Growing a Rainbow Vegetable Garden with Kids

You know how all of the nutritionists always tell you to eat the rainbow?  {Not to be confused with the Skittles folks.}  Basically, your plate is supposed to filled with different colored foods to ensure you are getting the proper nutrients and all that.  Do you ever find it kind of difficult to teach your kids that basic idea when the grocery store is full of conventional varieties of green, orange and red?

Growing a rainbow veggie patch with the children is a great way to expose them to a whole different variety of foods, teach them the basic nutritional principles of eating the rainbow, and uh, I don’t know, maybe, just maybe, bond with them along the way.

Growing a garden from seed leaves you literally HUNDREDS of options you would never find in the grocery store.  Here’s some awesome, kid-friendly vegetables to try this year:

Purple

Cosmic Purple Carrots
Artichoke Green & Purple Artichokes
Sweet Purple Beauty Peppers
Royal Burgundy Bush Beans
American Purple Top Rutabaga {these taste like a sweeter version of a white potato}
Chef’s Choice Blend Cauliflower {these grow white and purple florets}

Blue

Dwarf Blue Curled Kale {try making Kale chips or putting this in soup to make it more palatable for the kids}
Jarrahdale Pumpkin {this has a gray/blue exterior and a standard orange interior}

Red

Cherry Currant Red & Yellow Tomatoes
Cherry Belle Radish
Beets
Watermelon
Red Acre Cabbage
Romaine Garnet Rose Lettuce

Orange

Tomato Cherry Sun Gold {these are literally the sweetest tomato EVER!}
Butternut Squash {use these instead of pumpkins to make pies–they kids will love them}
Cantaloupe
Sugar Pie Pumpkin

Yellow

Gold Rush Bush Bean
Summer Max’s Gold Zucchini Seeds {Zucchini bread anyone?}
Lemon Cucumber

Green

Spinach {slip spinach in the kiddos smoothies, if they won’t eat it plain}
Broccoli Romanesco  {these have a crazy strange appearance that kids will be blown away by, but still taste like broccoli}
Butterhead Buttercrunch Lettuce {this is a mild tasting lettuce, but with more nutrition than plain old iceberg}

Multi-Colored

Cherry Tomato Rainbow Blend {these sweet cherry tomatoes grow yellow, brown, red, green, white and pink and white striped tomatoes all on one plant}
Gourmet Blend Beets {these grow in a huge range of colors}
Calliope Blend Carrots

Seriously, the kids will have so much fun growing their edible rainbow.  Plus, how cool is it that they will learn that the grocery store is not the only place that they can get food?  It’s win-win.

~Mavis