Carrot Seeds
A satisfying vegetable for beginners! As long as you don’t let them get overrun by weeds, or too crowded together, you should get delicious carrots pretty easily.
A common mistake is not to thin your carrots – the seeds is small & inevitably they’ll come up a bit too close together; you must pull out the extras leaving a decent gap of a couple inches between plants. It’s the only trick to getting great carrots.
Sowing Information
Carrots are ready to harvest in about 3 to 4 months. Sow them outside several times from spring to mid-summer. Can also be sown early under cover.
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‘Blanche a Collet Vert’ -WHITE AND GREEN CARROT
This is a traditional variety from Belgium. All carrots were originally white or purple – the orange ones are a quite recent invention. The carrots are white, and the top inch or so is green, so they are bicolour when pulled up – very pretty both cooked and raw.
White, green tops, long and pointy, less attractive to carrot fly.
about 1000 seed £1.84
‘Blood Red’ (‘Rouge Sang’)
An ancient variety, the ‘Rouge Sang’ or 'Blood Red' carrot has orange-red flesh overlaid with a purple skin, and keeps its much of its colour when cooked. We've been looking for a productive purple-red carrot for a long time now, and hope that this heirloom variety from France will be an improvement over the Dragon Purple we used to have. Give it a go!
Notable for its rich flavour, and ideal for soups and stews.
about 500 seed, organic. £2.89
‘Giant Red’ Dark Orange Carrot
Despite the name, this is not truly deep red. However, the vigour and flavour of this Italian variety are terrific - large carrots grow quickly, with big, orange pointy roots.
The flesh is sweet without bitterness, while still retaining a good 'carrotty' flavour, and the core is much reduced. Great both cooked and raw. Good both for early crops as it grows quickly, but also for maincrop sowings and storage over winter.
Quick, large table carrot from Italy, that is always popular.
about 800 seed £2.55
‘Jaune Obtuse de Doubs’ -YELLOW CARROT
Most people don't realise that orange carrots are a modern invention. Carrots naturally come in a range of colours - white and yellow from Europe, and purple from the Middle East where agriculture originated about 11,000 years ago. (Orange ones are actually a recent thing in the past couple hundred years. ) So, yellow is a perfectly sensible colour for a carrot! This old traditional French variety has yellow roots with blunt ("obtuse") tips that are easy to dig up with no risk of snapping, and a good strong (but sweet) carrot taste.
Yellow carrots look great sliced or grated in salads, and they stay yellow when cooked.
about 1000 seed £2.64
‘Muscade’
We are pleased to offer some of this rare heirloom orange carrot, which we have chosen for its quick growth, uniform roots, and particularly rich taste.
It is said to have some North African ancestry in its breeding and is thus slow to bolt.
about 1000 seed £2.31
‘Touchon’ Carrot -SWEET, STORES WELL
A quick-growing heirloom from France, dating from the late 1700’s. Still a favourite with many growers (after 200 years) because it has a fine crisp texture and an excellent sweet flavour.
The roots don’t taper much and are quite blunt-tipped. It is a good one for winter storage - it stays sweet for several months after lifting. But also a great carrot for use fresh, as it has such a good flavour.
To store carrots, just lift in autumn once the weather has cooled, but before heavy frost. Trim the foliage and sort out any damaged ones to use straight away. Store perfect roots in layers in sand, sawdust or dry potting compost making sure they don't touch. Stored in a cool but frost free place (eg a garage) they will happily keep through to the following spring.
Good keeper, early & tasty.
about 1000 seed £2.64
Autumn King
New in the 2022 season, this is a large & sweet maincrop carrot for harvest in September/October.
Chosen for its excellent storage qualities.
about 1000 seed £2.19
D’Eysines Carrot - HUGE FAT CARROTS
This is a great old French variety, grown in the past in the region around Bordeaux. It has a decent orange colour throughout, including the core, with a good flavour and medium-sweet taste. Early in the season they are long and thin, but later they get incredibly fat, with a unique conical shape.
We included it in our carrot trials for the first time in 2003, and in the end because it makes such very fat roots, it gave one of the highest yields of the lot!
Now very rare other than our own production, so do consider saving your own seed.
about 500 seed (very rare), organic. £2.99
Kuroda
An early-maturing Japanese heirloom. It is notably tender & sweet, and the roots grow about 4-5” long: fat at the top and tapering to a rounded point.
Good for shallower soils.
about 1000 seed £2.31
Lisse de Meaux -LONG, GOOD FOR STORAGE
A particularly high-yielding long orange carrot, this is a good late-summer variety that can make really long roots. We like it because as well as tasting so good, it is very long-keeping once harvested, getting even sweeter in storage.
A good keeper, it is always popular.
about 1000 seed £2.39
Manchester Table Carrot
An Old English variety with good crack resistance, excellent full bodied flavour and strong tall tops. From a private collection in 2001, we loved it , but it wasnt until 2014 that we managed to bring it back into production on a scale big enough to offer in the catalogue.
Carrot seed is a two-year process: You can see us laying out all the roots for selection of the correct size, shape and colour (the rejects are in a pile at the front). These are replanted and go to seed next summer - you can see how big they get , the bars in the polytunnel are 8ft off the ground.
Really tasty, really rare ....
about 400 seed (very rare), organic. £3.39
Saint Valery
A proper heirloom variety from the region near St Valery in Northern France. Neat straight long carrots tapering to a fine point, with a good flavour
Really old! Vilmorin’s gardening book of 1883 (pictured) even then described it as a famous old heirloom with “great productiveness & at the same time a fine, regular shape, & thick, sweet, tender flesh.”
about 1000 seed £2.17