Heirloom Vegetables

There was a time when families grew their own food. Long before mechanical food production and super-scale agriculture there were kitchen gardens. Humble backyard plots planted with seeds saved, many from native homelands and brought here by people when they immigrated. The seeds were saved from year to year and shared with family and friends. Seed catalogs introduced the public to the “new” seeds as ethnic varieties mingled with known ones in the gardens. And it was good.

Until new farming technology introduced the need for “faster, bigger, better”.  Crops that could ripen simultaneously, be harvested all at once and held in storage until shipped far and wide became the new “advanced” way of producing food. The wide availability of produce meant less gardens, and less seeds being saved. Catalogs stopped offering the “old” reliable heirlooms in favor of  the “new and better” hybrids and many old varieties were lost forever.

Thanks to dedicated gardeners all over the world, heirloom seeds are making a “comeback”. Everything old is new again. (There’s nothing new under the sun!) Fortunately, with new awareness comes new responsibility and a new generation of seed-savers is being born. Join us, help preserve future diversity by sowing the seeds of our past!

These vegetables below are some of the heirloom varieties I have grown in my zone 6 garden. I hope to add more varieties as well as pictures throughout the 2010 growing season. If you are interested in growing heirlooms and saving seeds visit the seed source and bookshelf pages for information to get you started.

Meanwhile here are just a (very) few varieties to look for:

Peas: Dwarf grey sugar, Mammoth Melting sugar, Golden Sweet, Lincoln, Little Marvel

Eggplant: Black beauty, Rosa Bianca, Long Purple

Summer Squash: Patissons panache, Dark green Zucchini, Cocozelle Zucchini, Black Beauty Zucchini, Early yellow crookneck, Early Prolific, Green Patty Pan, Early White Scallop

Winter Squash: Waltham Butternut, Table Queen, Brode Galeux D’Eysine (A FAVORITE!), Blue Hubbard, Burgess Buttercup

Pumpkins: Long Island Cheese, New England Pie, Small Sugar, Rouge Vif  D’Etampes (A FAVORITE!)

Cucumbers: Long Green Improved, National Pickle, Straight

Carrots: Scarlett Nantes, Red Cored Chantenay, Chantenay, Danvers Half Long, Violette

Coles: Snowball cauliflower, Sicilian Violet cauliflower, Earliana cabbage, Early golden Acre cabbage, Catskills brussels sprout, Calabrese broccoli, Petrowski turnip

Radish: Watermelon, White icicle, China Rose, French Breakfast

Beets: Golden, Red Ball, Bull’s Blood, Chiogga, Cylindra, Detroit dark red

Peppers: Friggitelo, Corno di Toro, Gypsy, Hungarian Wax, Long Cayenne, Hot Cherry, Sweet Banana, Pepperoncini, Joe’s Long cayenne, Jalapeno ( more to come in 2010)

Tomatoes: San Marzano, Mama Leone, Amish Paste, Brandywine, Brandywine Pink, Purple Cherokee, Beefsteak, Amana Orange, Siletz, Rose de Berne

Bush Beans: Tendergreen, Rocquenfort, Dragon Tongue, Top Crop, Vermont Cranberry, Pencil Pod, Maxibel

Pole Beans: Trionfo Violetto (A FAVORITE!), Rattlesnake, Neckargold, True Red Cranberry, Kentucky Wonder, Romano

Lettuce: Marvel of Four Seasons, Dark Lolla Rossa, Black seeded Simpson, Mache, Brune de Hiver, Forellenschluss, Sanguine Ameliore (A FAVORITE!), Merlot

Spinach/Greens: Arugula, Bloomsdale Spinach, Monstreaux de Viroflay spinach, Verde Coure Pieno Escarole, Rhubarb Swiss Chard, Rainbow Mix Swiss Chard, Radicchio, Russian Red Kale

Melons: Sugar Baby Watermelon, Iroquois Melon, Jenny Lind Melon