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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Garden -> Veggie Heirlooms
 Heirloom Vegetables: When
Historic is Better And When It Is
Not
By Niki Hayden
Like most home gardeners, I was first introduced to heirloom vegetables through
tomatoes. The Amish Brandywine couldn’t be beat, I
was told, and my pulse quickened at the thought of plump, misshapen beauties all
summer long. I’ve grown a number of heirloom tomatoes and found
some of them fickle. Some are more subject to disease, take forever to ripen and offer
up a scant harvest. What I overlooked are the heirloom tomatoes that thrive in
my garden given the soil, summer temperatures and dates to maturity.
I discovered 'Jaune Flamme' and 'Principe Borghese'. The first
is a medium-sized tomato with a bold taste. The second makes the finest dried
tomato of any I've grown. So if Brandywine falls into the category of other finicky
plants, many heirloom tomatoes have settled in with aplomb.
Crookneck squash is another winner. The yellow summer squash sold
throughout many catalogues looks like a zucchini. The skin is tough and the
inside pithy, with none of the flavor of the creamy interior of the yellow
crookneck. Even more astonishing is that yellow crookneck squash is a hardy
plant, studded with tiny squashes that appear throughout July and August. The
newcomer is sleekly designed, perhaps for easy shipping and small seeds, but that’s not a home
gardener’s concern. The old variety has flavor that I've not gleaned from its
newer sibling. Yet fewer seed catalogues carry the old standby each year.
It now surprises me to see such a garden stalwart labeled
an heirloom when the concept of heirloom is so hazy. In the world of antiques,
the definition of an antique oak chest is 100 years old. In the world of
gardening, heirlooms can be relatively recent, but out of favor. Butternut
squash is sometimes called an heirloom, conjuring up images of Italian
grandmothers stuffing gnocchi generations ago. In reality, butternut squash dates
back to the 1940s, created in the United States. Whether or not it classifies as
a hybrid, the butternut is classic and worth the room it takes to spread out.
So this is not to overlook the squash family as a great
collection to be tapped. The old Hubbard, large, bumpy and delicately colored in
an aqua green, is delicious and easy to grow. Other heirloom squashes like the
buttercup, turban and banana boast a following. Amy Goldman, the author of The Compleat Squash: A Passionate Growers’ Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes and
Gourds, also adores 'Australian Blue' and 'Triamble'--somewhat rare finds.
Although winter
squashes may take up room, they come from hardy stock and many of these
you’ll never find outside your garden.
Heirloom potatoes are surfacing in
supermarkets. The Peruvian blue potatoes have taken chefs to new heights. Potatoes originated in the Andes and these blue potatoes do have roots
there, but for the home gardener there is one serious drawback. “You just keep
digging and digging and digging,” Connie Zweck, co-owner of the Zweck farm,
admitted to me. Unless you enjoy sifting through soil looking for these purple
nuggets, I’d suggest planting the potato you enjoy most.
Many are fun to grow, in varying sizes with knobs and
oddball shapes. The russet potato so universally beloved was developed by Luther
Burbank, a true North American plant genius. He scanned veggies for interesting
plant mutations and often propagated a rare find. With heirlooms, we can turn back time and
reconstruct what Burbank and the ancient Peruvians farmed many years ago.
Lettuces and greens are overlooked in the heirloom
definition, except for ‘Red Sails,’ which is often promoted as an heirloom.
'Red Sails,’ a red-tinged leaf lettuce is lovely, but it’s no more
heirloom than romaine, which is an ancient lettuce. Romaine dates back to Roman
cooks, and remains a sturdy lettuce for Colorado. It can take some summer heat.
Although it needs a longer span of time than most lettuces, it will keep longer,
too, and provide a harvest that can be extended. This alone is a boon for most
home gardeners.
Many greens are ancient; kale is another example. Although these
rarely are labeled as heirlooms, they come with a genetic tenacity worth getting to
know and love.
Peppers have hit the heirloom labels with nearly the same
popularity of
tomatoes. But this is a case where heirloom often is better than hybrids. The fleshy red, orange and yellow bell peppers in our stores are grown in
greenhouses where the temperature, water and nutrients are carefully measured.
Growing such hybrid specialties in the garden may leave you disappointed.
My large pepper hybrids take a long time to reach maturity.
And, by the time they do birds have pecked holes and pests have gnawed away at
them. Most are covered with brown and mottled areas. Tom Zweck grows an
astonishing variety of peppers at his Longmont farm, including the finicky large
bells. But his soil, sun and water are near perfection.
In contrast, heirloom peppers closer to old-fashioned peppers, like
ancho (poblano) and a myriad of smaller sweet and hot peppers grow quickly and
vigorously with an astonishing bounty. I’ve grown Caribbean, sweet, anaheim,
ancho—nearly any pepper I can find. Most are satisfying for the home gardener
and few peppers are tasteless. Try Hungarian heirloom peppers for small,
sweet and beautiful veggies.
Some, like the anaheim and ancho, which typically
are roasted for full flavor, can be roasted and frozen throughout the winter
with little fuss. The flavor freezes beautifully. Take one or two from a freezer
bag and you’ll never have to buy peppers again in midwinter. Some of these
peppers are quite old in their native climes, shaping cuisine for centuries.
So while vegetables may be separated by heirloom versus
newer hybrid varieties, eventually, gardeners will be attracted to taste. We
care about taste, hardiness and yield. In some cases, the hybrids will win out.
If you discover diseases in your soil, hybrids bred to be immune to wilts or
rusts may be the best choice. But don’t
let wonderful heirlooms disappear. And don't assume, as I did, that one
disappointment with an heirloom taints the entire family. Home gardeners have the power to save the
overlooked, underappreciated and unloved. If we ask seed suppliers to keep us in
mind, wonderful heirlooms will be around for years to come.
Heirloom seed suppliers:
Abundant Life Seed Foundation, P.O. Box 772, Port Townsend,
WA, 98368
Seeds of Change, P.O. Box 15700, Santa Fe, NM, 87506
Territorial Seed Company, P.O. Box 157, Cottage Grove, OR,
97424
Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants,
Monticello, PlO. Box 316, Charlottesville, VA, 22902
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