Purple Carrot Experiment

In looking for new vegetable varieties to try out I stumbled across purple carrots. Although the majority of purple carrots I have grown in the past have been of purple only on the outside, I have been experimenting with some more deep purple carrot varieties.



A few purple carrots from a recent carrot trial

One helpful hint, courtesy of Kitazawa seed company, is that if your desire is to have your carrots exhibit full dark colors, you should grow them over the winter. Thus, if you want to grow a dark red or purple carrot – you should try to grow them when the weather is cool.

In May my purple carrot experiment was doing well



Thinning a few of the carrots out in May



Some more purple carrots

Another reason to grow carrots in the winter, should you live in a hot climate like I do, is that growing over the winter can assist in avoiding harsh summer growing conditions and pests. In my excitement to plant a new purple carrot variety, I decided to try growing my carrots over the summer. However, thanks to some local leaf-hoppers and the unrelenting heat of the summer putting my plants under stress, my whole purple carrot patch became infested with mosaic.



With leafhoppers comes Mosaic

The leafhoppers discovered the remaining carrots

All I could do to save the remaining carrots from mosaic was to pull up most of them and hope for the best. While pulling out the carrots, the leafhoppers clued in on what I was doing and shifted their population to the last healthy plants. The remaining plants soon became diseased. My only consolation is that I learned something and that I have more seed for next fall. Until then, I will make sure to remove all food sources (including carrots) for the local leafhoppers. The main consolation of a failed vegetable experiment is that I can consume my failures before they consume me.



Another way to say "garden failure" is "dinner time"