Something weird must have been going on last winter while I was picking out the veggie seeds for this summer… or maybe there’s something weird in the water…. in any case there’s a definite purple tinge to the vegetable garden this year.  I knew that these heirloom ‘Trionfo Violetto’ pole beans would be purple, but I chose them for the meaty, nutty flavored, stringless beans they produce.  They turned out great, but whether it was temperature or bird attacks, it took them a while before the blooms started setting little beans.I rip out bucketfulls of the volunteer verbena bonariensis every year, but even after the carnage stops there are still plenty of their airy purple flowers throughout the garden.  They go good with the beans, but also match the ‘Ruby Perfection’ red cabbage on the other side of the path.  I never realized how purple red cabbage is until this year.

The verbena also picks up the black-purple of the ‘black egg’ eggplant.  Although the cold spring made for a slow start to the eggplant season, they’ve hit their stride now and are putting on decent sized fruit.  The ‘Black Egg’ is turning out to be productive and tasty even though I’d rather the fruits were a tad bigger.

The ‘Red Wing’ onions are also doing great.  They’ve sized up more  since I took this picture and the purple flush of the bulbs matches up nicely with the purple phlox.

There are regular green beans and yellow onions, but for some reason they haven’t done nearly as well as the purple versions.  Go figure.  It makes me wonder if I could ever get organized and disciplined enough to have color coordinated vegetable garden.  In my case I doubt it, but it reminds me that vegetable gardens can look good too and if you ever want to give it a serious go check out some of the books by Rosalind Creasy.  She wrote the book on edible landscaping (plus a few others!) and her gardens really are amazing.