Rainbow Chard
Photo from Uprising Seeds (link in post)
I have this obsession with rainbow chard. I think I first heard of it when reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book I loved so much I re-read it less than a year after my first reading. Anyway, isn’t it gorgeous? Uprising Seeds, an heirloom seed provider, has rainbow chard seeds available for sale.
Since I often fantasize about having my own vegetable garden, stocked with heirloom varieties, I thought I’d share some of my favorites. Basically, I love veggies in rainbow colors, and veggies in non-traditional colors. There are so many gorgeous varieties out there, but you most likely won’t find them at your local grocery store.
Another vegetable that caught my eye while browsing the Uprising Seeds website is the Painted Mountain Flour Corn. Isn’t this stuff gorgeous? I love it.
Photo from Uprising Seeds (link in post)
The story of the development of this corn is great, please do check out the link above to learn more about it. This variety of dry corn has been successfully grown from as far north as Siberia and as far south as South Africa. Even the husks look like they’ve been painted.
Other favorites from the site include:
- Ceylon heirloom tomatoes. This is a variety that looks like a big fancy tomato, in cherry tomato size.
- Cherry Tomato Sampler. This package includes one pack each of their most popular cherry tomato varieties: Snow White, Green Grape, Koralik, Black Cherry, Yellow Pear, and Red Fig. Check out this complete list of the cherry tomatoes they offer for photos and descriptions.
- Heirloom Black Tuscan Kale. I haven’t ever used kale, but this one has a long, almost black leaf to it, and the description, which claims it’s the tastiest kale out there, sold me on it.
Do any of you grow heirloom varieties at home in your gardens? What are your favorites?
That corn looks a lot like the purple corn, I saw once in a supermarket in Peru, then I came here and found gluten free purple cornflour made from the same peruvian corn, it’s so pretty…still tryna figure out what to do with it!
I would love to be able to find purple corn. In Mexico you can get blue/purple corn flour, and it makes gorgeous tortillas.
How about purple cornbread served with honey butter?
I love color and felt disappointed that the only chard seeds I found were ordinary green. I do love green but to have a chance for some color, I’ll take it.
I like to plant purple green beans and here in Hawaii we have purple sweet potatoes.
Purple green beans and purple sweet potatoes sound gorgeous! Maybe you can get a handful of your seeds for next year online and try new things. This site has some beautiful veggies.
oooh! THAT sounds good! The only problem is the colour tends to disappear in batter, but I’ll work on it, definitely bookmarking that idea!
Well, purple tortillas are definitely purplish, so I think the cornbread might work out. Let me know if it does!
will do!
I also love Rainbow chard a lot! It is great in cooking, roasting & baking!
The varieaty in colour from the corn is just georgous!
What kinds of recipes do you use rainbow chard in? I’ve always kind of been at a loss as to what to do with it.