It can be easy to grow the whole rainbow in flower gardens, but you can do it with vegetables too! Growing a rainbow vegetable garden is fun whether you’re 5 or 55!
It can also be educational for children. It’s a fantastic opportunity to discuss light and rainbows, nutrients, and eating a balanced diet, as well as heirloom seeds!
Here are a few varieties you could use to grow your own rainbow.
Red Varieties
Bloody Butcher Dent Corn
This gorgeous red dent corn is a Virginia variety that dates back to 1845! The stalks grow 10-12 ft. tall and produce two ears per stalk. Bloody Butcher is great for flour, cereal, or roasting ears and makes excellent cornbread.
Costoluto Fiorentino Tomato
An Italian heirloom from the Tuscany region, this tomato was one of the most heat tolerant and productive varieties in a 2011 U. of Georgia trial. It’s richly flavorful for sauces and stuffers or just slicing!
Large Red Tomato
Prior to the Civil War, one of the most commonly grown and best-documented tomato varieties in the country. Listed in the 1843 Shaker seed catalog at New Lebanon, NY, the Large Red tomato is vital for antebellum garden recreations and historic farms. Fearing Burr in his 1865 book stated, “From the time of the introduction of the tomato to its general use in this country, the Large Red was almost the only kind cultivated, or even commonly known.”
We introduced Large Red for historical reasons, but we were surprised and pleased during our 1996 trials to find that it became a favorite of a local restaurant’s chef.
Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomato
Always a favorite at our tomato tastings, Matt’s Wild is from seed collected in the wild near Hidalgo in eastern Mexico. The plants bear loads of intensely sweet, tart, and flavorful, ½ in. deep red cherry tomatoes. They are vigorous, disease-resistant, and sprawling, and self-sow readily.
Detroit Dark Red Beet
The Detroit Dark Red Beet dates back to 1892 and was developed from the popular variety Early Blood Turnip. It’s a widely adapted, very popular dark red beet that’s resistant to Downey Mildew.
They have excellent flavor, fresh or canned! You can also use these dark red beets as natural food coloring or dye. Try making pink frosted beet brownies!
Outredgeous Romaine Lettuce
NASA chose this stunning red lettuce for space farming. In August 2015, Outredgeous became the first vegetable grown and eaten on the International Space Station!
It was bred by Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed. Outredgeous has intensely dark red, slightly ruffled leaves that form loose heads.
Ruby Red (Rhubarb Chard) Swiss Chard
A beautiful addition to any garden, Ruby Red is worth growing for the color alone. The foliage is dark green on ruby-red stalks. It’s more frost tolerant than other chards, and the plants are especially striking in cold weather.
Orange Varieties
Danvers 126 Carrots
An excellent carrot variety, Danvers is widely adapted, productive, and heat-tolerant. The dark-orange roots grow 6-7 inches long and 2 inches at the shoulder, tapering to a blunt point. They’re especially suited to growing in clay soil, and the strong tops aid harvesting.
Danvers is a good storage variety. These and other carrots can also be dehydrated and ground to create natural food coloring powder.
Kellogg’s Breakfast Tomato
These 1-2 lb orange beefsteaks are delicious and perfect for a tomato sandwich! This variety is a West Virginia family heirloom that was passed to Darrell Kellogg of Redford, MI, who selected and named it.
Connecticut Field Pumpkin
This pre-1700 cultivar of Native American origin is still the most popular variety of large Halloween pumpkins. Also called Big Tom or the Yankee Cow Pumpkin, it produces 15-20 lbs fruits that are bright orange, slightly ribbed, and vary in shape and size.
It’s good for canning, baking, and pies. Try making pumpkin spice waffles!
Cateto Sulino Flint Corn
Roughly translated as “Southern Unrefined,” Cateto Sulino produces ears up to 8 in. on 5-8 ft. stalks. The kernels are such a bright orange, inside and out, that Farm and Sparrow bakery in North Carolina says it’s caused customers to ask why they’d put cheddar cheese in the bread they’d baked using it!
Cateto Sulino is a blend of Argentine and Uruguayan landraces, selected in Tennessee by Joshua Gochenour for insect resistance, virus resistance, and bright orange color that indicates high carotene content. You can find more information on the history of this corn in its product description.
Persimmon Tomato
One of our personal favorites for its rose orange color and rewarding flavor, it produces beautiful persimmon-colored, rose-orange fruits. The fruits are typically 12-16 oz though early ones can weigh up to 2 lbs. The plants are well-branched, vigorous vined, and Late Blight Tolerant.
Yellow Varieties
Renick Yellow Watermelon
Renick Yellow offers high yields of small melons with sweet yellow flesh. It has much tastier rinds than most watermelons have. This unique variety comes from the Renick Family of Ashville, OH, via Linda Roberts, Bill Ellis, and SSE. It was introduced in 2020 by SESE.
Aji Chinchi Amarillo Hot Pepper
Introduced by SESE 2018, this pepper is fruity and flavorful, with medium-high heat. It’s a heavy yielder and a favorite in our 2016 pepper taste test. Aji Chinchi Amarillo ripens from green to golden yellow.
Aji Amarillo peppers are a key ingredient in Peruvian cuisine. This rare “Chinchi” strain bears smaller peppers, about 3 × ½ inches, much earlier in the season than the standard Aji Amarillo. Thanks to Chris Watson for providing our seedstock.
Coyote Cherry Tomato
This variety grows wild in Veracruz, Mexico! It produces ½-inch pale yellow fruits on vigorous plants. The fruits are very sweet with unusual flavor overtones, including notes of vanilla. It was a favorite in our 2015 tomato tastings.
Dr. Wyche’s Yellow Tomatillo
Our earliest tomatillo and one of our sweetest, it produces heavy yields of 1½ inch cheerful yellow fruits plus an occasional cheerful purple fruit. It comes from the collection of Dr. John Wyche of Hugo, OK, one of SSE’s earliest members.
Lemon Cucumber
Lemon Cucumber is an excellent, never-bitter, old-fashioned cucumber flavor with a hint of nuttiness. It produces 7-foot vines covered with crunchy round yellow fruits. Harvest cucumbers at 1½ inches for pickling or 2 inches for salads.
Buhl Sweet Corn
Buhl produces 6-7 foot stalks that bear two ears of amazingly uniform sweet yellow corn of superior quality. You’ll have to fight the raccoons to enjoy it! It comes from Sandhill Preservation Center via SSE member B.W. White 1981.
Grandma Nellie’s Yellow Mushroom Bean Pole Snap
A heavy yielder of light yellow pods, this bean has the unusual characteristic of tasting somewhat like mushrooms when cooked. Tender when picked at 5 inches, this bean is a true treasure. The original seed came from Marge Mozelisky, given to her by her grandmother.
Green Varieties
Green Zebra Tomato
The emerald flesh of Green Zebra has good flavor. The 3-5 oz fruits ripen to yellow-gold with alternating dark-green zebra-like stripes and are gorgeous sliced or in salads. Well branched vines provide good foliage cover and have some resistance to septoria leaf spot.
This variety was developed in 1985 by Tom Wagner and was chosen by Alice Waters for the famous California restaurant Chez Panisse.
Cherokee Green Tomato
This is one of the best-tasting green tomatoes anywhere! It produces 8-12 oz fruits with green flesh and green-yellow skin with amber to red color on the blossom end.
Cherokee Green was selected from Cherokee Purple tomato by North Carolina grower Craig LeHoullier. It’s an Open Source Seed Initiative variety.
Cisineros Grande Tomatillo
A highly productive variety, Cisneros Grande produces large fruits up to 2½ inches making for easy harvest and processing. Most fruits ripen to yellow, while some stay green throughout. Fruits average about the size of a golf ball.
For a tart salsa, use the bright green fruits while the husk is still green; for a sweet and fruity flavor, wait until the husk dries. Plants grow 4-6 feet tall.
Marketmore 76 Cucumber
Marketmore 76 is an excellent high-yielding, 8-inch, bitter-resistant cucumber. This dependable variety grows well in the Mid-Atlantic region as well as the North and is a good choice for market and home gardeners alike. The dark green fruits are white-spined.
Black-Seeded Simpson Looseleaf Lettuce
Black-Seeded Simpson dates back to 1850 but is still a popular variety! This old standard is one of the earliest loose-leaf types. It’s good for early spring planting for the first lettuce of the season, but quality declines in heat or late plantings.
Blue/Indigo Varieties
Blue Clarage (Ohio Blue Clarage) Dent Corn
A 1920 Ohio heirloom, this variety was selected from “Rotten Clarage.” It’s a highly uniform, semi-dent corn. Blue Clarage produces solid blue, two 8-10 inch ears on each sturdy 10 foot stalk. It has excellent Corn Rootworm resistance and tolerates crowding and smut better than many other open-pollinated corns.
Originally developed as a meal and feed corn, it has a higher sugar content than most dent corns and may be used fresh in the milk stage. As cornmeal, it has a sweet flavor. It mills easily and makes speckled blue and white flour, but white flour is obtained if the bran is sifted out. Older farmers who use this corn to feed chickens claim that the chickens will eat more, lay more eggs, and put on more meat.
Cherokee White Eagle Dent Corn
A beautiful blue and white corn with a red cob, Cherokee White Eagle occasionally produces an all-blue ear. Some people can see the image of a white eagle in the kernels! This variety produces 8-10 foot tall stalks, mostly two ears/stalk, and 6-7 inch stocky ears. It was the first variety deposited in the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank!
Blue Boy Bachelor’s Buttons
Bachelor’s Buttons are a fun edible flower. They can be used fresh or dried to adorn cakes, garnish salads, and add beauty to various other dishes.
Blue Boy is an old favorite for cut or dried deep-blue flowers. Plants are 30 inches tall and are especially suited for the backs of borders.
Borage
Borage is a bushy herb with bright blue edible flowers. It’s a good choice for attracting bumblebees and other pollinators to garden plots. The plants fade in the deep summer heat and humidity but can be reseeded for late summer/early fall harvest.
The leaves can be used sparingly to add a cucumber-like flavor in salads or for flavoring cool drinks. Medicinally, the seeds contain over 20% GLA (gamma-Linolenic acid), which is extracted and used commercially as an economical substitute for evening primrose oil.
Vates Collards
Vates Collards have stunning large blue-green leaves with good flavor. It’s slow bolting and produces high-quality frost-resistant greens especially suited to the Mid-Atlantic and the South. Plants grow up to 32 inches tall.
Violet Varieties
Royalty Purple Pod Bush Snap Bean
Developed in 1957, these productive purple beans have a natural blanching indicator. When prepared for freezing, the purple pods blanch to green after 2 minutes of boiling. They’re easy to pick too! The purple pods are easily visible against the green foliage.
The plants have short runners and need either wide row spacing or a fence for climbing. They produce 5-inch pods that are slightly curved. They’re very meaty and flavorful, great for vegetable soup. The buff-colored seeds germinate well in cool soil.
Red Acre Cabbage
Red Acre produces beautiful, round, 5-7 inch reddish-purple heads that weigh about 3 lbs. The heads may sunburn in hot weather, so best for early spring and fall crops.
It adds festive color to coleslaw and is an excellent storage variety with resistance to cabbage yellows.
Cosmic Purple Carrots
Did you know that carrots were predominantly purple for the first few hundred years of their managed cultivation? Yellow and purple carrots were first recorded in Asia Minor in the 10th century.
Cosmic Purple produces purple-skinned 7″ carrots, orange and yellow flesh. They’re spicier than regular carrots; great for adding color to salads and stir-fries.
Dark Opal Basil
This ornamental dark purple basil can be used like common basil for seasoning. It’s beautiful in salads! You may find a few green leaves.
Black Brandywine Tomato
Black Brandywine is a stunning tomato to add to your garden! It produces large dusky rose/purple fruit with rich, sweet flavor and good yields.
Black Brandywine is a 1920s Pennsylvania heirloom. It’s a cross between Brandywine and Fejee Improved tomato. William Woys Weaver’s grandfather obtained seed from the breeder, Dr. Harold E. Martin.
Purple Tomatillo
Sweeter than green varieties! This variety produces 1 x 1½ in. fruits that ripen to dark purple. Plants grow 4-6 feet tall.
Ping Tung Long Eggplant
This Taiwanese variety produces shiny deep lavender fruits that can grow to 11 inches or longer. If plants are kept upright, the fruits can be kept straight for over ¾ of the length, making for impressive filets.
Ping Tung Long is a disease-resistant and high-yielding variety, producing over 20 fruits per plant in our garden. It also has excellent flavor.
Rainbow Varieties
Purple Bumble Bee Cherry Tomato
The Purple Bumble Bee Cherry Tomato produces striking 1½ inch cherries, dusky purple with vivid lime-green streaks. They have a nice balance of sweetness and flavor. The tall, vigorous plants bear til frost. This tomato is widely adapted and has good splitting resistance.
Cherokee Long Ear Small Popcorn
This small kernelled variety makes surprisingly large pops, yielding a low hull/ corn ratio. It has great flavor and is highly ornamental. The 5-7 inch ears have many shiny colors, including red, blue, orange, white, and yellow. Stalks grow 6-8 feet tall.
The seedstock came from Merlyn Niedens, combining several strains of long ear Cherokee popcorn sent by Carl Barnes of Turpin, OK. Carl has helped save many of the Cherokee corns that came west over the Trail of Tears.
Rainbow (Five Color Silverbeet) Swiss Chard
Rainbow Chard must grow if you’re looking for colorful plants! Originally from Australia, a multicolored rainbow of plants with stems in shades of red, orange, pink, yellow, and creamy white.
