground. The tops are green, growing 15-20 cm high. The leaves are beautiful, spreading, and can lie on the ground.
The root crop is cylindrical, elongated, about 15-17 cm and weighing up to 160 g
The root crop is cylindrical in shape, elongated, about 15-17 cm and weighing up to 160 g. The skin is smooth, without tubercles. Color orange. The pulp has a high juice content, very sweet, without bitterness or astringency. The core is slightly lighter than the skin, large, juicy. The taste is pleasant, sweet. The aroma is best heard when peeling and cutting carrots. Unpeeled root vegetables emit a subtle odor.
Important!
It is Caramel carrots that are most often chosen for baby food. In some cases, it is also suitable for preparing dietary dishes.
Pulp with a high juice content, very sweet, without bitterness or astringency
Sweet varieties of carrots for children
Children eat juicy, crispy carrots with pleasure. This is not only tasty, but extremely healthy delicacy. Here is a description of the varieties that kids especially like.
Children's sweet
Mid-early variety. The pulp is beautiful, bright orange. It is characterized by a high content of carotene (up to 15 mg per 100 g) and sugary substances (up to 8%). The roots are cylindrical, blunt-pointed, up to 20 cm long. The pulp is juicy, tender and sweet.
The variety is recommended for fresh consumption, making juices and purees. It has high keeping quality. Disease resistance is average.
Caramel
Mid-late carrots . Root crops are medium length, cone-shaped, blunt-pointed. The color of the skin and pulp is orange. It has excellent taste. Good both fresh and prepared. Suitable for freezing. Keeping quality is high. The variety is resistant to cracking and blooming.
Honey
One of the best varieties of carrots both in appearance and taste. Root vegetables are long, straight, cylindrical in shape . The color is orange-red, the core is small.
Honey carrots are recommended for children's and dietary nutrition. A distinctive feature is resistance to bacterial and black rot, powdery mildew. The best yield indicators are on sandy and loamy soils.
Sweet tooth F1
Late ripening carrots. Ripens in an average of 120 days. The roots are conical, large (up to 20 cm in length and 2.5 cm in diameter). The pulp is dense, juicy and sweet. It has a high carotene content.
The Sweet Tooth carrot variety is characterized by excellent keeping quality. Used for preparing baby food.
Characteristics of the variety
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The Caramel carrot variety differs from other types in taste and many other qualities.
- The shoots appear together.
- There is resistance to flowering. If the crop shoots out an arrow, it is too late; the root crop has time to ripen.
- These carrots, as a rule, do not crack, even with high soil moisture.
- Productivity is high. From a square meter of plantings you can harvest 2.5-4 kg of carrots.
- The harvested crop is well stored.
- Carrots are suitable for transportation over long distances.
- Caramel has excellent commercial qualities.
- The taste is excellent. The sugar content in the root vegetable is 6-7.5%.
You can harvest 2.5-4 kg of carrots per square meter of plantings.
The variety is highly valued for its rich vitamin and mineral composition, pleasant taste and rich aroma.
Interesting!
Caramel carrots make very tasty freshly squeezed juice.
How to plant Caramel carrots
Caramel carrots, of course, grow best in soft, crumbly soil. If the soil is not crumbly enough, it can be diluted with sand before sowing carrots. The bed for sowing is prepared in the fall. Humus or compost is added to it (1 bucket/square area) to enrich it and dug into it using a full spade.
Sowing Caramel carrots should be carried out from April 20 to May 10. Before the procedure, add wood ash to the soil (1 cup per square meter) and dig up the area. Sand and peat are added as needed if the soil is very heavy. After this, the soil needs to be loosened.
To sow seeds, it is necessary to make furrows 1.5-2 cm deep. The furrows are made at a distance of 20 cm from each other. Then they need to be watered generously. When the water is absorbed, sowing can be done. During the procedure, the seeds can be mixed with sand so that they are not sown densely.
Sowing Caramel carrots should be carried out from April 20 to May 10
To ensure that seedlings appear faster and the soil does not dry out quickly, you can cover the crops with film for the first time (if sowing was done in open ground). In addition, if the seeds were sown ahead of schedule, the film will help protect the soil and young shoots during return frosts.
Important!
Even on heavy soil, you can grow carrots if you dilute it with sand before planting, and regularly loosen the soil while the root crops are growing.
Instructions for landing
It is worth remembering that it is best to use sandy loam soils for planting carrots. It would be better if onions, cucumbers, and potatoes were planted in this place before. The sowing itself must begin at the end of April in order to obtain early production. The seeds are planted in furrows 3-4 cm deep. A distance of 17-20 cm should be maintained between the rows. When 14 days have passed after germination, thinning should be carried out. After the root crop reaches 1 cm in diameter, a second thinning is carried out; in this case, 5-6 cm should be left between plants. Subsequently, the fruits need careful weeding, watering and loosening. This root crop is usually harvested at the end of September. In early November, winter sowing can be done; it is at this time that the temperature most often drops to 5 degrees. Only in this case, the seeds are planted in the soil to a depth of 1-2 cm. In order to obtain carrots for storage, the seeds must be sown at the end of May.
Read also: Natchez blackberry: description and characteristics of the variety
The variety described above is becoming more and more popular among gardeners due to its high positive characteristics. It is really beneficial for the child’s body, which immediately attracts the attention of young mothers to it.
Features of caring for carrots
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The main feature of the variety, for which gardeners value it, is not the sweet taste of carrots, but its unpretentiousness! Growing Caramel is a pleasure - it is not capricious, grows quickly, and produces a large harvest.
- Watering is carried out as needed. The soil should not dry out, otherwise the root crops will be limp or bitter.
The soil should not dry out, otherwise the root crops will be limp or bitter
- Weeding is very important for carrots. The soil is kept loose throughout the growth of the carrots. First of all, you need to loosen the spaces between the rows, but it also doesn’t hurt to fluff up the soil a little around the carrots.
- Experts note that the fewer weeds that grow next to carrots, the better the harvest will be. In this case, you need to pull them out, and not tear off the top. After all, when the weed root remains in the ground, it continues to develop, preventing root crops from growing. So there is not much use in cutting off the top part of weeds.
Important!
Lack of watering always negatively affects the taste of carrots. Therefore, it is necessary to water the plantings in a timely manner.
- All excess sprouts must be pulled out. However, instead of removing the sprouts, experts simply pinch them off. As a result, the root crop does not develop, but neighboring shoots are not damaged when thinning the plantings. Thinning of the plantings is carried out 3-4 times, so that in the end, when the carrots are already large, there is at least 5 cm of free space between the root crops.
- Fertilizing is not done often. During the season, it will be enough to apply fertilizer 2 times. The first time feeding is needed 3 weeks after emergence, the second time – after another 4 weeks. As a fertilizer, you can take a tablespoon of nitrophoska, 2 cups of ash, or make a complex fertilizer from 20 g of potassium nitrate, 15 g of urea and 15 g of superphosphate.
Weeds need to be pulled out, not the tops.
As you can see, caring for Caramel carrots is not labor-intensive. Of course, it is impossible not to pay attention to planting at all, otherwise the yield will be low, but all the work invested will pay for itself with a large, tasty harvest.
Rules of care
To obtain a good, high-quality harvest, it is necessary to strictly follow all agrotechnical care measures.
Caramel carrots need moderately moist soil throughout the growing season. Drying out the soil during seed germination and when the crop ripens has a particularly bad effect.
If there is a lack of moisture, the formed root crop may acquire additional lateral roots in search of moisture. This will negatively affect the taste and appearance. But excess moisture can also lead to carrots cracking and rotting.
With proper soil preparation, Caramel carrots grow well without additional fertilizing and provide high yields. But if the plant’s leaves are pale and develop poorly, you need to carry out 2-3 maintenance feedings per 10 liters of water:
- after germination - 1 tbsp. l. nitrophoska;
- after two to three weeks - 2 cups of wood ash;
- It is fashionable to feed with a complex of mineral fertilizers with a predominance of potassium, phosphorus and the addition of microelements no later than 1-1.5 months before ripening.
Diseases and pests of the Caramel variety
Caramel does not get sick often, but it is possible. Most often, the plant is affected by phomosis or alternaria. To prevent the disease or cure it, crops are treated with a 1% solution of Bordeaux mixture.
Interesting!
High-quality carrot care is the best prevention against diseases and pests.
The main pest that can appear on Caramel carrots is the carrot fly. If the leaves begin to curl, then the insect has appeared on the site. Most often, the carrot fly affects thickened plantings, where there are a lot of weeds or overly moistened. If a carrot fly has settled on a plant, it can be removed by treating the tops with Inta-Vir or Actellik.
The main pest that can appear on Caramel carrots is the carrot fly.
Harvesting and storing carrots
Harvesting occurs as the carrots ripen. If planted early, the first harvest can be tasted at the end of June, but if the carrots were planted late, they will be ready for harvesting around September. Carrots are collected by pulling them by the tops. If the root crop has grown large, it can stay firmly in the ground. In this case, you should dig it up with a pitchfork, but very carefully so as not to harm the root crops themselves.
Important!
Carrot harvesting is carried out on a sunny or cloudy day, when the ground is dry and no rain is expected.
Despite the fact that Caramel is an early variety, its harvest can be stored throughout the winter if it is provided with normal conditions.
- In order for carrots to be stored better, it is necessary to sort them correctly. Medium-sized carrots last the longest without damage. It should be smooth and even. The smallest specimens should be immediately used for food. Large carrots are used after small ones, as they store better, but can dry out quickly.
- Caramel carrots must be stored in the pantry, basement or cellar. Before planting root crops, the room is cleaned, disinfected, and whitewashed so that it is suitable for long-term storage of the crop.
- Carrots are packaged in boxes, boxes or nets. It is well stored in any container and even just in bulk, in sand.
- The temperature should be approximately 0…+1 degrees. Humidity – 90-95%.
- During the winter, you need to sort out the carrots 2-3 times, that is, about once a month. Thanks to this, it will be possible to identify diseased, damaged root crops in time and remove them from the common box.
Carrots are packaged in boxes, boxes or nets
Caramel carrots are used for fresh consumption or processing. It has a pleasant taste, so it enriches the taste of any summer salad. When boiling or frying, it practically does not change the taste. It has an interesting flavor when preserved (assorted dishes, winter salads, caviar). The largest and smallest specimens can be used for freezing. These carrots are usually grated and frozen. It is suitable for soups, stewing, baking.
Interesting!
As they are stored, Caramel carrots do not lose their sweetness.
Bolero F1
This is an early variety, the fruits of which are recommended for fresh consumption, long-term storage, and also for growing for bunch production. The seeds are very hardy, easily overcome dry summer soil crust and easily tolerate heat. Root vegetables are medium in size, sometimes a little longer, regular cylindrical in shape with a blunt tip. The core and bark are equally orange in color. Bolero F1 is a recognized leader in resistance to Alternaria and powdery mildew. Good resistance to cercospora and root rot was also noted.
Reviews from gardeners about carrots of the Caramel variety
Gardeners' opinions about Caramel carrots are mostly positive. The variety is considered worthy for cultivation in large and small areas.
- Lyubov Guska : “For many years I could not grow good carrots, then I made a high bed with high-quality, loose soil and planted Caramel carrots. For the first time I had such a large and beautiful harvest! The root crops grew slender, even, without deformities. And the taste is so pleasant - we ate almost all of it fresh! Now I will only grow this variety – it has no drawbacks!”
- Makar Zhelezny : “Growing carrots is a tradition in our family. We always plant it, but we try to choose different varieties for comparison. Caramel carrots were sown together with the Nantes 4 variety. Both varieties produced, but I liked the Caramel one more in taste. It is sweet, children eat it raw with great pleasure! In addition, she is not capricious - we only removed the weeds and watered them on time. We use fertilizers only in the fall, filling the area generously with compost. The carrots were not stored for long because they were eaten quickly. This year we will plant more.”
- Evgeniy Vinilov : “I have been growing Caramel carrots for several years now. It is very tasty, compared to other varieties, and grows well even on heavy soil. Yes, and it can be stored all winter - tested from my own experience. My wife uses the harvest for various dishes. I really like the assorted Caramel pickled carrots. Probably because of the sweetness it turns out unusual - a mixture of sweetness and acidity of salt. And if you add hot pepper to the preservation, then you get a masterpiece!”
