GROWING MEDIEVAL CARROTS

GROWING MEDIEVAL CARROTS

an experiment by a black thumb medievalist

A bit of context.

In addition to all the limits of the historical reconstruction that we already discussed extensively in other articles, historical reenactment is a compromise for many other reasons: there are medical devices that we cannot avoid (fixed dental braces; wheelchairs, diabetes devices, etc.); conveniences that we cannot give up (ever seen reenactors coming out of public bathrooms?) and anachronisms that are hidden even from the most expert eyes—sometimes even from the reenactors themselves.
A great example is food: as much as historical reenactors and reconstructors try not use any food out of context (for example, potatoes and tomatoes in fourteenth-century Europe are out of the question) and to cook dishes that have a historical basis, we unfortunately have to come to terms with the idea that all foods once looked different: the food we eat has gone through centuries of selection to become more productive—not necessarily tastier or healthier. The ears of wheat were less full, the apples were smaller, the chickens were less bloated and so on.

There are also foods that humans, over time, has not only selected for productivity but also for appearance: it’s notorious for example the famous story of carrots, whose orange appearance would seem to have been specifically selected by Dutch farmers to pay homage to the Orange in the sixteenth century. In reality it is more likely that this beautiful story is a legend and that the change was due to a spontaneous mutation—is the orange gene of the carrot dominant? I don’t know, I have not woken up as Mendel and I will not do genetic experiments on carrots. At least for the moment.
Surely thanks to art we have been able to outline when the mutation occurred: while the Dutch painters of the 1600s already painted carrots as orange, the market scenes represented by the Flemish and Spanish painters of the 1500s still show a great variety of purple and yellow carrots.

Origins of the carrots.

It seems that the first carrots cultivation has taken place about 5000 years ago, in the area of the present-day Afghanistan. The sources are conflicting about the origins: sometimes they talk about the carrot as a vegetable imported in Europe from there, sometimes they talk about the purple carrot as imported and the yellow one as native European. Anyway, ancient vegetables is not my field, so I won't discuss the topic further.

The interesting thing is that it was not immediately appreciated as a food: in Roman times the carrot was mostly used for its medicinal properties, the flavor was rather bitter and unpleasant. Its popularity did not seem to change much even in the Middle Ages, when in the 1100s some crops were proposed in Spain by the Arabs and it took almost five centuries to reach all of Europe, which is very slow if we consider that with the movement of peoples fashions reached every corner within a decade.
Furthermore, demonstrating the little use of this food, the medievals themselves often confused the name of the carrot with that of the parsnip. The similarity is undeniable: the parsnip is a distant cousin of the carrot, different for the white color (the medieval carrot included shades from yellow to red) and it was widespread in the Middle Ages as the potato is today. It's not a coincidence to find images of carrots named after parsnips in the books of the time.

The popularity of the carrot in the Middle Ages, however, remains linked only to its aesthetic aspect: is still a food with a bitter taste, used more as a garnish to embellish certain dishes because of its colors. You know, medieval people were fancy.

The experiment.

I never say no to a challenge, especially since I have spent my entire childhood and adolescence in a competitive environment. So, when I was pointed out in a video that the carrots I was cutting were not “historically accurate”, I decided to bring up a topic that I had put aside for years: on a trip to Amsterdam BC (before corona) I brought home some colored carrot seeds, but unfortunately I never had the opportunity to experiment; I was waiting to have a house with a garden, but hey, when science calls you have to answer! So I got myself a pot large and deep enough (90x40x50cm) to grow my own medieval carrots in my two-people apartment.

I realized late that I hadn't thought about buying soil. I took the bags of soil I already had without even checking online if it was the right one (it was a mix of rose soil and herb soil—don't do that too) and filled the pot. Then I soaked the soil, sowed abundantly and soaked the soil again. Realizing that I had to wait 150 days for the harvest was a trauma. But still, I did it.

The 150 days of waiting.

After several days of staring at the pot I started to see the first plants and I was really happy. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that I should thin out the situation, but the toxic traits of capitalism whispered in my ear that I wanted as many medieval carrots as possible. And I also didn't want to choose which of my children would live and which would die.

Everything seemed to be going well anyway, even if the situation was more like a rave party than a carrot farm. The first three months, however, it was rainy literally every day. My plants were depressed, and I was more depressed than them. The basil got sick, I had to transplant it and try to eradicate a fungus, the tomatoes seemed to be on the verge of assisted suicide, the rose didn't even flower. But my drama was the carrots: I noticed some empty spots in the their pot. At first I thought that the seeds in the areas hadn't germinated, but in a few days I started to notice rotting plants in the aforementioned areas, which were spreading like wildfire.

Obviously, I was desperate and already thought that I wouldn't finish the experiment and that if I wasn't able to manage a plant I wouldn't even be able to raise anything more difficult—like a child, a dog or even a goldfish. Imagine me sitting in a room with dramatic music in the background crying over the carrots. It was a hard time.
One day I was talking to a friend about the basil problems and the fact that rain can cause a lot of diseases in this plant. She sent me a video on “how to take care of basil” and I discovered that the fungus on basil could have been eradicated with garlic.
So I decided to try it on carrots too. I know absolutely nothing about carrots, but since I started doing things randomly I went on with the garlic theory. The situation improved from there, but I can’t guarantee that there was a cause-effect relationship.

Finally summer arrived and with it weeks of temperatures above 36 °C (96.8 °F). It was literally the opposite situation. Plus I had to go for the working season at the seaside and I had to leave my plants in the hands of my mother and sister. Two weeks after my departure, asking my sister how my carrots were, the answer was: «Are they plants that I had to water? I thought they were weeds.»

In the end, the carrots survived the rainy season, the drought, and even my sister.

The harvest moment.

I had been waiting for the harvest for 150 days now. I had no idea what to expect, because there had been too many problems (and also I had done too many nonsense things). But I was hoping to see at least a single colored carrot.

I noticed new problems while trying to extract the largest plant. Three centimeters of compacted soil lifted up as if I were leafing through a book, revealing that the soil underneath had not been disturbed by any roots. It was the same for the rest of the pot, and the carrots were soooo tiny.

Far be it from me to judge the size, I still appreciated that the experiment showed a different range of colors of carrots. Among the many yellow and white carrots, two purple ones and one orange one survived. The flavor? Well, you will see the reaction on instagram in the next days!

To conclude.

The experiment was half successful. I was able to see the range of different colors of the carrots, but I can't consider it finished: of all the mistakes I made (starting with too many plants), the one that really seemed to have affected the experiment was the choice of soil. Apparently the fact that the carrots couldn't go deep was due to the soil being too compact and hard. The Internet suggests mixing it with sand to make it softer: who am I not to try again?

For the research on medieval carrots I have to thank my friend Martina. She is always precious, but when it comes to medieval food she is even more!