Lucky home gardeners. Treats await in the spring. One of the major wholesale suppliers to our local garden centres kindly sends me their catalogues as a guide to items of interest coming up for gardeners.
The potato pages of the spring 2017 bulbs, small fruit and vegetable catalogue hold surprises. It鈥檚 good to see that AmaRosa, a red-skinned, red-fleshed fingerling potato, has been added to the roster of gourmet potatoes that will appear in some garden centres in the spring. I found it two years ago in the Eagle Creek Seed听Potatoes catalogue (seedpotatoes.ca) and have enjoyed these beautiful, tasty potatoes since then.
Red-fleshed potatoes, like the purple-fleshed kinds, are rich in anthocyanin, a powerful antioxidant found in blue, red, and purple produce such as berries and pomegranates 鈥� all potent immune system boosters.
There is a shallow flat of AmaRosa potatoes immediately outside the door of my office, on carport shelving. Their numbers are rapidly dwindling as I regularly collect a few, give them a scrubbing, halve them lengthwise and sprinkle with oil and freshly ground salt before roasting them.
AmaRosa is a tasty, creamy-textured potato that Eagle Creek recommends also for making 鈥渇antastically colourful potato chips as they retain their brilliant red colour when fried.鈥�
A potato new to me this year is听All Blue, from Eagle Creek. I听wanted to compare it with Russian Blue, which I鈥檝e grown for years. Russian Blue is a personal favourite because it鈥檚 so easy to grow, so听good tasting, and attractive. Love those pink mashed potatoes.
Purple potatoes, a subspecies of regular potatoes, have been cultivated for thousands of years in the Andean regions of听Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. Numerous, diverse varieties have evolved over time into present-day food crops because of their resistance to disease and resilience in the face of harsh conditions.
In my garden conditions, this year, All Blue was more productive and had a deeper purple colour and fluffier texture when cooked than Russian Blue. Interesting, because the Eagle Creek catalogue notes that All Blue 鈥渉as been tested to be genetically identical to Russian Blue.鈥�
Local garden centres carry Russian Blue, and next spring some will also have Violet Queen, a new listing with the gourmet seed potatoes in the wholesale catalogue I have. Its flesh is an even deeper violet-purple than either All Blue or Russian Blue. In the spring I鈥檒l certainly be looking for Violet Queen in garden centres.
The increasing availability of听potatoes with red and purple flesh offers home gardeners an听embarrassment of riches: easy-growing plants; superb and varied flavours; nutritional riches; fun in experimenting with the new.
Patriotism in bloom. Pride in our beautiful country on its 150th birthday will be on display in some home gardens next year in the form of red and white flowers grown from bulbs, tubers and corms that will be in some garden centres in the spring. Gardeners are invited to 鈥淪how Your Canadian Colours鈥� with dahlias, lilies and gladioli 鈥� all good for growing in containers or mixed borders.
鈥楥anadian Celebration鈥� is a package of 鈥楩ire and Ice鈥� dahlia tubers that will grow into 40-centimetres plants bearing red and white striped flowers with bright golden eyes 鈥� ideal for growing on patio, deck or balcony.
鈥楾rue North Lilies鈥� yield 90-cm plants with some pure white and some clear scarlet Asiatic lily blooms. 鈥楾rue North Gladiolus鈥� corms will grow 100 cm tall and bear spikes of white, red, and striped red and white flowers. 鈥楾rue North Dahlias鈥� produce 100-cm tall plants with double flowers in the neat, 鈥淒ecorative鈥� style, some white, others red with white tips.
In the next few blinks of the eye it鈥檒l be Christmas, then the new year. Soon after, these treasures will be waiting to be found in our local nurseries and garden centres.
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GARDEN EVENTS
Gordon Head meeting. The Gordon Head Garden Club meets Monday, 7 p.m., in Gordon Head United Church Hall, 4201 Tyndall Ave. Tayler Krawczyk from Hatchet & Seed will speak about edible landscaping using permaculture principles.
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VIRAGS meeting. The Vancouver Island Rock and Garden Society meets Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., in Gordon Head United Church Hall, 4201 Tyndall Ave. Lloyd Gillmore, a VIRAGS in-house expert, will discuss the听cultivation and care of dwarf rhododendrons.
