The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables

The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables
The 100 Easiest-to-Grow Tastiest Vegetables for Your Garden
By Marie Iannotti

As the growing season gets into full swing, you might be making some last minute choices on vegetables to plant.  How about some heirlooms?  Breeding has changed the flavor of many of our vegetables.  If you think the flavor of vegetables from years ago was better or more intense, you might just be right.  Heirloom vegetables bring back those flavors.

What is an heirloom vegetable?  According to this book, they must be open pollination, meaning their seeds will grow into plants with the same characteristics as the parent plant, they must be more than 50 years old, and they must have been handed down so that we know where they came from.

“…an heirloom can be anything of value that is passed down through generations, be it jewelry, baseball cards, your first grade report card, or a humble jar of beans.”

Marie also points out that we’ve gotten used to buying new seeds every year but in days gone by, you had to save seeds to plant the next year.  “When we save seeds, we tend to be selective, so the seeds handed down from generation to generation are often among the best vegetable varieties ever grown.”

I had to laugh when I read, “Homegrown heirloom vegetables can be so beautiful and delicious that it seems you could simply inhale them, and many vegetables never make it all the way from the garden to the kitchen.”  I recalled days when my father would pick a kohlrabi and peel it with his pocket knife and feed me slices in the garden, or the simple pleasure of opening a ripe pea pod and eating the raw sweet peas straight out of the jacket.

Marie divides her top picks into Aromatic, Beautiful, Classic, Colorful, Long Season, Prolific, Spicy, Sweet, Unusual, and Versatile.  All the while keeping in mind that limiting it to 100 means she needed to pick the hardiest and flavors you won’t usually find.

For each entry she includes information on ideal sun exposure, soil temperature, planting depth, days to germination, spacing and days to maturity, growing notes, how to harvest, tips and others to try, as well as anecdotes of its origin and vivid descriptions of the plant and vegetable that capture its splendor. 

From artichokes and asparagus to squash, I recognize some of the vegetables in this collection.  The Chioggia beet has been extolled in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Chiot’s Run organic gardening blog has mentioned many as well.  Early Purple Vienna kohlrabi is a childhood memory.  Rainbow Swiss Chard, Kentucky Wonder green bean, French Breakfast radish, White Icicle radish, and Cherokee Purple tomato are all present and accounted for.

This book also brought others to my attention that I had not yet heard of.  It made me want to grow “German Butterball “ potatoes that melt in your mouth and Small Sugar squash looks and sounds like a delectable, compact, pie pumpkin. 

Marie ends with a section on creating your own heirlooms and seed-saving basics, with a more specific guide to different types of plants.  There is also a small glossary of terms, a chart of hardiness zones and a resource list of companies and some suggested reading, plus the ever present index.

“Their true splendor comes from being too scrumptious to forget, so we continue to grow and eat them for generations.” 

Check it out for some inspiration in your garden!

Carrots Love Tomatoes ~ Louise Riotte

Carrots Love Tomatoes
by Louise Riotte
Well, it's that time of year. The gardening catalogs have been arriving in droves. My husband and I have already ordered nut trees, fruit trees and many seeds and other plants. We opted for open pollination and heirloom seeds so I knew we had to order early as they have limited supplies and run out of things. We've actually already recieved the seeds! The trees will arrive at the appropriate time for planning so now we have to decide exactly how we want to plant things. We also have to figure out how to deter deer and other animals from eating all the bark off the trees and killing young saplings.

We've heard of companion planting, of course. I've always planted marigolds around my garden to discourage animals from eating the vegetables and just last year I planted garlic with the rose plants because I had heard it was good for them but I didn't know exactly how. I figured it was some nutrient that they used and turned into something the roses needed. Carrots Love Tomatoes provided an explanation.

"All the alliums - garlic, onions, chives, and shallots - are beneficial to roses, protecting them against black spot, mildew, and aphids."

Anyone who has had a rose bush knows how aphids can eat those leaves right down to the stem in no time at all!

Companion planting can also help you make the most out of the space you have. (I planted the garlic right over the rose bush.) I also think of the classic three sisters tradition where the beans are planted around the corn stalks so they climb the corn stalks and the pumpkins or squash are planted around them so that their leaves shade the ground and crowd out weeds.

Information in the book is broken down into chapters including vegetables, herbs, wild plants, nuts, etc., along with chapters on garden techniques and soil improvement. There is information on what to avoid planting together as well as what to plant together. I plan to make a chart for the vegetables I will be growing with their "likes" and "dislikes" before plotting out the garden.

This will also help us make the most of the space we have, as information is provided on what can be planted close together. "Kohlrabi is mutually beneficial with onions or beets, wtih aromatic plants, and surprisingly with cucumbers, in part because they occupy different soil strata."

There are many side notes on topics like how to dry herbs or what herbs are good for tea. The chapter on wild plants contains notes on which are good food sources for humans, always a topic of interest to patrons in the library. There is information on deterring pests and model companion gardens. There are even plans for a postage stamp garden or windowsill garden. Carrots Love Tomatoes is a fairly slim volume but my husband found so much useful information in it that he ordered a copy for our home library as soon as he finished reading it.

It's been an odd winter and the growing season this year will likely provide challenges. Will it be extra wet or extra dry? Will there be more slugs and bugs than usual because we've had a fairly open winter? I wouldn't count on any predictions you've heard made so far. We'll just have to take it like it comes and adjust accordingly. The principles of companion planting are one thing that won't likely change on us though, and will help us deal with the challenges.