Gardens Grow a colourful fruit and veg rainbow
Gardening book authors Two Dirty Boys serve up a platter to celebrate Pride month
Growing a rainbow of fruits and vegetables in your garden or allotment is a great way to add a burst of colour to celebrate Pride month. To mark the occasion, Robin Daly and Paul Anderton, friends with an allotment in East London – known on social media as Two Dirty Boys – and authors of gardening books Propagate and Regrown, reckon it’s possible to make your fruit and veg platters a rainbow of colour, using plants for their dazzling shades as well as their flavour.
Here, they serve up some suggestions to achieve a Pride rainbow of colour when you grow your own.
Red
‘Beets, radishes and tomatoes will rouge your border nicely. Beet leaves will add some red to the garden as the crop matures (and can be harvested as salad leaves).
‘More visually (as beets grow mostly underground), radishes are bright red and really couldn’t be easier to grow.
‘Lastly, tomatoes are your red veg A-game. Cherry tomatoes are easiest.’
Orange
‘Our pride and joy is our miniature peach tree, which gives us around 15 beautifully sweet red/ orange peaches each August. Because they ripen on the tree they are insanely sweet.
‘Instead of orange carrots, choose a heritage type with delicious yellow or purple roots.’
Yellow
‘Yellow, for us, would have to be sweetcorn as, when you grow it yourself, you can eat it direct from the cob, raw, and it tastes sensational.
‘Corn ripens in late summer, so perhaps yellow bell peppers are a better option for summer Pride platters.’
Green
‘Literally all vegetables have a green bit. But if you want to go more ornamental, then Swiss chard stems come in some wildly vibrant colours.’
Blue
‘Blueberries are an obvious choice and people are always surprised that they grow in the UK, which they do very well. Like the peach tree, they are perennial, which means they fruit each year.
‘There are purple/blue potatoes and sweetcorn, too.
‘We’ve had great success in our greenhouse with aubergine, but if this summer is like 2022, then it should be fine outside.’
Other colours
‘To supplement your fruit and veg, we would suggest edible flowers. There are so many. Nasturtiums (red through to yellow) are so prolific and deliciously peppery.
‘Violas come in a huge range of colours, while courgette flowers are yellow/orange and look fabulous on the plant as well as being delicious stuffed with Greek yogurt, deep fried and drizzled with honey.’