Gardeners can choose from a huge number of vegetable varieties featuring interesting colors, shapes and sizes never available at stores. There are little bite-sized peppers that are ready for dips and salads in no time at all. Small softballsized cabbages are perfect for today's smaller families, eliminating waste and saving preparation time. Tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, eggplants, Swiss chard and even corn are now available in a rainbow of colors. There are yellow watermelons, striped beets, purple beans, pink eggplants, purple asparagus, and blue potatoes in the garden, but not necessarily on store shelves.
Vegetable gardeners can choose from several different kinds of parsley, basil, mint and oregano.
Homegrown food offers variety. Why just eat only purple eggplant when you can dine on white, black, deep pink, green, or purple. Homegrown food offers fun for children. Unusual vegetable shapes, colors and sizes are appealing to children, and many of these specialty vegetables are only available in seed. Children can have fun growing white pumpkins, orange watermelons, UFO shaped summer squash, blue potatoes, golden beets, violet radishes or round yellow cucumbers.