Carrots hit a purple patch

By ELLEN READ

After hundreds of years, purple carrots are making a comeback as part of a Katikati business' 25th anniversary celebrations.

Kings Seeds - a mail order seed supply business - is about to release its anniversary catalogue, which will include seeds for purple carrots.

Orange carrots did not appear until the 17th century, when patriotic Dutch growers bred them to match the colour used on the national flag.

From as far back as the 10th century, the crop grew purple in India, the Middle East and Europe. Its origins are traced to Afghanistan. There are reports of Egyptian temple drawings from 2000BC which show a plant believed to be a purple carrot.

"We've already got a lot of interest in the purple carrot seeds," said Gerard Martin, who with his wife, Barbara, bought Kings Seeds from founder and friend Ross King 4 1/2 years ago.

King and his wife, Glenys, ran the company, and a retail outlet, from Avondale for 21 years.

One of the Martins' first decisions was a lifestyle one, which caused them to move to Katikati and to focus solely on mail order.

With backgrounds in horticulture and teaching, they had a combination of industry knowledge and people and administration skills.

Despite that, Gerard Martin said the first year was a huge learning curve in extending product knowledge and learning business systems.

"I'm still learning. I don't think I'll ever know everything," he said.

The company's customer base is made up of 10,000 private gardeners, 200 commercial growers and about 150 garden centres and nurseries.

The Martins have continued the trend set by the original owners (who have no connection to the Kings plant barn chain), which is to offer an interesting range of flowers, a collection of heirloom vegetables and a wide selection of herbs.

A range of seeds has been developed to meet the growing organic market. And as New Zealand's Asian population increases, they are also sourcing and offering Asian vegetables.

The Martins get 95 per cent of their seeds from overseas - from 15 international companies in Europe, Japan and North America - meaning importing is a major part of their business.

"New Zealand has quite stringent biosecurity rules but it is perfectly possible to operate within them," Gerard Martin said.

An Auckland-based import agent handles the incoming freight and looks after the customs paperwork.

Exporting is also part of the business: Kings Seeds are distributed in Australia and in Japan.

In Japan the distributor, Mieko, has her own TV show called Mieko's Garden.

Word of mouth among expatriate Kiwis has also seen the company send orders to an island resort off the coast of Mauritius, to Korea and Pitcairn Island.

Martin said the challenge was to know what plants would suit global climates.

The past four years had been spent refocusing and building the business, he said, and the next aim was to strengthen the range of Asian and organic seeds offered.

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