Purple Napa cabbage ‘Merlot’
If you thought that color-coordination was reserved for the flower garden, try expanding your palette (and your palate) this year. These purple-hued veggie and herb varieties combine to make a dramatic edible display, whether grown together or interspersed in the garden. In addition to being stunners in the garden, highly pigmented foods tend to contain high levels of antioxidant anthocyanins, elevating healthful eating from garden to plate.
Early in the season, tuck vivid purple alyssum alongside herbs and salad greens like ‘Red Batavia’ lettuce, one of our favorite head lettuces for its vibrant color and sweet tender leaves. The alyssum will continue to bloom even as spring lettuces are replaced by summer herbs. Purple basil and purple shiso are both grown in a similar manner- pinch back after transplanting to encourage bushier growth, harvest leaves for culinary use or allow them to flower for a more ornamental look. Purple basil is used just like green Genovese basil, and shiso is a popular Japanese herb with a flavor like cumin and clove. Use the leaves to make lettuce wraps or color radish pickles a vibrant red.
If you have the room and patience, cauliflower offers a fun payoff, and the ‘Graffiti’ variety boasts a wild purple head peeking out from blue-green leaves. Cauliflower can be sown in spring as long as they are kept watered through summer (and maybe offered some purple shade using ‘Hopi Red Dye’ amaranth); sow mid-summer for a fall harvest.
While traditional red cabbage always deserves a place in the garden, this year we are thrilled to be growing purple Napa cabbage, which offers all the versatility and crunch of green Napa in a stunning wine color. We can’t wait to chop it into colorful slaws and kimchi later this year.
Freshly dug garden potatoes are easy to grow and very rewarding, and digging up ‘Adirondack Blue’ potatoes really feels like unearthing buried jewels from the garden. The reddish-purple skin reveals violet flesh that holds its color even when cooked, making for stunning roasted or mashed potatoes.
Another unusual addition to the purple garden is the ‘Colorado Star’ artichoke, whose spiny 1-3’ tall plants produce a relatively high yield of buds in a range of purple hues. This artichoke variety matures earlier than others, making it a good option for our relatively short season. Grow them as an annual, and combine with purple-topped Verbena bonariensis and flavorful bronze fennel to create height and architectural interest in a garden that transcends the boundaries between edible and ornamental.
Verbena bonariensis