Why Grow Heirloom?

Five Reasons to Grow Heirloom Plants

1. Exceptional taste is the No. 1 reason many gardeners cite for choosing heirloom varieties.

Crinkly-crisp, cone-head cabbages from Sicily, nutty Native American squash, your grandma’s voluptuous deep red canning tomatoes — they all immediately invoke flavorful images for those who knew them in childhood and others who have discovered them.

“A lot of the breeding programs for modern hybrids have sacrificed taste and nutrition,” says George DeVault, executive director of Seed Savers Exchange, the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom and other rare seeds. “The standard Florida tomato is a good example. Instead of old-time juicy tangy tomatoes, it tastes like cardboard. It was bred to be picked green and gas-ripened because that’s what was needed for commercial growing and shipping.”

Many heirloom vegetables have been saved for decades and even centuries because they are the best performers in home and market gardens. Ship-ability wasn’t a concern so flavor could take a front seat, and it did. There’s no need to plant veggies bred to be tough when you can plant heirloom vegetables that are tender, sweet, juicy and just plain delicious.

2. Heirloom vegetables are likely to be more nutritious than newer varieties.

In addition to ship-ability, breeders and commercial growers have been steadily pushing for higher and higher yields. “But for home gardeners, a little difference in yield isn’t a big deal,” DeVault says. And even though hybrids may often out yield heirlooms, it turns out we’re now paying a hidden cost for this emphasis on higher yields. Recent research has revealed that in many cases, newer vegetables and grains are significantly less nutritious than heirlooms.

3. Many gardeners prefer heirloom vegetables because they are open-pollinated, which means you can save your own seed to replant from year to year.

Seeds saved from heirloom vegetables will produce plants that are true to type, unlike hybrid seeds. If you try to save seed from hybrids, you usually won’t get good results.  Also, with heirloom vegetables you can choose what works best in your garden. If you save seeds from heirloom vegetables over several years, you can gradually select seeds from the plants that perform best in your local soil and climate. This will give you a seed strain that is more resistant to local pests and diseases. Plants are much more adaptable than most of us realize.

“Take a nice, old variety that has a lot of redeeming qualities, and select what performs well in your garden,” DeVault says. “Save those seeds, and you can create your own locally adapted variety.”

Locally-adapted heirlooms also fly in the face of one of the major criticisms vintage veggies endure. Are they really less resistant to pests and diseases? Again, there is a discrepancy between what works commercially and what works on a home or small scale. One hundred and fifty acres of French heirloom melons growing in Texas might be devastated by an infestation or illness, but when you’re talking about small, diverse gardens and heirloom seeds that have been selected to grow well in that region, heirlooms may actually be a better choice. “Varieties that are localized tend to survive attacks by pests and disease quite well,” Kaiser says. When you select and save seeds from the most successful heirloom vegetables from your garden, the more reliable those vegetables will become year after year. Not only do you get a better, locally adapted strain of a variety when you save you own seed; you also save money because you don’t have to purchase new seeds every year, as is the case with hybrids.

4. The fourth advantage of heirloom vegetables is that they are “less uniform” than hybrids, which means they often don’t ripen all at once.

Commercial growers love the uniformity of hybrids because they can pick the crop in one fell swoop. But for home gardeners, a gradual supply of fresh produce is usually preferable to the glut of the all-at-once harvest that many hybrids provide.

5. They are less expensive than hybrids.

On top of that, if you save your own seeds, the price drops to zero for the heirlooms.

In many cases, these heirloom vegetables have been grown for many centuries all around the world. What a great feeling — to be connected through tiny, magical seeds to so many other gardeners from so long ago!