hippy potatoes growing up

For those of you who remember my posting about the hippy purple potato back in March, here are a couple of the juvenile shoots making me proud. A few came up 3 or 4 weeks ago, and then we had one frost night that killed them. Thankfully, four more shoots came up a week later and they're back in business. Not many of us know that the potato is a perennial originating in the Andes (of which there are about 200 known wild species). Peru currently has over 4200 varieties! Although our most common potatoes today have infertile flowers, some heirlooms can be fertile and produce poisonous green cherry "tomatoes", of which you can save the seed for planting. Being a close relative of the tomato, the base of the potato plant can be grafted to a tomato plant to produce both tomatoes and potatoes. (hmm, maybe an experiment is in order...I'll let you know when I try it)

p.s. The one night of frost cost us most of the first crop of brown turkey figs, too. Bummer...major bummer. We have two left on the tree. Fortunately there is a much larger crop expected in the fall.