Rainbow Garden: 39 Colorful Varieties

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.

Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomato

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.

Kellogg’s Breakfast Tomato

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.

Renick Yellow Watermelon

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.

Cherokee Green Tomato

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 Clarage (Ohio Blue Clarage) Dent Corn

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.

Cosmic Purple Carrots

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 (Five Color Silverbeet) Swiss Chard

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.

7 Reasons to Grow Echinacea

Choosing plants for your garden can be challenging. There are so many incredible flowers, herbs, and vegetables to choose from. While everyone should make a garden that is uniquely theirs, one plant that I think deserves a spot in every garden is echinacea.

Echinacea is beautiful.

This one is a bit of a no-brainer, but echinacea is a gorgeous addition to the garden! They look lovely, added to cottage or potager-style gardens.

We carry four varieties of echinacea:

  • Echinacea Pallida (Pale Purple Coneflower)
    Drooping flower petals are 1½-3½ in. long and may range in color from pink, purple, or white, but are typically rosy purple, with a purple-brown flower disc. Long, narrow leaves.
  • Echinacea Angustifolia (Narrow-Leaved Coneflower)
    The plants are the smallest of the echinaceas (8-18 in.) and the spreading pink ray petals are the shortest (¾-13⁄8 in. long). The leaves are long and narrow.
  • Echinacea Paradoxa (Yellow Coneflower)
    The most exceptional of the echinaceas because the petals are yellow rather than purple, hence the name E. paradoxa. Leaves are long and narrow.
  • Echinacea Purpurea (Purple Coneflower)
    The flowers are 3-4 in. across with pink-orange cone-shaped centers and purple-pink rays. 

Echinacea is a native plant.

Selecting native species for your garden, whenever possible, is an excellent idea. Native species like echinacea tend to be low-maintenance. They’ve evolved to handle the climate conditions and pest and disease pressure found here in the Eastern United States. They also help provide food and habitat for native species.

Echinacea attracts butterflies.

As a native flower, echinacea is an excellent food source for native insects. You’ll frequently see native butterflies like yellow swallowtails and great spangled fritillaries visiting echinacea blooms.

Beneficial insects like bees and predatory beetles may also overwinter in dead foliage and stems. It’s best to avoid trimming back dead material until the temperature is consistently over 50°F in the spring.

Echinacea attracts birds.

Along with helping native insects, echinacea also helps native birds. You may spot goldfinches and other seed-eating birds visiting the flower seed heads in late summer and early fall.

Echinacea is a hardy perennial.

It’s easy to fall in love with flowers that bloom year after year. Echinacea will bloom for about two months each summer with little care and maintenance. It’s a great plant for busy gardeners. Also, echinacea will self sow and spread on its own. It isn’t so vigorous that it will take over your garden, but once you have it growing, it’s easy to transplant to other sections of your garden or share with friends.

Echinacea is drought-tolerant.

Echinacea has extensive root systems, and most varieties have a long taproot. These roots make them incredibly drought tolerant. If you live in an area experiencing more droughts or don’t get around to watering as often as you should, echinacea is a great choice.

Be sure echinacea gets enough water while the seed is germinating and it’s first getting established.

Echinacea is a potent medicinal herb.

You may have noticed that echinacea is frequently listed as an ingredient in “cold and flu” tea blends from your local grocery store. This is because studies have indicated that echinacea has immunostimulant, bacteriostatic, and anti-viral activity. It’s believed that echinacea can help your immune system respond and shorten the length of your cold or flu.

It can be used in teas and tinctures or infused in salves. A great thing about echinacea is that the entire plant is medicinal, including the roots, leaves, and flowers.

Additional Herbalism & Garden Resources

Transplanting: 9 Tips for Success

This time of year is all about planting. We’re transplanting cabbages and broccoli this week in our zone, but soon it’ll be time to start setting out tomatoes, peppers, and other warm-weather crops. While transplanting is relatively straightforward, there are a few things you can do to ensure your seedlings grow successfully.

Hardening Off

The first thing you need to do is harden your seedlings off. Seedlings accustomed to the relatively stable conditions in your home just aren’t up to coping with the outdoors just yet. For best results, move your plants outside for a few hours each day, gradually increasing the time over a week or two. This process allows your seedlings to become accustomed to the sunlight, wind, outdoor air temperature.

Prepare Your Soil

Transplants do best when they have fertile, soft soil to grow in. You can prepare your bed by incorporating a couple of inches of finished compost and loosening the soil with a garden or broad fork. It’s also a good idea to dig a larger hole than your transplant needs and fill in around your plant with compost.

Choose an Overcast Day

Even though you’ve hardened off your seedlings, it’s best to plant them on an overcast day. Transplanting is a bit stressful for plants, and a lot of heat and sun can make it harder for them to recover quickly. If you have to transplant on a sunny day, you can use shade cloth or similar material to create a bit of temporary shade.

Water Before Planting

Ensure that your seedlings are watered well before planting, preferably paying extra close attention starting a day or two ahead of time. Dry seedlings will have a more difficult time recovering from transplant shock.

Newly transplanted leek.

Gently Break Up Roots

If you notice that your transplants are root bound, meaning the roots have formed around the container’s inside, it’s a good idea to break them up a bit gently. Gently pinch apart the bottom and sides of the roots in a few places. These breaks will encourage the roots to grow outward.

Proper Planting

For most crops, you should plant your seedlings so that the soil is at the same level as it was in the pot. However, tomatoes will grow roots from farther up their stem, so it’s helpful to buy them deeply. You can plant tomatoes so that their first set of leaves is just above the soil (if the first set is yellow or dying, remove it and plant up to the next set). Another exception is leeks which you should plant in a hole to create the nice white, blanched stems.

You can also give your plants a bit of extra help by creating a small basin around your transplant. The basin will help catch and hold water while the plant is young.

If you’re using peat pots or other pots that you plant into the ground, it’s essential to avoid leaving any sticking up. You may need to tear a bit of the top off the pot. Leaving any material such as peat pot or newspaper sticking out into the air can wick moisture away from the plant’s roots.

Press the Soil in Gently but Firmly

Once your plant is in the hole, you should gently but firmly press the soil around it. If you don’t press the soil in, you may leave air pockets around the plant, preventing root growth.

Give Your Plants a Boost

After you’ve got your transplants in, you’ll want to water them. If you can, it’s best to provide extra nutrients with the water. Liquid kelp or seaweed liquid fertilizer is excellent for this. You should follow package instructions, but you typically only add a tablespoon or two to every gallon of water. Alternatively, you can use mild compost tea. Water at the base of the plant and avoid pouring all over the leaves.

It Will Take Plants a Little While to Take Off

Don’t be worried if you don’t see a lot of new growth quickly. When you first plant your seedlings, they’ll be working hard to establish healthy root systems. This will happen before you get to see any foliar growth. However, once their roots are established, you should see good growth.

Spring planting is a fun time of year for many gardeners. It’s good to be out in the garden finally and starting to see plants on their way. Make sure that your seedlings transplant well this year by using these simple tips. Getting your plants off to a good start can help ensure a good harvest.

Saving the Past for the Future