All Blue Potatoes

I've wanted a garden since I started living on my own in 2006.  Clemmie started to have a desire to start a garden with me after I told him we can have rare vegetables, including Purple Peruvian potatoes, purple carrots, and purple podded pole beans (I'd prefer the Moonshadow Hyacinth Bean or Scarlet Runner Bean).  They're nutritious and make for some yummy, eye-catching cuisine!

From what we've read online, any type of root vegetable will grow well in appropriately-sized containers.  The most popular way to grow potatoes is with the tire method--put four to five seeding spuds inside a tire located on top of some good quality garden soil.  Cover over.  Let the plant grow 4" to 6" tall, then cover plant with soil only 2" to 3" are showing. Repeat, adding new tires as needed.  Radishes are great companions to both carrots and potatoes; they can actually promote growth by loosening the soil, allowing the shoots of carrot and potato plants to break through.

So we know how to grow what we want, now to get them, right? Almost.  Purple Peruvian potatoes are not only extremely expensive, they are difficult to find or sold out.  Clemmie, thankfully, found an alternative: All Blue potatoes.  We visited local nurseries looking for starter spuds.  Most didn't even know that purple or blue potatoes exist.  One shop in Charleroi, Bill's Feed and Seed, called their distributor to see if they had any; they do!  The All Blue potatoes are expensive but much less so than we could find online. The only downside: we had to buy a 50 pound bag!

Yikes, right?!? Maybe not.  We placed an ad on Craig's List here in Pittsburgh, offering the starter spuds as $8 per five pounds.  We've had one gentleman place an order with us for ten pounds.  We also plan to share five pounds with both our neighbor Cindy and our friend Lisa.  That leaves us with twenty-five pounds of potatoes for which we need to find a home.  The order arrives on Thursday...we'll see how it goes!