The Colour Purple

Inspired by a fun book (which I borrowed from Lisa and never returned) 75 Exciting Vegetables for Your Garden , I've been trying to grow some fun foods. This year's biggest and most colourful addition to the garden was a Graffiti cauliflower that was not only bright purple and enormous (bigger than a basketball), but also incredibly delicious. This cauliflower is the crowning achievement of the garden (so far...) and I am bitterly dissappointed that there will not be a Harvest Fair to show it at. The Purple Monster (yes, I named my vegetable) may have been saved the fate of sitting on a paper plate from 8 hours, but it couldn't stay out of my stomach, so for a small dinner party yesterday we had a cauliflower and carrot salad that was very scrum-didly-umptions.

Keeping with the purple theme, this year's garden also featured red baron onions, which were the first onions I've ever had that didn't get eaten by worms. These onions taste like shallots and can be used like green onions. I also grew purple carrots (again) this year. I don't think they get as long as the normal orange nantes carrots, but who cares - they're purple. Purple trumps length in the carrot world. The purple cabbage isn't exactly a special vegetable, but I'm going with a themed post - so what the heck.

The last purple emergent of the day is a nice trumpet lily that I can't quite capture on the camera. The lily bulbs were bought this year and started in the house. This ends up being a nuisance, but you get your flowers out of the deal...so nuisance or not, I'll probably do it again next year.

Last, but definitely not least, are my favourite sweetpeas. I get these seeds from a small organic company. They aren't as showy as the grandiflower sweetpeas, but they are smelly and unique. I love the bicoloured flowers...

Sierra posted this on Aug 17, 2007 from the garden | | permanent link