John’s Purple Carrot

John’s Purple Carrot has been protected within the Heritage Seed Library Collection for nearly 40 years.

This beautiful carrot can be traced back to very humble beginnings. In the mid-1970s allotment-holder John Purves was offered two bags of carrots from a neighbouring allotment owner to feed to his rabbits.

When he got home and emptied the bags out, John noticed there were three to four purple carrots amongst all the other orange ones. He cut one up and noticed that it was purple throughout and the taste was like an otherwise orange carrot; crisp and flavoursome.

He planted the purple carrots and over a number of years, rogued out the odd yellow carrot until he managed to obtain a pure purple line.

John decided to pass some of his seeds to Horticulture Research International, now part of Warwick University, for their long-term preservation, and, with John’s permission, they passed them on to the Heritage Seed Library.

This is a regular in our annual seed list and always proves a firm favourite.

This variety is a tribute to John’s perseverance. Carrots are biennial and require roots to be grown and carefully selected in year one, then grown for seed in year two so getting a stable crop of purple carrots is an impressive feat.

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