Whatever type of carrot seeds you plant it’s easy to learn how to grow carrots from seed.  Here are some common characteristics. Carrots are biennials, so they use their leaves in the first year, to gather energy from the sun to build a big, starchy root. This is where they store their energy over the winter. The following spring they use that stored energy to send up a tall umbel of white flowers, looking strikingly similar to Queen Anne’s Lace to which they are closely related. When the weather gets cold in the first year of growth, carrots convert a lot of their starches to sugars, so the roots become sweeter in winter.