I like Touchon variety, very sweet and juicy for juicing and for slaws, fresh eating and cooking. Makes a great carrot cake too. I plant them for a spring/summer crop as well as a fall crop (when it's even sweeter). They're typically cylindrical and 6-7" long for easier picking.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I will try them.

Oh, another big two thumbs up for 'Rainbow' !! These beauties are so sweet and tasty that I now no longer bother to plant any other! I've been vegetable gardening for over 40 years and always like to try new varieties, though so many of the new highly touted "best of best" have not stood up to the quality of 'Rainbow' and often I end up simply discarding the packet of expensive seed, rather than to waste the time and energy on something I've found to be inferior. Be sure to seek out the true 'Rainbow' as pictured above, they have a softer palette of colors. I always share the harvest bounty with others and sometimes their faces drop a bit because they expect a carrot to be a dark orange color, they later almost always enthusiastically tell me how they love these carrots! I grow two long rows for a total of over 60 ft and store large quantities over the winter, I'm gonna go grab some now come to think of it!

Thank you everybody. I have also googled for sweetest carrots and it brings me info about Kuroda carrots. Anybody has experience in growing them?

Where do you buy the "Rainbow" carrot seeds? I've checked my fav. seed suppliers without success :(.

I've seen them offered at the following .... Veseys, Territorial seeds, Parks, Harris Seeds, W H Perron and probably a whole lot of others.

https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/carrots/rainbow-pelleted-f1-carrot-seed-2414JP.html?cgid=carrots#start=1 https://0201.nccdn.net/1_2/000/000/14f/6cc/Twilley-Catalog-2020-NP2.pdf

Thanks FrozeBudd and Farmerdill :). Going to buy some over the winter :).

Thanks from me too on the rainbow carrot tip. I tried purple carrots about 20 years ago and was not impressed so I stuck with the much sweeter orange Nantes/Touchon type. Always looking for new things to try.

Oh, some of those heirloom purple and red carrots can be pretty tough to palate when it comes to fresh eating, seems they were bred for color, rather than flavor and sweetness. Okay, maybe some are better, especially now the newer varieties, though the ones I had been given seed of by a friend, these were only good for feeding horses!

I have tried a couple of the full purple like Purple 68 and Black Nebula and purple skinned orange core varieties like Purple Haze, Purple rain ….

I was not impressed by flavor or texture but the orange cored purples were better than the pure purples.

Yes, a novelty, though unfortunately that's where it seems to end with these. Wish I could recall the name, but grew an orange variety just a few years ago. one being touted as the ultimate in best of the best, sure they were uniform and nice looking, though tasteless and overly crunchy HARD. On the other hand, I just enjoyed a 'Rainbow' and talk about sweet, juicy and tender, I'll always be growing these beauties!

Carrots quality seem to depend on variables... time of year, weather, etc...

- Nantes are always decent fresh carrot, dependable for sweetness

- Kuroda are nice carrots, good fresh eating at any size, nice size and thickness. I like good sized carrots, more food after you pull and clean it up, satisfying for the work

- Purple Dragon is a good purple with a yellow core, well worth trying. Not as dependable as orange carrots.

- St. Valery is an old classic carrot that many like

Romance does well for me.

Thanks all for your input.

I recommend Cosmic Purple! It's the sweetest, prettiest and most dependable variety I've grown. I've had no problems with it at all.

Edit: In terms of orange carrots I recommend Tendersweet. It can be slightly finicky but is in my opinion more reliable than other imperator varieties, and it tastes delicious.

Thanks once more. I can't wait to try them myself!

I only grow Flakkee carrots. After years and years of smaller, forked carrots, I now get foot long carrots up to 2" thick, that taste great. I got the seeds on Ebay from Italy, about 4,000 seeds for $3.30 with free shipping. I have been using the seeds for 4 years so far, and still have about 90% germination.

Here is some Flakkee , that website offers a lot of cool Italian seeds shipped quickly from Kansas.

Edit, I read that Flakkee is the European name for Danvers carrots.

Keep reading seed descriptions, and it is kind of confusing. Funny how the opinion varies widely on whether carrots are good to eat fresh or just for cooking. I just want to grow carrots and pull them out of the ground and eat them, leave them in the ground until I need them. Not that worried about what the carrots taste like after 6 months of storage, not worried about if the tops are marketable, or whether they all look the same.

Want to try many different types, but I'm not sure I really get anything better to eat than just using the easily found Scarlet Nantes and Red Cored Chantenay seeds.

Muscade Orange Carrot... not really sure how these are different, but I'm gonna try these this year. Does anybody know what type of carrot Muscade is most comparable to?

Uzbek Yellow Carrot... these have a weird shape, maybe I'll try these. I read that Uzbek carrots can be orange or yellow, just have the same shape. I tried some regular Yellow carrots one year, and they grew like weeds and I they were very tough as a weed so I never tried again.

Kuttiger Carrot ... a very old type, like they grew before orange carrots, wonder what these are good for.

My order from Baker Creek came in a few days ago and a free seed package they sent was New Kuroda Carrot. I'm really anxious to try them out. They say they are sugary sweet, ultra-fine textured and the roots can power through tough soil and blistering heat.

Madonna

Flakkee straddles the line between being a named variety and simply a type of carrot. Their shape is also somewhat intermediate between a Danvers type, and an Imperator type. They are fairly long, longer than most Danvers, but they do end in a blunt tip (unlike the true Imperators). They can get quite large and in fact when the discussion turns to growing giant vegetables, their name tends to turn up.

Just to make things more confusing, they are known by a number of other names. Autumn King is one you will see often; this is a particular selection of Flakkee. They may also be known as Flak. Flakkee 2 is described as a selection of Autumn King.

I also like the Rainbow ones. Tried growing them last year. Will do so again this year. Fun!