Bare Root Plants for Sale
Thank you for your interest and happy growing!
PLEASE READ: If you are local or regional to the Finger Lakes area (able to pick up in person), feel free to reach out to hello@edibleacres.org with a clear wish list of plants and we will work to arrange a pickup.
We update our inventory on March 1st for Spring bare root sales and September 1st for Fall bare root sales. If you are visiting this page and see everything as sold out, please make a note in your calendar to revisit at our next ‘opening’ and pick up some lovely plants!
Our Fall offerings tend to have higher numbers of trees, shrubs, cuttings and a medley of our abundant and fall appropriate herbaceous perennials. Spring offerings will generally have more herbaceous perennials, grasses, etc and a smaller number of trees and shrubs. We weight our inventory in large part based on seasonal appropriateness for establishment. We hope you understand and visit again if you don’t find what you are looking for this time.
If you are super eager to get plants now, we now have a Permaculture Nursery page that lists friends of ours with ethical and thoughtful growing practices. We strongly encourage you to check them out and get some awesome plants from them too!
TIP: Use the tags above to help filter our offerings by characteristic (ie. click on ‘fruit’ to find any fruit bearing plants we offer, etc.) As we add more and more it is a helpful way to find a plant to fit your goals…
Purple Potato (Perennial Peruvian)
Purple Potato (Perennial Peruvian)
Solanum Tuberosum
We have enjoyed growing a wide range of potatoes over the years, at least 20 or more varieties have crossed our paths and grown for a season or two. Some are more memorable than others, some are truly stunning... The Perennial Peruvian Purple Potato (Pppp!) has been at the top of our list as an incredibly unique, hardy, disease resistant and beautiful type to grow for many years and are thrilled to be able to offer them to new people!
We started with this amazing little dark blue, nearly black potato as a gift from a friend a number of years ago. She had a connection with folks from Peru who shared this ancient variety (we call 'Ancient Blue' sometimes) and she found that in her garden most every type of potato would succumb to blight during the season but this type would not. Further, any potatoes she missed in the harvest would most likely return the following year! After 10 years of working with this potato type we have seen the same thing: extremely strong resistance to blight and a strong desire to perennialize where left in position.
This phenomenally hardy and beautiful plant (dense foliage with distinct blue hues throughout) also has high value in the kitchen. Their dark rich blue/purple color is strong on the skin and likewise in the flesh. They cook to a dark rich color and confer deep, earthy, nutty flavors to a dish. Their dense pigment is almost certainly from super high anthocyanin content, making them a border line medicinal tuber!
We offer limited amounts of these tubers in the fall and encourage people to store them in root cellar conditions where you put your own root vegetables for winter storage or ideally cool and even temperatures with decently high humidity but not wet or in soil and spring plant when potatoes are appropriate for your area or wait until our spring offering window to get plant material near ideal planting time. We do not promise these to be a fully perennial plant, but can offer that in our zone 5B/6A climate they have a strong desire to come back year after year. These can be the foundation of some very high value propagation work for a truly long lived perennial potato type and encourage anyone interested to do so!
https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2019/08/storing-potatoes.html - We found this to be a helpful landing place with more details on how to properly store these potatoes, when you first get them from us and after harvesting your first crop. They aren’t fussy!
Do not store in the fridge or in moist soil for winter!
Allow them to be cool and in higher humidity (50F or cooler and 50% humidity is just fine),
open and dry on the surface, not planted, not in sawdust, etc…
Size:
Leaves/vines can reach 2-3' in height and tend to fill out a bed very thoroughly by end of season
Site Preference:
Like most potatoes, these enjoy rich well drained soil in full sun whenever possible.
Hardiness:
We can share that in our 5B/6A context these quite often will perennialize at least a bit, especially with some fall leaves or light mulch over the bed. In warmer climates we could imagine these being solidly perennial.
