Teaching Garden Update: Harvesting Purple Potatoes

This last Saturday we harvested the purple potatoes that we planted back in March. The purple color comes from anthocyanin pigments. Evidence indicates health benefits from anthocyanin include improved eyesight and circulatory system function, benefits for diabetics, and anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antimicrobial activity. We may have been a few weeks late because a few were starting to sprout and regrow! With all of the rain and inconsistency in watering, we saw some cracking but they looked healthy overall. I'm going to make a purple potato garden salad for everyone to try next week at volunteer day.

Several of us were on pest patrol looking for hornworms and stinkbugs on our tomatoes and peppers and using the organic solutions for pest control we learned from this weeks video. We relocated hornworms on the Datura/Moonflower which is also in the nightshade family, and we gave stinkbugs a soapy bath. We took notice of a few beneficial insects including a praying mantis looking for spider mites. Peyun also found a giant stick bug on our heirloom corn. We were not sure of the giant walking stick's role in the garden but we found an article that they can alter affect decomposition through their diet choices.