Variety performance review
Purple Top Turnip in the Corn Belt Core.
- Good
- Multiple — generic seed
- 60–80 days to bulb maturity
- Organic-approved
Regional strengths
Purple top turnip is the easy-button brassica for Corn Belt food plots — broadcast in late summer (early August in MW-2), establishes fast, and frost-triggered sugar conversion in November consistently turns whitetails onto the plot just as bow season transitions to gun season. Cheap seed cost per acre is a major reason it remains a food plot staple.
Regional weaknesses
Purple top is a single-purpose crop — once deer have stripped bulbs and tops in late winter, the field is bare until spring planting. Brassica disease (clubroot, alternaria) is rarely a problem in food plot rotations but becomes a real issue in continuous-brassica plots. Fawning cover value is poor.
Agronomic ratings
Drought tolerance
fair
Standability
good
Emergence
excellent
Winter hardiness
fair
Food-plot ratings
Palatability
good
Persistence
fair
Establishment
easy
Attraction timing: Peaks after first hard frost — frost-driven sugar conversion turns deer onto bulbs and tops in November / December
Best for
- Corn Belt food plots planted late July / early August
- diversified brassica blends
- first-year plot conversions
Not recommended for
- plots needing year-round attraction
- continuous-brassica rotations
Best soil types
loam, silt loam
Seeding rate
3–5 lb/acre broadcast; 2–3 lb/acre in a blend
Farmer notes
Long-running staple in Quality Deer Management Association (now NDA) food plot literature.
Data quality & sources
Quality: community-reported · Last updated 2024.