These Are the Best Vegetables for a Brighter Spring Garden.
Spring is just around the corner, and while many of us are looking forward to tomatoes, peppers and eggplants, there’s a whole vegetable growing season ahead before our nightshade friends are planted in the ground. Spring is good for short crops, which are vegetables that do well in cold weather and don’t take long to harvest, including cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, peas, lots of greens, spinach, mustard and the like. radishes and carrots that you can imagine. If that sounds like a sea of green, don’t worry: the color possibilities in your spring garden are endless.
Plant These Colorful Cauliflower Varieties
Don’t get me wrong, the massive head of white flowers with perfect blush tips looks like a crop of clouds. However, your plate ends up with a lot of white over and over again, so shake it up. Cauliflower now comes in a stunning range of colors, especially purple, burnt orange and chartreuse. The colors hold up well during cooking and will add color to your garden. For a vibrant, nutty color, I grow two varieties of cauliflower: Clementine and Flaming Star. Leaning toward purple, I grow Depurple Cauliflower or Graffiti . To achieve that lime neon green color, you must grow Romanesco , which is actually a type of broccoli. Because you’re growing all these different varieties, they’ll also be ready to harvest at different times, so you’ll have a longer period of fresh eating.
Consider kohlrabi
Kohlrabi is the vegetable Pluto. These satellite-like orbs go unnoticed, but they make wonderful garden guests and are delicious raw in a salad or salad. I cut them into thick slices and grill them. They come in three colors: white, leafy green and purple, and when you grow all three together they make a fantastic garden display. Purple Vienna creates fantastic purple suns with leaf rays, Kossack produces a soft green, and Beas produces a stunningly bright white.
There are many spring vegetables that play in this color scheme. Asparagus, cabbage, broccoli and peas come in green and purple varieties.
Grow color underground too
While it won’t seem impressive in the garden, growing a full range of colors for the plate is also worth adding a little variety to the seeds underground. Potatoes come in a variety of colors and now is the time to start thinking about planting them. Purple, pink, blue and red colors can be purchased at your local nursery or ordered online .
Beets are very useful in the kitchen, and you can grow colorful varieties such as Detroit Goldens , Chiogga Candy Stripe beets, and Scarlet Red Ace.
Visit a local seed house
To explore all the colors available to you, you’ll need to start digging through seed catalogs, and while some of them have pretty pictures, the best seed home is always the one closest to you. If there are test fields near your seed house, their seeds will likely grow well in your climate. To find a seed store near you, simply Google “seed company, [your state].” If you can find local producers, that will be even better.
While one of the benefits of seed diversification is a more colorful harvest, it also means your crops are less vulnerable. If one variety doesn’t germinate or one variety is attacked by a virus, fungus or pest, you have others.