Stewed Tomatoes
Corn Pudding
Brussels Sprouts with Cream and Nuts
Creamed Onions
Candied Sweet Potatoes
Baked Beets
Roast Parsnips
Turnip Puree
New Potatoes with Butter and Parsley
Carrot Pie
Rhubarb and Strawberry Cobbler
Appendix A: Planting and Maintenance
Appendix B: Pest and Disease Control
A few years ago, I grew an heirloom vegetable garden filled with varieties that would have been grown in America in the late 1800s. My scarecrow, Millie, oversaw the garden. The wheelbarrow contains much produce from that garden.
heirloom
vegetable
gardens
Seeds are a link to the past. Immigrants smuggled them into this country in the lining of their suitcases, under the bands of their hats, and in the hems of their dresses. The Germans brought cabbages, the Italians paste tomatoes, and the Mexicans their beloved chiles. According to Kent Whealy, director of the Seed Savers Exchange (an organization dedicated to saving old vegetable varieties), from the time of the Mayflower to that of the boat people, many of our heirloom seeds have entered the country in just this way.
The home gardens in which these seeds were grown a hundred years ago differed greatly from home gardens today. For one thing, the varieties themselves were notably diverse—for example, there were high-shouldered tomatoes (whose tops protrude above the stems), purple broccoli, and huge, dense beets. Even within varieties, the produce was much less uniform than what we’re used to. But an even more fundamental difference relates to the seeds themselves: when planting time came, gardeners took seeds not from commercial packages but from jars in closets where the seeds had been stored from the previous year’s harvest. Gardeners in the olden days used the seeds of their own open-pollinated plants—varieties capable of reproducing themselves.
The seed catalog is from the late 1800s as are the bean varieties.
By the 1930s, commercially marketed seeds of many new varieties were becoming increasingly available to home gardeners. Many new hybrids proved to be more vigorous, uniform, and widely adaptable than some of the open-pollinated varieties, and the public accepted them enthusiastically. However, people could not save the hybrid seeds to plant the next year. To produce a hybrid variety, a breeder crosses two varieties or even two species of plants. But like the mule—a cross between a donkey and a horse—hybrids cannot reproduce themselves, so the seed companies must repeat the crossing process every year.
Commercially produced varieties streamlined the home garden, simplifying planting and standardizing produce, but in the process, old, open-pollinated varieties cultivated for generations disappeared. Some horticulturalists estimate that thousands of plant varieties have been lost forever.
For the better part of the past fifty years, American gardeners have favored many of these commercial varieties and hybrids, but change is in the air. Gardeners are by no means forsaking them, and no one is denying that the heavy production and uniformity of some hybrids make them appealing, but many old, open-pollinated varieties are drawing attention. Diversity in all its glory is coming to be valued anew. Against the backdrop of ever spreading monocultures—huge single-variety crops—the old varieties show their unusual shapes, colors, and sizes to great advantage. Gardeners and cooks have rediscovered small yellow plum tomatoes, blue cornmeal, and rich yellow fingerling potatoes. Restaurants use orange tomatoes in their salads and ‘Dragon Langerie’ beans—yellow romano beans with maroon lace markings—for a splash of the unusual on their appetizer plates.
Collectively, these plants are known as heirloom varieties—varieties “of special value handed on from one generation to another,” as Webster’s defines the word heirloom. More specifically, most seed people agree that the term applies to any open-pollinated variety that is more than fifty years old.
Some gardeners are primarily interested in the taste of the heirloom varieties, the ‘Bonny Best’ tomato, for example. Other gardeners enjoy the novelty of heirlooms and like to amuse the family by serving ‘Mortgage Lifter’ tomatoes, ‘Ruth Bible’ beans, and ‘Howling Mob’ corn or to arrive at a Fourth of July picnic with red, white, and blue potato salad made with regular potatoes and blue and red heirloom potatoes. Still others appreciate the historical connections—the ‘Mayflower’ beans or ‘Mandan Bride’ corn, for instance, or a lettuce variety brought to this country by a great-great-grandmother.
Vegetables are not the only endangered cultured plants, the old flower varieties are in trouble too. I planted many of them in my heirloom vegetable garden including the species white zinnias, calliopsis, and gloriosa daisies.
Another view of my heirloom garden shows more of the old flowers and the chicken coop. It includes the single, tall, cream Peruvian and single species white zinnias; tansy, with its fernlike foliage in the foreground; strawberry gomphrena; tall status; species yellow marigolds; and a magenta plume celosia from Monticello.
I have been gardening and cooking with unusual varieties for as long as I can remember. Over the years, that especially tasty corn variety, that unusual-colored bean, and those vegetables with offbeat names pleased my soul, and I sought them out. But my interest was really piqued almost twenty years ago at a conference on seed saving. I met other heirloom-variety gardeners who gave me a different slant on the subject. Many had been drawn to these vegetables and fruits initially by their novelty and taste but soon became concerned—as I did—about a more global issue: the erosion of the vast gene pool of vegetables.
To stay in existence, plant varieties must be grown and kept growing. Our bank of irreplaceable vegetables from which future breeds will draw has shrunk alarmingly.
It’s critical that we now focus on this erosion and start to rebuild the endangered stock. The U.S. government and the seed companies are cooperating
