Heirloom seeds: A Gardener’s Delight

I confess, I’d never heard of  heirloom seeds until just a few years ago. The idea fascinated me. Then I got my first heirloom seed catalog, and just about fell out of my chair with excitement. Dozens of varieties of tomatoes, peppers, carrots, even lettuce that I had never heard of sprang out at me in bright color photographs.

What are heirloom seeds, and why are they so great?

Not only can you get varieties of different colors, sizes and shapes, but you can even get ones that are best suited to the climate and region that you live in. How does this happen? Heirloom vegetable seeds are seeds that have been carefully selected by the best of the crop. They may be selected based on the taste or size of the fruit.

For example, a farmer may, for several years, save the seeds from the sweetest bell peppers of a particular harvest. S/he plants those the next season, then again saves the seeds from the sweetest peppers. After, say, ten years or so the peppers that are growing are the sweetest around. They probably also have a higher nutritional value than the run-of-the-mill varieties found in stores.

And, as the name implies, heirloom garden seeds are passed down from generation to generation so that future descendants can benefit from the wonderful characteristics of the food.

Usually, these seeds are organic, and most have a story attached to them. Some of the seeds I have on hand right now include a cucumber that does better in chillier weather (I plan to plant them this fall), currant tomatoes which are so teeny that you need about a dozen to equal the fruit in a quarter of a regular tomato, and watermelons the size of a softball (great for small gardens like mine, because you can train them to grow vertically).

There’s a dud in every bunch

Not all heirloom seeds are what they’re cracked up to be, however. Last year and this I’ve had tremendous difficulty getting my heirloom peppers to grow, and the plants that finally come up look sickly. The one that survived last year never produced anything. However, all my other seeds have done pretty well, so it could be that that particular harvest of pepper seeds were bums.

Where to find heirloom seeds

You can buy heirloom seeds online at such places Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek. There are also a few free seed exchange websites, where you can trade seeds you’ve saved with seeds of another avid heirloom gardener.

However you choose to begin your heirloom garden, I encourage you to obtain at least two or three of each vegetable crop you want to grow, then find out which ones grow the best for you and begin saving those seeds. Eventually, you can save up enough so that you can not only grow a plethora for yourself and your family, but also begin to swap them with other heirloom seed fans.

************************

Even if you do organic gardening with heirloom seeds, you are still probably need to supplement. Here’s the supplement I recommend above all, and why.

Beyond growing your own food, this affordable online course provides all the basic knowledge you need to live healthy and long.

Tagged as: are, garden, heirloom, organic, seed exchange, seeds, vegetable, what, why