Next year, I plan to grow some black vegetables in the veg patch and allotment. I'm usually much more fussy about taste than looks, but this is quite a fun sideproject for me. I've grown yellow and red cropsets before, but I suspect black may be a little more difficult to achieve, so this won't be in the main veg set. Now, I spend much time in February browsing through the Thomson & Morgan seed stands in my local garden centre, and these are some of the candidates I've found so far. Of course, a true black is very rare, so often these stray into purple, but dark will definitely be the order of the days.
- Aubergines: mostly black anyway. I've not had much success with these in the past (too fussy about light), so a nice safe one like T+M's Black Enorma F1 or Moneymaker will do.
- Climbing beans: okay, I'll cheact a bit and go purple on this: T+M's Blauhilde looks good.
- Dwarf french beans: Purple Teepee? Apparently purple beans have a extra 'zing' over other less dark types; it will be worth investigating this.
- Carrots: Purple Haze F1 Hybrid
- Cauliflower: Graffiti F1 Hybrid
- Chilli peppers: Black Pearl
- Lettuce: Revolution
- Sweet pepper: Sweet Chocolate
- Tomatoes: Black Cherry or Black Russian
Lighter purple crops that may suit this colour scheme include scorzonera, Falstaff sprouts, scarlet or black tuscany kale, beetroots, kalibos or red jewel cabbage, red baron or lilia onions, giant red mustard, rudolph or redhead calabrese, red strawberry popcorn, purple f1 hybrid pak choi, treviso chard, mantanghong radish, healthmaster carrots and purple broccolis. It's also tempting to toss in some Bright Lights or Rhubarb chard to provide some bright contrast colours.
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