Carrot tops are wonderfully edible and nutritious. Whenever carrots are growing in my garden, the carrot tops are sure to end up in a soup, stir-fry or salad. Eating the greens from root crops more than doubles the produce from that part of the garden.
Save and regrow your carrot tops in pots and you’ll have a bountiful windowsill or balcony pot of greens for cooking, salads and garnishes – but sorry, no new carrot roots – you need seed for that.
So, how to regrow carrot tops from the root?
To grow carrot tops is really easy. You simply just take the store-bought carrots and chop the top part with the stem then put it in a pot of soil. In the video below, I will show you how.
Growing Carrot Tops from Seeds
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| Carrot is one of the fifty-five plants I talk about in this film…. |
- carrot top in vegetable soup
- carrot top chopped in salad, mixed with other leafy greens and legumes
- carrot top as a stir fry leafy green
- carrot top added to pesto
- carrot top added to juice
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| Use your carrot greens – they are a valuable food too. |
It does take a long time for carrot roots to be ready for harvest (12-18 weeks) – but this way my carrot patch is producing food from just a 4 weeks after planting. They are full of potassium, calcium, chlorophyll and other nutrients, rich in protein and have six times the vitamin C of the root.
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| Carrot tops look a lot like Italian parsley or celery – both of the same family (Apiaceae) |
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Thanks for this post, Morag, I'm getting some really good ideas here. I haven't used carrot tops before but will be trying them now. I ordered the toothbrushes from your post a few days ago. They arrived so promptly and are an instant hit. My husband also likes the idea of using the handles when finish with, to use as garden markers. Keep up the good ideas.
blessings Gail.
Thank you for this. I had no idea you could eat the carrot tops! Will give it a try.
Another great post Morag. Thank you. I wonder why we throw away the tops of any root vegetable. Radish leaves, beetroot tops, turnip greens…….just about anything leafy attached to a root vegetable is worth eating. My rule of thumb is to be much more cautious if the bit we usually eat grows above the ground; tomatoes and eggplants are part of the nightshade family and their stems and leaves contain high concentration of the glycoalkaloid poison. Potatoes are also nightshades and an exception to the root vegetable rule. Rhubarb leaves are notoriously poisonous. These days we're lucky to have the benefit of the internet. We can just google anything we might like to try eating.
great tip – thank you! Love your blog by the way