I scrolled the pages of the seed catalog, past the flowers, past the kale and the radicchio and some other vegetables that I wouldn’t eat on a double dog dare. And then my gaze
And then my gaze fell squarely on Magic Molly potatoes. There was a photo
There was a photo of purple tubers piled high and looking edible and this description: “A large fingerling with deep purple skin and purple-blue flesh. Tubers have a rich, earthy flavor that is especially good when roasted. Also retains its purple color when boiled, adding a new element to hot and cold potato dishes.”
I thought: Right there. That’s the potato for me.
Now, three pounds of the little darlings are planted in the garden and – I hope – about to send up some leaves.
To be honest, I don’t know what you do with fingerling potatoes. I am counting on Kindra to come up with interesting applications, but we can boil and mash them if we have to. Purple mashed potatoes are always welcome at our table.
So far, the Magic Mollies are the stars-inwaiting in the garden. And when I say garden, of course I mean the large blue tubs and buckets in neatish rows behind the lattice panels. There are 33 20-gallon tubs and about 30 5-gallon buckets.
Last year, you may recall, my lower back recommended that Kindra and I try the container garden thing, so we invested in a bunch of containers and planting soil and had a fairly good season.
We learned several things, including:
- Potatoes, onions and tomatoes do well in containers.
- Surprisingly, so does okra, as long as you don’t overplant.
- Radishes, spinach and carrots don’t even realize they’re living in a container. They’re surprised when you pull them and they see that they’ve spent all this time in a tub.
- It is impossible to water cantaloupes and watermelons enough for them to produce in a 20-gallon tub.
- Cucumbers planted in a five-gallon bucket and trained on a trellis make a lot of cucumbers.
- Five-gallon buckets are good for coolseason crops but not so much for summer crops.
- It is easier and less painful to weed a tub that’s two feet tall than a garden in the ground. In fact, my knees wrote a letter of endorsement for the container garden and proposed that it become permanent.
Kindra and I like to plant things that are unusual or that you can’t buy locally. Right now, we have a couple of packets of rainbow carrots planted, and I would like to report that each carrot is colored like a rainbow. I’d like to, but I can’t. A close reading of the seed packet showed that there are carrots of different colors that should resemble a rainbow if you pull them in a bunch.
We have slips for white-meated sweet potatoes on the way, and we have some interesting beans and peas on the shelf waiting for slightly warmer weather.
I am especially eager to sample some of the Alabama Blackeyed Butterbeans and the Ozark Razorback peas.
The descriptions are impressively vague, merely mentioning that the ABBs are grown in Alabama, are referred to there as butterbeans and will need trellising.
The Razorback cowpeas, according to the description, are “very productive bush plants that yield an abundance of beautiful mottled peas with delicious creamy flavor.”
Sounds good. They can prove themselves on the plate with a piece of cornbread.
Right alongside the Heavy Hitter okra, which, I was fascinated to learn, was developed by Ron Cook, an Oklahoma farmer.
It’s going to be a good summer.