Saturday, March 10, 2012

Planning a Purple Garden :)




Just for fun this year, i decided to turn my front garden into a purple garden this year! Typically my front garden is used mainly for cold crops. i usually plant spinach, kale, lettuce, broccoli and peas in this bed. This year we are really moving things around, trying a few new things and having a bit of fun with the gardens.
We are moving many of our cold crops to the old potato bed. Potatoes will be planted in the new garden that we made in the cleared area. That leaves the front garden open for whatever.

While ordering seeds this year, i started to notice how many purple varieties are out there and i got the idea to plant a purple garden. :)


i created a board on pinterest, to pin all my favorite purple veggies! i probably will not be growing all the varieties i pinned on my board, but i have bought seeds for quite a few and am still on the look out for more. Here are a few of my favorites!

These are called Blue podded peas....but come on, that is purple!! :) This will be my first year trying these, so i don't have an opinion yet. From what i have read, they make a good dry soup pea, but can also be harvest young and eaten fresh like snow peas.

Redbor kale is another variety i'm pretty excited about. Isn't it beautiful!! We eat ton of kale here. Most years i grow the Dwarf Blue Curled., but last year i also planted Rainbow Lacinato Kale and was really impressed with the color variations. When i saw purple kale for the first time, i knew i had to grow some!!

i've never been huge fan of cauliflower, but isn't this beautiful!?! i already have my seeds started for this, and am pretty excited to see how it does. This is Sicilian Violet Cauliflower. i picked up my seeds on ebay from this seller, Ohioheirloomseeds, and am very happy with them. i ordered quite a few different seeds from them and like the flat rate $1.69 shipping no matter how many seeds you order. The seeds are packaged and labeled well, and they have a wonderful variety of heirloom varieties.

This will be my first time growing these, Cosmic Purple carrots. :) These are also available from Ohioheirloomseeds, although their photo wasn't quite as impressive.

A few other purple vegetables that i'll be growing are purple podded pole beans, Royalty Bush beans, Purple passion asparagus, Cherokee Purple tomatoes (even though they don't look that purple), purple basil and several varieties of red/purple lettuce. i also plan to accent the garden with a variety of purple flowers and herbs.

i'm still on the lookout for differnt purple veggies we can incorporate into our purple garden, and love the convenience of the pinterest boards to 'pin' any potential vegetables i come across. Feel free to follow along on my Purple Garden Pinterest board for more purple garden ideas!

i look forward to sharing photos of our purple garden this summer, once things are growing.

3 comments:

  1. What a great post! Thank you for the inspiration and resources.

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  2. I love the idea of a purple garden...and it looks like you have been fairly successful so far!

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