Purple Top Turnip

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.

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.

Late-summer planted purple top turnips fit the Upper Southeast bow-and-rifle hunting calendar well — frost-driven palatability spike usually arrives during early November, aligning with the rifle opener in much of TN and KY.

Drought during August establishment is the most common purple top failure mode in the Upper Southeast — KY/TN August dry spells can prevent germination even on prepared seedbed. Mid-October planting is too late; window is tight.