- Carrots were first grown as medicine for an assortment of ailments.
- Carrots can be traced back about 5,000 years. Since many mistook the vegetable for parsnips, it is unclear they first appeared.
- The orange vegetable can also be white, yellow, red, and purple.
- Mel Blanc, the voice of cartoon character Bugs Bunny, did not like carrots.
- Carrots are put into two categories, domestic and wild.
- Long Orange, Early Short Horns, and Scarlet Nantes are all types of the vegetable.
- Baby carrots are not a type of carrot. They started with Mike Yurosek, a California farmer who did not want to keep throwing out blemished carrots. He started cutting and peeling the vegetables to make them appear perfect.
- They can be left in the ground all winter.
- They are 88% water.
- Carrots are richest source of beta-carotene. The human body turns beta-carotene into vitamin A.
- The vegetable is great for eyesight and you skin, it also boosts the immune system.
- Cooked carrots are better for you than raw. Cooking the vegetable releases more beta-carotene. The raw vegetable only gives you 3% beta-carotene, but cooked you get up to 40%.
- This root vegetable does have seeds, which are harvested from the tiny white flowers that grow above ground.
- China, Uzbekistan, Russia, United States are the top 4 countries that produce the vegetable.
- It’s estimated that the U.S. produces about 1.3 million tons of carrots and turnips a year.
- Nearly 94% of American carrot production is grown in California, Texas, Washington, Michigan, Florida, Colorado and Wisconsin.
- California produces over 85% of all carrots grown in the United States.
- Carrots are the second most popular vegetable in the world, after potatoes.
- 6 million tons are produced annually.
- Carrot seeds are so small that about 2,000 seeds can fit in a teaspoon.
- The average person will consume 10,866 carrots in a lifetime.
- The root vegetable was the first vegetable to be commercially canned.
- The roots reach ideal color when the air temperature is between 60ºF to 70ºF.
- In 2015, 71,550 acres of fresh market carrots were harvested, with a total yield of approximately 2.4 billion pounds.
- In 2015, the average fresh carrot yield per acre was approximately 34,000lbs.