Passionate About Asparagus

Another box from Pinetree Garden Seeds came in the mail on Wednesday, and I have been counting the hours until the weekend when I could get my new Purple Passion Asparagus crowns into the ground! Freaky looking things, asparagus crowns:
Dug a new 10' asparagus bed today. Actually it's the south half of last year's sod heap. That part of the yard doesn't drain very well so I constructed a raised bed out of the decomposed sod. I made a shallow trench and dumped an $8 (!) bag of manure down the center, and covered that with a couple of inches of decomposed sod, which is now very rich humus. I made 10 little mounds and spread the tentacle-like roots of each crown over each mound.

Then I covered all that with a couple of more inches of humus, just a little over each crown.

The crowns are a few inches below the top of the sideboard of the raised bed, and I plan to mound at least 6 more inches on top as the summer progresses. Because of the poor drainage I chose to build up the bed this way, rather than doing what is usually prescribed-digging a 12" deep trench and planting the crowns well below grade and gradually filling it in to ground level. Hopefully my method will prevent the inevitable crown-rot and produce a comparable harvest.

By the way, my Green Mountain seed potatoes also came in the same box--But I'm way too tired from today's earth moving to do anything about them now. On the counter they will sit, "chitting" away until the bed they're to share with tubers saved from last year's colored potatoes is prepared, most likely next weekend.

Pink and Purple Potatoes

Tom Wagner's Paint Jar and Skagit Beets as french fries:

Skagit Beets were on the small side, and the skin had some sort of scab, but pared and cooked up they were creamy inside, crunchy outside, perfect for frying. Paint Jar, on the other hand, although the large smooth picturesque tubers lent themselves well to slicing, when fried they were disappointingly dry and mealy.

Which led me to believe that Paint Jar would be more suited for baking:

Technicolor dinner a few nights later: Salmon, baked potato and green beans. Talk about a feast for the eyes.

and yes, it tastes just like a baked potato!

Things that are Purple

My list of purple garden crops for 2009 (yes I plan to grow all of these):

All-Blue Potatoes
Bolivian Rainbow Hot Pepper (purple at one of the stages)

Violetto Cauliflower, Falstaff Brussels Sprouts
Hungarian Breadseed Poppy , Carbon Tomato
Lavender (the flower), Purple Tiger Hot Pepper

Purple Beauty Sweet Pepper
Crapaudine Beets (more of a mahogany black)
Flame Lettuce, Dragons Tongue Bush Beans
Forellenschluss Lettuce
Burgundy Onions, Burgundy Okra
Painted Mountain Sweet Corn (ok not purple per se but ears can have blue or burgundy kernals)
Orach, Purple Pole Beans
Pepino Dulce, Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Purple Asperagus
Purple Haze Hybrid Carrots
Purple Globe Radish

Rosa Bianca Eggplant, Rosita Eggplant

Blue Bean Vine (a.k.a. "dead man's fingers", an akebia relative, just for fun)
Chinese red noodle beans
Blackberries, Blueberries, Aronia Berries, Grapes
Not pictured: Purple Tomatillos

Purple things that will not be growing in my garden this year:

purple kohlrabi-mine is "Gigante", a white variety

purple-top turnips, mine will be white and golden

purple plums- I'm planning Green Gage and Toka (red)

purple sage-mine will be just plain old sage-colored sage

red cabbage-too obvious

I am also impatiently awaiting the release of new purple varieties of Pumpkins, Cucumbers, Paw Paws and purple Karelas. What's the hold up, breeders?