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the edible

rainbow

garden

Why plant only the standard colors of vegetables? Why not plant a harvest of unusual vegetables that includes ‘Yellow Doll’ watermelon, ‘Plum Purple’ radishes, ‘Cherokee Purple’ tomato, ‘Lemon’ cucumbers, ‘Asian Bride’ eggplant, and ‘French White’ zucchini.

I LOVE BRIGHT COLORS! My dresses are red, bright blue, even deep purple. My house is decorated with primary colors, and sometimes you practically need sunglasses to look at my garden. I dream in Technicolor. While I thrill to Ansel Adams’s black-and-white photographs, I photograph in color only. Intellectually I realize that not everyone feels the way I do about color. I tell myself there are people who love beige and others who decorate solely with black and white, but in my heart I’m not sure these people really exist.

Given my predilection for colors, it’s not surprising that I’m enamored with colorful vegetables. Why grow only standard green kale or broccoli when I can have purple ones too?—providing, of course, that they taste good. Why limit myself to green bell peppers when I can have yellow, orange, and violet varieties as well? It’s not the colors alone that I glory in; it’s the infinite variety that nature offers. Just as I delight in seeing exotic birds and insects and growing unfamiliar species of flowers, so I enjoy growing and cooking with vegetables of unusual colors. I love putting my hands on them and sharing them with others. When a neighbor’s child helps me harvest blue potatoes, we take pleasure in the color together. I get a kick out of serving pink scallions or thinly sliced raw purple artichokes to a visiting gardener. All in all, color is a whole dimension of my edible garden to experiment with and enjoy.

I can trace my fascination with colorful vegetables back twenty years to my discovery of orange tomatoes and purple string beans. These vegetables were so much fun I started looking for other varieties in unusual colors. At first, my collection built slowly. In those “monochromatic days,” most people thought it quite odd to grow or eat vegetables in colors they had not grown up with. And few colorful varieties were offered. Before long I met Jan Blüm, fellow color enthusiast and owner of Seeds Blüm, and we started playing that great gardening game, “Have I Got Something for You!” I’d show her lavender eggplants and she’d tell me about yellow peas and red celery. I’d describe chartreuse broccoli and she’d present me with red orach and green radishes. I always felt on the cutting edge with my vegetables, but I was constantly outclassed! Jan had an advantage. She worked with people who sought and saved heirloom vegetables—many of which were very colorful. These heirloom gardeners were dedicated to preserving an eroding gene pool, which was a much more serious reason to be passionate about unusual varieties.

Farmer’s markets are a great place to seek out colorful vegetable varieties and find out which grow best in your climate. Craig and Toku Beccio, owners of Happy Boy Farms of San Juan Bautista, California, offer many different colors of organically grown tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes.

Given the extra energy from dedicated heirloom gardeners and the awakening interest among savvy chefs who saw the culinary potential, colorful vegetables couldn’t stay under wraps forever. By the mid-1980s, organic growers in California like Doug Gosling, then garden manager of the Farrallones Institute in Occidental, and Michael Maltus, manager of the garden at Fetzer Vineyard in Hopland, were growing tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers in a rainbow of colors. Meanwhile, the Seed Savers organization in Decorah, Iowa was collecting hundreds of colorful varieties including watermelons with yellow or orange flesh and purple tomatoes and sweet potatoes and reintroducing them to the public.

At about the same time, I visited the New York Botanical Garden and mentioned my color experiments to Debra Lerer, then director of children’s gardening. Immediately inspired, Debra felt the desire to grow a rainbow garden in the children’s section of the botanical garden the next summer. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Of course! Children and colorful vegetables were a natural combination and yet another reason to grow these vegetables. Visiting Debra later, I saw that the plot of rainbow vegetables was clearly a big hit. The children thought it much more fun to grow yellow zucchini than green. The purple potatoes were great because the young gardeners could show their parents vegetables- they had never seen before. And the youngsters dubbed the purple beans “magic beans” because they turned green when cooked.

In the 1990s the movement toward colorful vegetables was well under way. Heirloom vegetables were going mainstream. Organic farmers, ever on the look out for an edge over the grocery store, found that colorful heirloom vegetables sold well. Seed company owners like Renee Shepherd of Renee’s Garden and Rose Marie Nichols McGee of Nichols Garden Nursery offered many colorful varieties. And garden books and magazine articles routinely recommended them.

In recent years, yet another reason to grow rainbow vegetables has emerged. Nutritionists and plant breeders now know that vivid color often goes hand-in-hand with additional health benefits. Colorful varieties often yield more vitamins A and C and have more disease-fighting chemicals than some of their drab cousins. In the new millennium gardeners will find more and more vegetables like the red carrot and the orange tomato with extra beta carotene as many vegetable breeders select for these beneficial traits.

Saving a gene pool, making children’s gardening more fun, and growing super nutritious vegetables are all excellent reasons to become a rainbow vegetable maven. And then there are the reasons that hooked me in the first place—growing rainbow vegetables is really great fun and harvesting a rainbow garden is an aesthetic experience in itself. Picture yourself taking a large basket into the garden to harvest your rainbow of vegetables and flowers. Place the red chard and pungent red nasturtiums into the basket. Move on to the golden beets and sunny calendulas. Your succulent yellow tomatoes and the yellow zucchini might be next. Add green, sweet, and ripe tomatoes and green radishes if you have some; these will make you chuckle. Dig up a few blue potatoes and finish the rainbow array with a luminescent ‘Rosa Bianco’ eggplant and purple string beans. No matter how many times I gather my vibrant rainbow vegetables, harvesting still makes me smile.

‘Bright Lights’ chard comes in a mix of colors. Here, bright orange and yellow chard plants shine in a flower/vegetable border.

how to grow a rainbow garden

Renee’s Garden seeds sprays the seeds of their colorful vegetable mixes with dyes

With a few exceptions, most unusually colored vegetables grow much like standard vegetables. For detailed information, consult “The Rainbow Vegetable Encyclopedia.” For the nuts and bolts of soil preparation, fertilizing, watering, composting, mulching, and garden maintenance, see Appendix A.

Starting with Seeds

A small number of rainbow varieties are a little challenging to grow; for example, yellow beets are somewhat harder to germinate than the red varieties. Also, the all-red and the all-blue potato varieties usually yield half as much as most modern hybrids, so you must plant more than the regular amount.

Quite a few rainbow vegetables, however, are downright advantageous. For example, purple beans, blue-podded peas, and golden zucchinis are easier for gardeners to find on the vines than the usual varieties. As unpicked peas and beans make the vines less productive, with colorful vegetables you need not wonder why the beans and peas have stopped producing or what to do with a three-foot zucchini that has grown unnoticed for a week or two. ‘Hopi Blue’ corn needs less water than the average corn crop. And purple and yellow string bean varieties can be started in much cooler soil than standard string beans. Purple and orange cauliflower varieties need no garden blanching to be tender and sweet. The only real problem with growing a rainbow garden is locating the seeds of some varieties. While the market is changing, many unique varieties are not readily available from local nurseries. The seed companies listed in the Resources section are good places to start.

The color-coded seeds help gardeners know which color vegetable the plants will produce. Colorful herbs and vegetables can sparkle in a mixed border. ‘Red Rubin’ basil has been planted among lemon basil and species orange zinnias at the Kendall Jackson Winery display gardens in Santa Rosa, California.

Growing more than one color of snap beans makes the harvest more appealing. Pictured above are three varieties of bush beans in one bed: yellow ‘Roc d’Or,’ ‘Purple Queen,’ and green ‘Slenderette.’ All are available in one package from Renee’s Garden.

Rainbow flowers and vegetables make a Technicolor presentation. In the basket are ‘Burpee’s Golden’ beet, ‘Gypsy’ peppers, ‘Ruby Red’ chard, ‘Mandarin Cross’ tomato, ‘Gold Rush’ zucchini, and ‘Albina Verduna’ white beets.

Color Planning before Planting

The color range of your harvest will be a major planning consideration. You’ll need to pay particular attention to the number of plants to grow, and to selecting and coordinating particular varieties. For example, the special effect of some colorful vegetables depends on lots of different colored varieties being served together. Envision three colors, not one, of tomatoes or peppers arranged on a tray. To achieve that effect, you’ll want to grow two plants of three or four varieties where possible instead of three or four plants of one or two varieties. For a mix of color with root vegetables and lettuces, forgo planting one row of each color. Instead, mix the seeds of many colors of beets, carrots, or radishes and sprinkle them together in the planting bed. In most cases you’ll be able to tell the colors apart when you harvest because beets have distinct foliage and most shoulders of these vegetables show above the soil. (See the interview with Renee Shepherd for more information on mixing colorful vegetables in the same bed. Her seed company, Renee’s Garden, offers packages of mixed colors of vegetables and the seeds are color-coded so you can see which colors you are planting.)

designing a rainbow garden

Cheryl Chang helps to harvest the glorious bounty from the Hidden Villa rainbow garden.

When I first planted colorful vegetables, I primarily focused on their use in the kitchen. Finding many rainbow varieties more lovely in the garden than their monochromatic cousins, I soon started planning gardens that featured their bright colors. About the same time I became fascinated with colorful vegetables, I developed an interest in edible flowers. Again, their enticing colors drew me to them. Soon my passion for edible flowers and colorful vegetables dovetailed and I often grew them together. My favorite combinations became purple and pink violas and tulips with burgundy lettuces; orange and yellow nasturtiums and calendulas among the red and orange chards and beets; red onions and scallions with red dianthus; and ‘Lemon Gem’ marigolds interplanted with orange and yellow peppers.

With each garden I’ve grown, the rainbow effect gets stronger and the palette of plants expands. My first rainbow garden looked mostly green. Even though the radish roots were red and the corn kernels blue, their green foliage gave little hint of the unique vegetables. To enhance the impression of a rainbow garden, I’ve learned to include flowering plants in primary colors such as zinnias, salvias, violas, statice, calendulas, and marigolds. At first, I randomly interspersed the flowers. Now, for my favorite rainbow gardens, I arrange separate beds for the red, orange, yellow, green plants. Using poetic license, I combine the purple, indigo, and blue plants in the fifth bed.

Checking the Site

When planning a rainbow garden, I use the same techniques as when designing landscapes for my clients. My first step is to make sure the light exposure is correct. Most all edible plants need at least six hours of midday sun to survive; eight hours is better. I check for good rich soil and great drainage. (Appendix A includes information on soil preparation.) Then I compile a list of the vegetables to grow, noting each plant’s height and spread, and which varieties grow best in my climate.

Drawing to Scale

My next step is to draw the garden area to scale, one-quarter inch equaling one foot. Graph paper or an architect’s vellum with a grid for one-quarter-inch scale drawings is helpful. The vellum is available from drafting supply stores and can be purchased by the sheet. With my scale drawing and vegetable list ready, I design the garden.

I start by noting the garden’s southernmost point on the scale drawing. This is important because I want the tallest plants situated on the garden’s south side so they don’t shade the shorter plants. I also plan paths or locate stepping stones for easy access to weed and harvest.

Creating the Rainbow

Next I plan the beds according to the order of the colors in the rainbow—red, orange, yellow, green, and a combination of the blue and purple tones. It’s fun to select red vegetables for the red beds, orange varieties for the orange beds, and so on. I flesh out the unusual colors with the more common varieties by adding, say, orange carrots to the orange bed and red beets to the red bed. Using the height and spread data from my plant list, I arrange the red row from back to front, choosing the tallest plants for the back, south side. For example, the twelve-foot-tall ‘Bloody Butcher’ corn would be in the back row, the six-foot-tall red tomatoes situated in front of the corn, and the two-and-one-half-foot-tall red peppers and maybe some red chard in front of the tomatoes. Then I plan the orange-, yellow-, green-, and blue-tone beds in the same manner, from back to front.

Meanwhile, the Hawthorne family, including Noah, Marcy, and baby Sierra, visit and enjoy the Hidden Villa garden under the watchful eye of “The Rainbow Lady” scarecrow.

After selecting the vegetables, I choose ornamental or edible and ornamental flowers in bright primary colors to give an all-over rainbow effect. I intersperse bright, clear red flowers in the red rows, placing the tall varieties in the back and the shorter ones in the front. I place clear orange flowers in the orange row and so on.

Through the years I have designed many rainbow gardens including a preplanned rainbow garden kit for W. Atlee Burpee & Co. I never tire of the process and the fabulous gardens that result. The following pages include specific examples of a few of my rainbow gardens. They include a summer garden at Hidden Villa in Los Alto Hills, California, filled with colorful cutting flowers and vegetables and a few edible flowers, and my own winter Wizard of Oz garden filled with unusual colored vegetables and lots of edible flowers.

[note]

Make sure the flowers you are going to eat are edible and are not sprayed with commercial pesticides unfit for human consumption. The most versatile species in the kitchen and in a rainbow vegetable garden are: borage (blue), broccoli (yellow), calendulas (yellow and orange), chives (lavender), dianthus (red), species mangolds ‘Lemon Gem’ and ‘Tangerine Gem (yellow and orange), mustards (yellow), nasturtiums (orange, yellow, and red), dwarf runner beans ‘Scarlet Bees’ (red), tulips (orange, yellow, lavender, red), violas, pansies, and Johnny-jump-ups (lavender, blue, purple, yellow, and orange).

The Hidden Villa Rainbow Garden

Hidden Villa is a magical place, an oasis of untamed nature in the midst of suburbia. It is the dream of Josephine and Frank Duveneck who envisioned preserving hundreds of wild acres for future generations to enjoy. Thousands of city children visit during the school year. In the summer, Hidden Villa becomes a children’s camp filled with the smell of bay leaves underfoot, and the culinary delights from a very large vegetable garden.

A number of years ago—completely immersed in colorful veggies and knowing children loved them too—I was looking for a place to plant my fantasy of a huge rainbow vegetable garden. As I live not far from Hidden Villa, it seemed a perfect place for my culinary rainbow.

Once the Hidden Villa trustees gave approval, I turned to the local junior college horticulture department for help with this ambitious project. The professor recommended Gudi Riter, which led to a fortuitous pairing as Gudi is a talented cook as well as gardener. You will enjoy trying many of the recipes she helped me develop.

Because Gudi and I were planting so many unusual colors of vegetables, and to some extent flowers, we planned our garden early in the year (January) to have a good selection of colorful varieties. We needed plenty of time to order seeds and get the peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes sown in late February. In late March, we started more flats of flowers and vegetables including chard, scallions, parsley, and basil, and the flowering zinnias, statice, salvia, verbena, safflower, species marigolds, kochia, and ‘Bells of Ireland.’ Before we planted in late April, the folks at Hidden Villa plowed the area, which was about twenty feet deep and a hundred feet long, and divided the plot into five twenty-foot-square sections approximately five rows deep. They also mixed in lots of manure.

Gudi finished the soil preparation by laying out and digging the beds and paths. With the help of her son and daughter, soon we were able to plant much of the garden. We placed our transplants then seeded the beans, corn, amaranth, beets, carrots, potatoes, and sunflowers in place. The area was so very large; we’d underestimated the number of plants to fill the rows. So we purchased dwarf marigolds, lobelia, and verbena transplants from a nursery.

The garden got off to a great start with the exception of most of the blue potatoes that rotted. A few gophers gave us problems until they were trapped. By late June the garden was filling in very well.

By then, the area’s grasses and brush had dried up. In California, we get no rain from May through September. Consequently, the deer moved out of the woods and down the hillside into our rainbow garden. In a flurry of creativity we decided to outline the different beds with a kaleidoscope of yarns. Besides initially foiling the deer, the bright strands gave more of a rainbow feeling to the garden. When the camp children arrived, the garden had yet to bloom but the colorful yarn outlines gave a hint of the fun to follow. Although the yarn seemed to confuse the deer for a few weeks, soon they were back.

We then tried a scarecrow—a lady built from stockings and straw and dressed in one of my dresses straight from the 1970s, my quasi-hippie stage. This only kept the deer at bay for a few more weeks.

We finally resorted to black plastic bird netting placed here and there and resigned ourselves to some damage.

Despite the hungry intruders, by the end of July we started harvesting lots of vegetables and flowers. The camp cooks used some; we fed our families; and we even started bringing neighbors and friends to help. Let me tell you, two thousand square feet of vegetables is a lot of vegetables. We all seemed most to enjoy assembling large harvests of vegetables and flowers and arranging them by colors to really experience the rainbow effect.

The Hidden Villa rainbow garden came to a close in October and we deemed it a great success. It introduced hundreds of visiting schoolchildren to unusual colors and varieties of vegetables. The garden looked really “cool” and attracted the local TV station to come do a story. Most of all, we shared an exciting summer full of surprises in our special place. I’m sure the Duvenecks are smiling.

Clockwise from top left: Gudi Riter, her son Andy, and daughter Tina plan out the marigolds for the orange row in the Hidden Villa rainbow garden; Sandra Chang sorts her rainbow treasures in the Hidden Villa garden; Gudi sorts the vegetables from the Hidden Villa garden by color.

Plant List . . . . . . . . . The Hidden Villa Rainbow Garden

Red Row

4- to 6-foot plants for back row

‘Burgundy’ amaranth, grain type

‘Illumination’ amaranth, leaf type

‘Bloody Butcher’ corn

‘Red’ okra

‘Red Currant’ tomato

2- to 3-foot plants

‘Big Red’ zinnia

Hibiscus sabdariffa— annual hibiscus

‘Early Red’ bell pepper

‘Serrano’ chile pepper

‘Anaheim’ chile pepper

‘Ruby’ chard

1- to 2-foot plants

‘Detroit Dark Red’ beets

‘Flare’ salvia

‘Red Beard’ scallions

Plants under one foot

‘Peter Pan’ scarlet dwarf zinnia

‘Romance’ red verbena

Orange Row

4- to 6-foot plants for back row

‘Large Flowered Mix’ ornamental sunflowers

Orange tithonia

‘Golden Jubilee’ tomato

‘Mandarin Cross’ tomato

2- to 3-foot plants

‘X-20’ marigold

Safflower

Apricot statice

1- to 2-foot plants

‘Golden Belle’ pepper

‘Tequila Sunrise’ chile pepper

‘Habanero’ peppers

Plants under one foot

‘Orange Gem’ marigolds

‘Gold Nugget’ marigolds

Yellow Row

4- to 6-foot plants for back rows

‘Giganteus’ sunflower

‘Teddy Bear’ sunflower

‘Taxi’ tomato

‘Yellow Pear’ tomato

‘Yellow Currant’ tomato

‘X-15’ marigold

2- to 3-foot plants

‘Sunburst’ summer squash

‘Gold Rush’ zucchini

1- to 2-foot plants

‘Pencil Pod Wax’ snap beans

‘Gypsy’ bell pepper

‘Burpee’s Golden’ beets

Plants under one foot

‘Lemon Gem’ marigold

‘Yellow Sophia’ marigold Golden sage

Green Row

4- to 6-foot plants

‘Italian White’ sunflowers

‘Bells of Ireland’

2- to 3-foot plants

Kochia

‘Envy’ green zinnia

‘Burpee Hybrid’ zucchini

‘California Wonder’ bell pepper

‘Jalapeno’ chile pepper

1- to 2-foot plants

‘Burpee’s Tender Pod’ bush snap beans

Plants under one foot

‘Spicy Globe’ dwarf basil

French thyme

‘Extra-curled Dwarf’ parsley

Chamomile

Purple Row

4- to 6-feet plants

‘Hopi Blue’ corn

‘Purple Striped-leaf’ ornamental corn

‘Sicilian Purple’ artichoke

2- to 3-foot plants

Purple zinnia

Deep blue statice

‘Royalty Purple Pod’ bush snap beans

‘Rosa Bianco’ eggplant

‘Dusky’ eggplant

1- to 2-foot plants

‘Victoria’ blue salvia

‘Opal’ purple basil

Plants under one foot

‘Buddy’ dwarf purple gomphrena

‘Crystal Palace’ blue lobelia

‘Blue Mink’ ageratum

The Rainbow Oz Garden

Many, many years ago I removed the front lawn and planted a vegetable garden in my sunny front yard. I had become weary of trying to grow sun-loving plants in a shady area. As a landscape designer I knew I could make my garden lovely enough for a formal suburban neighborhood; judging from everyone’s reaction I succeeded. A fallout from front yard gardening I had not anticipated was that neighborhood children would come to visit and want to be involved. After a few years we were having lots of fun together and I found myself moving away from formal vegetable gardens and leaning more toward what “my kids” wanted. One year, that meant lots of flowers for drying; another summer we planted huge pumpkins. From one year to another I found myself growing more of their favorite rainbow-colored vegetables. Eventually I decided that while I had already grown a rainbow garden at Hidden Villa, it had been a summer garden. This time I would fill my rainbow garden with cool-season vegetables and grow them during the winter. Thanks to “my kids,” my garden style really loosened up. I thought, “Why not plan the garden with a Wizard of Oz theme and design it around a yellow brick road?” Well, that idea met with enthusiastic hoorays. All the kids on the street from ages three to ninety deemed it a spectacular idea.

I designed a graceful, curving path through my front garden; my crew installed a brick path and painted it a bright, bright yellow. Getting in the spirit of the project my daughter-in-law Julie Creasy and assistant Gudi Riter started sewing costumes. Dorothy and the Scarecrow were stuffed with straw and dressed delightfully. My friend and the artist who drew the line drawings in this book, Marcy Hawthorne, painted Dorothy’s face. Barbara Burkhart assembled the Tin Man from five-gallon nursery containers, hand trowels, a hose nozzle, and a plastic watering can; she sprayed him with chrome paint.

By the time the brick path was complete it was really too late to put in a cool-season garden. Instead, for a summer garden we planted the Oz garden with corn and lots of zinnias. It sure was a lot of fun but by early September we were ready for the main event— ”The Rainbow Oz Garden”. Out came the corn and zinnias and in went the cool-season vegetables. I designed color-matched beds on both sides of the yellow brick road and placed the shortest plants next to the road and the tallest the furthest away. Unlike the plot at Hidden Villa, no plants were very tall so planting them at the garden’s northern end was not an issue. I chose edible flowers of clear, bright, solid colors to fill in the beds; they also gave the garden and my salads a festive look.

Both the summer and winter Oz gardens became a neighborhood institution—a part of Sunday family strolls More than once I saw some of the kids skip down the path on their way to school. Delivery people said it was the favorite address on their route; joggers and walkers told me they found them selves drawn to the street. The most fun, though, was picking baskets of those colorful vegetables and flowers and laying them out in their glory for all of us to admire.

The scarecrow sits between the yellow and orange rows of the Creasy Oz rainbow vegetable garden. His harvest includes the many colors of ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss chard, ‘Burpee’s Golden’ beets, ‘Detroit Dark Red’ beets, ‘Stockton’ red onions, garlic, ‘Easter Egg’ radishes, and ‘Danver’s Half Long’ carrots. Behind him a broccoli plant flowers, attracting beneficial insects to keep the pests under control.

Red Rows

2- to 3-foot plants

‘Ruby’ chard ‘Detroit Dark Red’ beets

‘Stockton Red’ onions

‘General Eisenhower’ red tulips

Plants under one foot

‘Juliet’ red lettuce

‘Telstar Crimson’ dianthus

‘Red Empress’ nasturtiums

Orange Rows

2- to 3-foot plants

‘Bright Lights’ orange chard

‘Danvers Half Long’ orange carrots

‘Royal Chantenay’ orange carrots

‘Orange Sun’ orange tulips

‘Pacific Beauty’ orange calendulas

Plants under one foot

‘Orange Crystal Bowl’ violas

Yellow Rows

2- to 3-foot plants

‘Bright Lights’ yellow chard

‘Burpee’s Golden’ beets

‘Pacific Giant’ yellow calendulas

‘Garant’ yellow tulips

‘Yellow Sweet Spanish’ onions

Plants under one foot

Golden sage

Golden lemon thyme

‘Yellow Crystal Bowl’ violas

Green Rows

2- to 3-foot plants

‘Premium Crop’ broccoli

‘De Cicco’ broccoli

‘Romy’ fennel

Plants under one foot

‘Nevada’ crisp-head lettuce

‘Nordic II’ spinach

‘Tres Fine Maraichere’ endive

‘Triple Curled’ parsley

Purple/Blue Rows

2- to 3-foot plants

‘Osaka Purple’ Japanese mustard

‘All Blue’ potatoes

‘Tokyo Mix’ ornamental cabbages

‘Attila’ purple tulips

‘Purplette’ scallions

Plants under one foot

‘Easter Egg’ radishes

Johnny-jump-ups

‘Blue Princess’ violas

‘King Henry’ purple violas

interview

Renee Shepherd

Renee Shepherd and I have been friends and colleagues for years. Both of us are fascinated with colorful vegetables. Researching this book gave me the excuse to ask her to share her views. “Before I even get them in the kitchen I enjoy these vivid vegetables,” Renee began. “Picking a basket filled with many colors is beautiful. Food in vibrant colors is more exciting. I enjoy simple cooking. And simple dishes made with diverse colors seem more complex. For example, if I cook up green snap beans and sprinkle them with crumbled feta cheese, it’s interesting. However, if I cook both yellow and green snap beans together, the recipe becomes exciting.”

“Then there is the satisfaction of growing all these special exotics from seeds,” Renee continued. “Growing three varieties of a vegetable instead of one extends my interest in the crop. It’s like taking a theme and adding a variation. I find it hard to imagine why someone wouldn’t want to grow vegetables in many colors.”

Renee is the owner of a new seed company, Renee’s Garden. Her seed packets are perfect for the rainbow gardener. For instance, she offers a trio of cayenne peppers in one package: a purple variety, a red pepper, and a yellow one. The beets come in three colors as do the tomatoes, zucchini, snap beans, bell peppers, lettuces, etc. So the gardener doesn’t need to buy three different seed packages of the same vegetable to get the rainbow effect. Further, the gardener needn’t research whether the vegetables will ripen at the same time. Renee has done all the work for you.

“I was flying cross-country when the idea came to me,” Renee explained. “Then I puzzled over how to color-code the seeds so gardeners could tell which color they were growing. No rainbow gardener wants to start seeds from a multi-color package and end up with four red bell pepper seedlings, one yellow variety, and no orange. There had to be a way to mark the seeds. Easter egg dyes came to mind because they are nontoxic and readily available. As soon as I got home, I tried spritzing the seeds with different colors. Sure enough, the dye dried quickly and left just enough stain so you could tell the different colors apart.”

Renee’s colorful menus are famous. I remember the time she roasted bell peppers of many colors and drizzled them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and melted anchovies (see recipe, page 76). Then there’s her exotic salad made with multicolored ‘Easter Egg’ radishes combined with the sweetness of fennel and apples (see recipe, page 70). Renee adapted her Aunt Alice’s braised summer squash recipe with dill. Rather than using only one color of summer squash like her aunt, Renee combines yellow, dark-green, and light-green summer squash and carrots in the chicken broth (see recipe, page 78). She also likes to make a confetti of dry red and yellow cayenne flakes to sprinkle over pizza. Asked how she serves tomatoes of many colors, Renee said, “I love the different colored cherry tomatoes—I call them garden candy. They’re so sweet and jewellike. I stir fry them lightly until they start to burst, then add herbs and garlic and serve them as a warm salad. Sometimes I arrange large colorful tomatoes slices over a tart or I hollow out tomatoes and stuff them with an orzo pasta stuffing. Another of my favorite ways to feature their colors is to make two sauces, one of red and the other of orange tomatoes, and create a pool of color and flavor on the plate for roasted vegetables.”

Renee Shepherd, seeds woman extraordinaire, has long been enamored with colorful vegetables. Her latest seed company, Renee’s Garden, offers a rainbow in a package. For instance, she sells red, yellow, and orange bell pepper seeds all in one package. The gardener can tell the colors of the pepper varieties apart because Renee has dyed the seeds.

Renee has done a great deal to expand the home gardeners’ seed choices by offering her seeds in many retail nurseries and homestores. Rainbow gardeners no longer have to mail away for colorful varieties. I, for one, am very grateful.