The Greatest Potatoes of All

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

It has come to my attention that I do this every year: fish around in the soil for potatoes before they are due. As I said last year, it’s the anticipation of not knowing what is going on underneath the soil. This aspect of my personality comes as no surprise. I’m the kind of person who skips to the end of a mystery novel. I try not to do it, but nearly always do.

I think I’m going to wait just a wee bit longer. The plants are still in the process of dying back and we could have had a slightly bigger harvest last year if I had just waited before digging it all up.

Minutes after taking this photo, I brought them inside, popped them whole into a pot of boiling water, and served them hot with a pat of butter and a sprinkling of salt. These are the best potatoes we will have all year.

In case you’re wondering: the purple is ‘Purple Peruvian’. I’m not sure about the reddish pink variety since they were given to me at a transplant trade back in the spring. To be honest, I can’t be 100% bout the ‘Purple Peruvian’ since they were originally purchased at an organic supermarket, but I’ve grown them 2 years in a row and am pretty certain based on the potatoes and the colour of the flowers (purple!).

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Cyclamen hederifolium ‘Lysander’

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

At the time I took this photo there was another plant flowering with the tag Cyclamen africanum. As this site indicates, they were indistinguishable from one another.

It’s difficult to tell from this photo, but this flower (and plant) is very tiny. Its pot can fit comfortably in your hand. Adorable.

Who knew there were so many interesting cyclamens out there? Who knew there were all of these tiny little types from Africa. My cyclamen knowledge has been completely limited to the few they sell in the impulse buy section of the grocery store. I know nothing. Nothing!

Visiting Barry’s garden is both humbling and exciting all at once. It makes me realize (yet again) that I can never and should never get too big headed when it comes to my so-called plant knowledge. There is just TOO MUCH. An inexhaustible lifetime’s worth of fascinating plants to discover.

This is optimistic though, don’t you think? I have met a lot of gardeners (sometimes myself included) both beginner and experienced who are perpetually wringing their hands around the feeling of not knowing enough. But really, if the knowledge available to acquire is limitless, we never have to worry about knowing enough or god forbid, knowing it all. You will never know it all! I will never know it all.

We can all just sit back now and enjoy what we do know, and what we will discover tomorrow.

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Sweet Sorghum

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

I took this picture at the Montreal Botanical Gardens where to my delight they had a bed of cereal grains growing in the edible garden section. I love this place.

The name was too long to put in the title line so here it is: Sorghum bicolor gr. Saccharatum ‘Black African’.

The name gave me some clues to its usage and in looking it up I have discovered that it is indeed used to produce a sweetener called sorghum syrup. The stalks are sometimes made into ethanol.

The internet also tells me that it is believed that the crop was introduced into the Unites States by slaves who brought seeds with them from West Africa.

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Fire Lily (Cyrtanthus elatus)

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

Looks like a delicate Amaryllis don’t you think? That’s because it’s a member of the Amaryllidaceae family. You can find more information about this South African flower over here.

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White Hosta Flowers

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

Every once and a while I climb down off from my hosta snobbery horse and realize they’re not so dull after-all.

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