Ok Here we go, I apologize for the background!! only after viewing the pics to post them did I realize the background was a bad choice, I was trying to not get liquid all over the place. I didnt notice the background is distracting and makes its a bit harder to see!
So first the pics.
So first off now I know what I did/use works, I am going to redo it but this time get rig of all the orange root when I do it, I left a bit on because I had to try many things to get this to work and it was quicker easier to just use kitchen scraps as was. Now I have found what I was looking for I will micro propagate using nutrient gel with the compound I separated.
I did try commercial rooting and hormone powders but the carrot just rotted, if you look at the pic of the bottom of my carrot there is zero deterioration.
So the question is what would I want the leaves without the root?
I want the essential oil in the leaves so I can extract the compound responsible for the smell, I will use it as a fragrance for soaps etc.
So why not just use normal carrots?
I need a carrot that grows more like a herb such as say basil, and one you can grow all year in a pollytunnel easily. I need to be able to crop the leaves constantly and they need to be fast growing so it saves space.
Reasons normal carrots grown with the main root dont work
As the carrot grows and the bit you eat gets bigger, the amount of oil decreases in the leaves as the plant concentrates its energy on the main root.
Once the root gets to a certain size it goes woody and the oil content drops right off in the leaves and it then puts energy into making seeds.
Carrots or a mare for attracting carrot root fly, the fly lays its eggs near the carrot and the grub burrows into the root and start to destroy the carrot. The big problem however is once you get carrot root fly in your soil it can take YEARS to get rid of!!
Carrots need good soil stone free etc and are a PITA to grow for max oil content.
The carrots above actually get more oil the bigger the leaves get (upto a point but larger than ones with the big root).
These carrots can be grown in hydroponic set ups like mine that use 2.5 inch pipe for the main root chamber.
The carrot you can crop the leaves just like any other pot herb so you need less plants for same amount of oil.
These as you can see in just a couple of days grow rapidly! They are also growing roots like normal plants instead of the spindly side roots you sometimes get on carrots, this is why I think the oil content is so far 600% higher.
The seeds I am now interested in, since it was mentioned I started thinking about the oils in the seeds and they contain an oil which gives soap a softness, but you need alot of seed, these if left to grow would seed rapidly.
By all means try and copy the experiment to prove me wrong, I have tried many methods to get this to work, none have worked like this had and none grow at such a massive rate.
So apart from not telling you what the compound I extracted to make this work is, there you have it
thats is why these carrots are special to me. I can grow them like herbs without the normal set backs.
SIMPLES
Hard to see from the pics but root mass and size in 24 hours has increased, I have upped the amount of extracted they are fed on from 150mg to 200mg, this will cease in a week and normal growth nutrient introduced once I have good root mass.
I will start to cell culture in the next few days so there wont be any orange root at all.
Probably boring to most but as I said it was the only way I could get someone to see the pics in a pm I wrote about what I was currently working on that was non electronics related.
I did ask for the post to be deleted after posting the first pics, but if people are remotely interested then I will keep it updated so you can see how it pans out. Thanks for the comments I loved the guesses, I didnt intend for the post to stay long, but it turned out fun.
I have no idea why we cant upload pics in pms though?? But at least it may have given you a laugh, by the way parts of the oil in the leaves smells fantastic in cold process soap!