A backyard gardener in Gambo, Nfld., is looking for horticultural answers after pulling up a crop of purple carrots. Most of Ches Davis's carrots were the normal orange hue when he harvested his crop last weekend.But half a row of the vegetables had purple-coloured skins surrounding an orange interior. "I didn't know what to make of it," said Davis, who grows a wide variety of vegetables. Even the flavour of the purple carrots departs from the norm. "The texture of the carrot is completely different, and the flavour is a different, sweet flavour," said Davis, a retired grocer who has visited hundreds of food shops around the world, but has never encountered this variety. Other gardeners who grew carrots from the same source of seeds have not had the same results. "I just knew it couldn't have been the seed – it would have been in [the other gardeners'] beds as well," said Davis. "So it's just a complete mystery to me."

Chemical fertilizers could not have contributed to the colour, because Davis doesn't use them. "The only reasoning I can give is the conditioning of the soil where they were grown," said Mae Tizzard, who sold thousands of the seeds from the same batch to Davis and other gardeners.

View: Full Article | Source: CBC News

it sure sounds to me as though it was something in the soil that made those carrots' skins turn purple.

I'd love to see one of those upclose but I'm not too sure I'd like to taste them.

Lol, yeah same here. They don't look so purple though. I'd like to know what caused this, maybe I'll start liking carrots if it's a new good tasting carrot!

The article did not say but I would bet in the same plot were some beets. Some times in nature close proximity causes cross pollination, creating a hybrid. Apples and pair's will do this getting a bell shaped fruit with a unique flavor. No biggy!

Carrots used to be all different colours; purple, green, black and as crazy as it may sound, orange!

Atleast that's something I heard before on the BBC.

looks kinda like a sweet patato.....

So...some of his carrots turn a mysterious purple color...yet...he tastes them...?

Yeah, reeeeaaaaal smart.

I don't think this is really that unusual. I'm sure I've seen purple carrots before. Either there were beets nearby and it's a natural crossbreed, as Roger has said, or some different variety of seeds got mixed in with the batch. Since they all appeared in the same row, it's probably the cross-pollination behind it.

Bah, it'll take more then a few odd coloured carrots to kill us Newfoundlanders.

If it's anything like most gardens in Newfoundland, there were probably beets there, like ROGER said.

I think i read in a fact book that carrots used to be purple before 14th (or was it 17th) century.

I've been growing purple carrots for years. It's not an anomoly. Actually, there's more like a burgundy color, instead of purple.

Most carrot seeds that are grown in home gardens are hybrids. The purple carrots are open pollinated.

I'm thinking that some of the seeds that he got from his source weren't fully hybridized (is that a word?) and some of the seeds referred back to a "parent" source... namely, a "Purple" carrot.

I'm actually surprised that a retired grocer that has traveled the world never saw carrots like these... I can go to a local "high-scale" grocery store here in Michigan and get them.