The joys of heirloom gardening: Jim Veteto takes us back to our roots with old-fashioned vegetable varieties - Brief Article

New Life Journal, June-July, 2002 by Jim Veteto

As I look around the garden here at the Arthur Morgan School on a beautiful May morning, the variety of color and leaf structure in the early season section of our garden gives me great satisfaction. In one row, the green and red paint-splash colored plants of the Hyper Red Rumple lettuce, the Cherry Belle Radishes and the beautiful green and red Bruce D'Hiver lettuce make a nice trio. In another bed, four varieties of lettuce are sparkling in the early morning sun: the deep red and green ruffled leaves of Pablo Batavian, the more transparent greenish red of Majestic Red lettuce, the brilliant almost-new green of the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce and the red oakish leaves of Red Salad Bowl. They are all modestly interplanted with Red Onions to help deter pests. Another nearby bed contains White Russian Kale, Nero di Tuscana Kale, Prize Pac Choi (Chinese cabbage), Takinoshi Daikon (Asian radish), Cherokee Blue Mustard Greens, and White Onions. These small beds contain just a few of the 125 varieties of heirloom vegetables that we will grow here this summer.

What exactly is an heirloom vegetable, flower or herb? There are many definitions and discussions on the subject in heirloom gardening circles. This is the definition we have come up with in the Arthur Morgan School garden program: Heirloom vegetable, flower and herb seed are open pollinated seeds that have been passed down in a family, culture, or community for many generations. A seed that has a fifty year old or older history can be considered an heirloom.

There are many good reasons to incorporate more heirloom varieties into your gardening. They are often better adapted to local conditions than modern hybrid or genetically engineered seeds. In other words, they enjoy the qualities of drought, disease and insect resistance and adaptations to specific soil conditions. Heirloom varieties are often viable for longer periods of the growing season than modern hybrids, which are bred to be harvested all at one time for the marketing convenience of industrial farmers. This has the advantage of supplying home gardeners or CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) with a steady stream of vegetables for longer periods of the growing season. For educators, parents or information buffs, heirloom varieties offer immense educational value. You can learn all sorts of things about history, culture, science and social studies by studying heirloom varieties and their seed legacies. An extremely important reason that home gardeners need to grow and preserve heirloom varieties is that 92% of our American heirloom vegetable varieties have been lost in the last century. (For more information about the loss of agricultural biodiversity see, my article in the Dec-Jan 2002 issue of NLJ). By growing heirloom plants, you are entering a living tradition of seed savers. This tradition can help strengthen the bonds between older and younger generations, and seed swapping can create community-building opportunities. Another important reason is ... for the taste of it! If you grow a wider selection of vegetables, you will discover that you have more options to choose from to satisfy your own particular taste buds! This variety can also provide you with a wider selection of beautiful colors in the garden and a more complete nutritional content than if you just rely on a few modern commercial varieties.

Now that I have shared a number of reasons for growing heirloom seeds, I would like to share a personal story about one of my seed swapping and saving experiences. In 1997, I attended the Indigenous Environmental Network Conference at the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation out in Montana. There were two Sac and Fox Nation gentlemen there from Oklahoma who worked for a Native Agriculture project called the Thakiwa Foundation. They were giving away seeds for three different vegetables including Coushaw Squash, Cherokee White Flour Corn, and Indian Pumpkin. They told me that all three sets of seeds had been brought across on the infamous "Trail of Tears" from the Southeast (including our region) in the winter of 1838-9. Since that time, they had been grown by native people in Oklahoma for generations. When I told them that I was from the Southeast, they were pleased and thought it appropriate that I would bring the seeds back home and grow them in their native place. An interesting thing that I did not discuss with them was that my father's great, great, great grandparents had been forced to travel on the Trail of Tears in 1838-9 as well. Now when I grow Cherokee White Flour Corn, Coushaw Squash, and Cherokee Trail of Tears Bean (which I located from another seed saver) in the "Three Sisters" native guild section of our garden, I not only get beautiful plants and great food but I feel like I'm preserving a bit of cultural history as well as maintaining a link to my own families past.

The possibilities for this kind of meaningful gardening connection are numerous. I have a friend who grows Italian heirloom vegetables as a link to his Italian ancestry. It is well known that many Amish and Native communities maintain seeds that have histories that stretch back hundreds or thousands of years. Some people engage in "kinship gardening" that grows plants in the same botanical family near each other so that people can observe the diversity and the similarities between them. The Joy of Heirloom gardening is contagious and it all starts with the interest and desire to find, grow and save ancient seed.