Colorful choices. Vivid eggplants (above) and red noodle beans (below) add color and history to any garden.

Heirlooms in Your Backyard

Heirloom plants let you recapture the beauty of Grandma’s garden...and start your own traditions.

By Ann Wilson, Geneva, Illinois

Handed down through generations, heirloom seeds link modern growers to seed savers like Thomas Jefferson, who grew green pineapple melons, and the Civil War-era farmers who favored Bloody Butcher corn.

If you want to grow plants with a past, catalogs offer an amazing array of heirloom vegetables, from yellow radishes and blue pumpkins to round carrots and lime-green tomatoes shaped like bananas.

Seed preservationists like Jeremiah “Jere” Gettle, owner of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds near Mansfield, Missouri, want to ensure that future generations can enjoy the prized plants of yore.

“When I was a kid, I’d look through seed catalogs, and over the years I noticed that different varieties were gone,” says Jere, who started gathering seeds in his teens and founded his company at 17. “I thought I’d better get started saving the soon-to-be-lost ones.”

Jere joined a local seed-saving club and began selling the seeds he gathered. His price list gave birth to a seed catalog and trips to faraway lands in search of interesting and endangered plants. Today, his 10-year-old company offers seeds for more than 1,200 heirloom vegetables, herbs and flowers.

“A lot of people are switching to heirlooms,” Jere says. “They’re amazed at the variety. They like being able to grow unusual plants like purple or striped tomatoes—things that look different, taste good and have a history.”

Age-old plant varieties are popping up in restaurants, on television cooking shows, at farmers’ markets and in specialty stores. And growers striving for chemical-free gardens appreciate heirlooms for their time-tested sturdiness.

Which Are Heirlooms?

There’s some disagreement about what makes a plant an heirloom.

Dan and Joanne Nelson talk to a customer at Baker Creek’s 2007 Heirloom Garden Show. The event draws heirloom gardeners from 25 states.

“Some say varieties that date back 50 years or more are heirlooms; some say 100 years or more,” says Mayo Underwood, founder of Underwood Gardens, an heirloom seed company in Woodstock, Illinois, and author of From Seed to Shining Seed.

“I don’t believe age really matters. If a great old variety is in danger of being lost forever, I’d consider it an heirloom.”
In general, an heirloom is defined as a variety passed down for generations without being hybridized.

“All heirloom seeds are open-pollinated varieties, which means they are pollinated naturally by whatever means Mother Nature intended,” explains Mayo, who learned seed-saving from a Native American uncle.

“Heirloom seeds are the best of the open-pollinated varieties, having been chosen and saved down through the years for their awesome characteristics.”

For centuries, gardeners collected and saved seeds from the most flavorful, pest- and disease-resistant varieties for the next year’s crop. They chose flowers with beautiful, fragrant and colorful blossoms, and herbs with the most potent flavors and best medicinal properties, Mayo notes.

“Because these seeds were the best of the best, they were treated like other family heirlooms,” she says. “They were valued and passed down from one generation to another.

“Think of Grandma’s recipes. If you follow her recipe and your dish doesn’t taste as good as hers, try making it with heirlooms that you’ve grown. You’ll taste a big difference.”

You’ll find big differences among varieties of the same vegetable, too. Heirloom tomatoes come in all shapes, sizes and colors, including red, pink, yellow, orange, black, brown and white. Some are marbled, striped or flecked. And each one tastes different. One of Mayo’s favorites is the white-fruited Shah/Mikado, a parent of the more commonly grown Brandywine tomato.

Varieties to Try

Jere says his customers look for the unusual—white, red and purple carrots, striped tomatoes, odd-shaped squash and white or golden beets. Here are some of their favorites:

• Cherokee Purple tomato. This large, intensely flavored, dusky purple-pink tomato “makes the best salsa ever,” Jere promises.
• Green Zebra tomato. Three-ounce chartreuse fruits have deep-lime stripes and a sweet, tangy taste.
• Charentais melon. The fruits weigh 2 to 3 pounds and have sweet, fragrant, bright-orange flesh.
• Chinese red noodle bean. Thin, deep- red, 18-inch pods are delicious and hold their magenta hue when cooked.
• Moonshadow hyacinth bean. Lilac blossoms bloom along purple stems; flowers give way to deep-purple pods.
• Shishigatani (Toonas Makino) squash. This bottle-shaped, warty pumpkin has deep-orange flesh and a nutty flavor.

Heirloom flowers offer even more variety, and they still smell as good as you remember.

“When flowers are hybridized to get different heights or colors, they lose characteristics,” Mayo says. “Fragrance is the first characteristic to go. Remember fragrant roses and carnations? They’re heirlooms.”

In addition to beauty and fragrance, heirloom flowers offer other benefits. They attract birds and butterflies, and are likely to “come true” from seed, producing plants just like the parent.

Some plants also serve dual purposes. Mayo likes ornamentals that are edible, like trailing nasturtiums. And Jere points out that red long beans, hyacinth beans, chards, variegated peppers and purple basils can add unique forms and unexpected colors to perennial borders.

Mayo’s Prize Picks

Some of Mayo’s favorite ornamental heirlooms include toothache plant, blue-eyed daisy, perennial blue cornflower, larkspur, blue breadseed poppy, Mexican sunflower, alpine violet and Envy Green zinnia (pictured above right).

Heavenly Blue morning glories clamber up her mailbox, and the disease-resistant alpine strawberries she planted along her driveway lasted for years.

If you want to save seeds at the end of the season, Jere and Mayo suggest more in-depth reading, as the process can be tricky. In general, though, Mayo suggests beginners start by simply collecting seeds from heirloom plants they find attractive or flavorful.

Gathering times vary, but most vegetable seeds are ready to harvest when the fruits are ripe. There are exceptions; cucumber and bean seeds are best saved when the fruits are well past their peak.

Flower seeds can be gathered when seedpods mature. Store dry seeds in resealable plastic bags with a silica gel packet or a bit of rice to absorb moisture. Label the bag and store it in the fridge until you’re ready to plant.

“Growing just one antique bean or tomato or flower each year, saving the seed and sharing it with friends and neighbors will help protect our world’s plant diversity,” Mayo says. “The heirlooms you choose will return your kindness with the intense flavors and fragrances of childhood memories.”

Photos courtesy of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds