Circle M Farm

This past Sunday I seeded a bunch of the poisonous plants we’ll enjoy eating this summer. That’s right – many of our favorite hot-season staples are actually members of the nightshade family. Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are all part of this potentially toxic group, which also includes tobacco, petunia, mandrake, the datura flower and “deadly nightshade,” also known as belladonna. While some people do exhibit sensitivities to the food members of this family, many cultures ascribe great medicinal qualities to them. Most of us just find them delicious.

But the nightshade foods do carry potential toxins in the form of various alkaloids – probably a defense to protect themselves from insect damage. Luckily for us, the toxins are pretty easy to avoid since they are found in the green parts of the plants. So potatoes that have turned green from exposure to light, fried green tomatoes, even green peppers (which are generally just underripe red ones) should probably all be skipped. And obviously, the leafy parts of these plants are not to eat! Otherwise, the proven antioxidant and nutritional value of their fruits should encourage us to enjoy them without reserve.

I know I can’t wait, especially after spending an afternoon filling flats with luscious-sounding heirlooms. For some reason, I neglected to keep good records of the peppers I grew last year, some of which were just exceptional, so I sort of started from scratch on selecting seeds this winter. For sweet peppers, we’ll have the Hungarian Klari Baby Cheese, a squat thick-walled fruit traditionally pickled whole. Also called the Golden Delicious Apple Pepper, it ripens from white to yellow to red. How fun is that? The Peacework pepper will be our early red bell, followed by red Revolution and New Ace. And we’ll also have Chocolate, Valencia Orange and Purple Beauty. For long frying peppers we’ll have red Jimmy Nardello, which I do remember did well here last year, and yellow Hungarian Hot Wax. Fedco had a crop failure of the Hungarian Spice Paprika, so I’m growing Feherezon Paprika to dry and grind instead. Then for hot peppers we’re growing Czeck Black, Bulgarian Carrot Chile, little Matchbox and Ho Chi Minh cayenne.

For eggplants, we’re growing Diamond, which is a pretty traditional dark purple with a less bitter skin. Pintung Long is a skinny light purple Asian type. Rosita is a gorgeous striped pink-lavender from Puerto Rico that grows small and pear-shaped. Finally, the Applegreen is a light green, smallish fruit that is actually safe to eat!

Tomatoes won’t get seeded for another week or so, since they grow so ridiculously fast that they’d be tipping over in their pots before the weather warmed up enough to plant them in the garden. Potatoes, on the other hand, are traditionally planted in my neighborhood on Good Friday, according to local farmers. But I don’t even have mine from the seed catalog yet, so I’ll probably follow another piece of folk wisdom that says to plant potatoes when you see the first dandelion bloom. We’ve got a ways to go on that! This gardening business can sort of be looked at as inexact science or fine art – either way it requires heavy applications of both careful planning and intuitive flexibility. Plus a large amount of guesswork! Ultimately, that’s what makes it both consuming and fun.