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Seeds are a link to the past. Immigrants smuggled them into this country in the lining of their suitcases, under the bands of their hats, and in the hems of their dresses. The Germans brought cabbages, the Italians paste tomatoes, and the Mexicans their beloved chiles. According to Kent Whealy, director of the Seed Savers Exchange (an organization dedicated to saving old vegetable varieties), from the time of the Mayflower to that of the boat people, many of our heirloom seeds have entered the country in just this way.

The home gardens in which these seeds were grown a hundred years ago differed greatly from home gardens today. For one thing, the varieties themselves were notably diverse—for example, there were high-shouldered tomatoes (whose tops protrude above the stems), purple broccoli, and huge, dense beets. Even within varieties, the produce was much less uniform than what we’re used to. But an even more fundamental difference relates to the seeds themselves: when planting time came, gardeners took seeds not from commercial packages but from jars in closets where the seeds had been stored from the previous year’s harvest. Gardeners in the olden days used the seeds of their own open-pollinated plants—varieties capable of reproducing themselves.

The seed catalog is from the late 1800s as are the bean varieties.

By the 1930s, commercially marketed seeds of many new varieties were becoming increasingly available to home gardeners. Many new hybrids proved to be more vigorous, uniform, and widely adaptable than some of the open-pollinated varieties, and the public accepted them enthusiastically. However, people could not save the hybrid seeds to plant the next year. To produce a hybrid variety, a breeder crosses two varieties or even two species of plants. But like the mule—a cross between a donkey and a horse—hybrids cannot reproduce themselves, so the seed companies must repeat the crossing process every year.

Commercially produced varieties streamlined the home garden, simplifying planting and standardizing produce, but in the process, old, open-pollinated varieties cultivated for generations disappeared. Some horticulturalists estimate that thousands of plant varieties have been lost forever.

For the better part of the past fifty years, American gardeners have favored many of these commercial varieties and hybrids, but change is in the air. Gardeners are by no means forsaking them, and no one is denying that the heavy production and uniformity of some hybrids make them appealing, but many old, open-pollinated varieties are drawing attention. Diversity in all its glory is coming to be valued anew. Against the backdrop of ever spreading monocultures—huge single-variety crops—the old varieties show their unusual shapes, colors, and sizes to great advantage. Gardeners and cooks have rediscovered small yellow plum tomatoes, blue cornmeal, and rich yellow fingerling potatoes. Restaurants use orange tomatoes in their salads and ‘Dragon Langerie’ beans—yellow romano beans with maroon lace markings—for a splash of the unusual on their appetizer plates.

Collectively, these plants are known as heirloom varieties—varieties “of special value handed on from one generation to another,” as Webster’s defines the word heirloom. More specifically, most seed people agree that the term applies to any open-pollinated variety that is more than fifty years old.

Some gardeners are primarily interested in the taste of the heirloom varieties, the ‘Bonny Best’ tomato, for example. Other gardeners enjoy the novelty of heirlooms and like to amuse the family by serving ‘Mortgage Lifter’ tomatoes, ‘Ruth Bible’ beans, and ‘Howling Mob’ corn or to arrive at a Fourth of July picnic with red, white, and blue potato salad made with regular potatoes and blue and red heirloom potatoes. Still others appreciate the historical connections—the ‘Mayflower’ beans or ‘Mandan Bride’ corn, for instance, or a lettuce variety brought to this country by a great-great-grandmother.

Vegetables are not the only endangered cultured plants, the old flower varieties are in trouble too. I planted many of them in my heirloom vegetable garden including the species white zinnias, calliopsis, and gloriosa daisies.

Another view of my heirloom garden shows more of the old flowers and the chicken coop. It includes the single, tall, cream Peruvian and single species white zinnias; tansy, with its fernlike foliage in the foreground; strawberry gomphrena; tall status; species yellow marigolds; and a magenta plume celosia from Monticello.

I have been gardening and cooking with unusual varieties for as long as I can remember. Over the years, that especially tasty corn variety, that unusual-colored bean, and those vegetables with offbeat names pleased my soul, and I sought them out. But my interest was really piqued almost twenty years ago at a conference on seed saving. I met other heirloom-variety gardeners who gave me a different slant on the subject. Many had been drawn to these vegetables and fruits initially by their novelty and taste but soon became concerned—as I did—about a more global issue: the erosion of the vast gene pool of vegetables.

To stay in existence, plant varieties must be grown and kept growing. Our bank of irreplaceable vegetables from which future breeds will draw has shrunk alarmingly.

It’s critical that we now focus on this erosion and start to rebuild the endangered stock. The U.S. government and the seed companies are cooperating to save some varieties in storage facilities, but the bulk of the vegetable-seed-saving effort rests with the home gardener. Fortunately, reversing the trend does not require sacrifice. Instead, as this book attests, it can be a fascinating adventure both in the garden and at the table.

No matter what draws you to the preservation effort, it’s only fair to mention a few caveats. Many heirloom vegetables have been selected and maintained to match old-fashioned cooking and storage methods. From a modern standpoint, this often means using “stringy” string beans that have a great “beany” flavor or huge “keeper” carrots that, while they are a bit unwieldy to store and cook, are incomparable roasted in the embers of a fire or baked. Of course, part of the great fascination is preparing dishes that are rich in taste and color as well as represent a slice of living history.

Heirlooms are the focus of this book and make an exciting, even absorbing, theme garden by themselves. But my research and my own gardening experience have shown me that the venerable old varieties have a place in any garden. Growing an heirloom garden is a way to focus on these treasures, but the true place of heirloom vegetables is wherever gardens grow.

how to grow an heirloom garden

Heirloom varieties are not necessarily rare. You probably already grow a number of them—for example, ‘Kentucky Wonder’ beans, ‘Black Beauty’ eggplant, ‘Pearson’ tomatoes, and ‘Yellow Crookneck’ squash are all heirlooms. You could fill a garden completely with common heirlooms, but my purpose here is to explore the uncommon and even unique possibilities of an heirloom garden. By growing an heirloom garden you can have the fun of growing unusual and tasty vegetables, keep alive the less common varieties, and learn how to save some of your own seeds.

Choosing and Obtaining Heirlooms

Let’s look at how to choose and obtain some of the rarer varieties. Read through An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Vegetables (page 21) for descriptions of various varieties and then choose a handful that appeal to you. To keep things simple, choose only six to eight varieties to start with. Since you are probably planning to save your seeds, you might want to begin with the vegetables whose seeds are easiest to save: beans, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuces. Assuming you haven’t yet grown any of these varieties, I recommend that you treat your heirloom garden as an experiment. After all, you won’t know when you start out how well these varieties are going to perform in your particular climate.

With a few exceptions, plan, plant, and maintain an heirloom garden the same way you would any other modern vegetable garden. For information on how to install a vegetable garden from scratch, details on maintenance, and solutions to pests and diseases problems, see Appendices A and B (pages 90-101). You should know that, compared with modern varieties, some heirloom vegetables are more disease-prone (for instance, some of the cucumbers and peas), less productive (some of the colored potatoes in particular), and less uniform in their ripening times, shapes, and colors.

Heirloom vegetables primarily from my heirloom garden include: ‘Blackstone’ watermelons with their thick rind for pickling; ‘Brandywine’ tomatoes; ‘Dr. Martin’s’ and ‘King of the Garden’ limas; ‘Rouge Vif d’Etampes,’ ‘Flat White,’ and ‘Sugar’ pumpkins; ‘Long Island Improved’ Brussels Sprouts; and numerous gourds.

You may have to order some of the more unusual heirlooms by mail. Most local nurseries carry only a limited selection, so for the rarer old vegetables, such as ‘Cherokee’ beans or ‘Dad’s Mug’ tomatoes, you’ll have to obtain seed from companies that specialize in heirlooms (see Resources page 102). To explore heirloom varieties further—perhaps to locate a specific variety you remember as a child or to track down one of the really rare ones—contact the seed exchanges.

Seed exchanges, either membership organizations such as the Seed Savers Exchange, or informal ones run by seed companies like Seeds Blum, are grassroots networks of dedicated gardeners who trade seeds of unusual and threatened open-pollinated vegetable varieties. To use an exchange you become a member or obtain a catalog and select varieties of seeds offered by an individual gardener. You then mail a self-addressed stamped envelope to the people offering the seeds. If they still have seeds they will send some to you. In many exchanges seeds are traded, and you will need to offer varieties. from your garden in order to be listed; in others there is no such limitation.

Keep in mind that seed exchanges are primarily trading organizations for preserving the seed bank, not commercial seed companies, so inventory varies from year to year and among exchanges. A hint: for the largest selection of varieties, trade seeds in these organizations early in the year before most of the choice varieties are gone.

Saving Seeds

I never even thought about saving my own seeds when I started vegetable gardening thirty years ago. As far as I was concerned, seeds came in beautiful packages, not from my plants. I find myself amazed at how simple and satisfying the process is. For example, I merely keep a few ‘Dutch White’ runner beans each year for next year’s crop. I make sure they are completely dry, freeze them for a day to kill any weevil eggs, package them, label them, and put them away. That’s all there is to it. I felt like a chump for having ordered new seeds of open-pollinated varieties every spring when I could have easily saved my own.

Though the seed-saving process is easy, some background is essential. To select and save seeds, you have to know some elementary botany, and you have to practice some trial and error. That’s why I suggest that you start simply, with only a few heirloom varieties.

My heirloom garden contained many different varieties of lima beans including; ‘Dr. Martin’s,’ ‘King of the Garden,’ ‘Christmas,’ and ‘Fordhook Giant.’

‘Brandywine’ tomatoes I purchased while in the Brandywine Valley in Pennsylvania were the best I’d ever eaten.

Let’s begin with a review of the birds-and-bees information that people think they already know (until they’re called upon to explain it). The reproduction of seed plants involves pollination—the transference of pollen, which contains the sperm cells (produced by the stamen), to the stigma, which contains the ovary. Once a plant has been pollinated, seeds form. If the pollen from a flower fertilizes the ovary of the same flower, the process is called self-pollination. To self-pollinate, a flower must have both stamen and stigma; such a flower is called a perfect flower. Beans and peas have perfect flowers and usually self-pollinate. When pollen is transferred, either between flowers on the same plant or between plants, the process is called cross-pollination. Pollen is carried from flower to flower either by an insect or by the wind. Corn, squash, melons, and beets are all cross-pollinated.

The aim of seed saving is to preserve existing varieties unaltered, to prevent the plant from cross-pollinating with a different variety. Suppose you have a ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’ pumpkin plant situated next to a zucchini plant. A bee might visit a male flower of the pumpkin plant and then fly over to a female flower of the zucchini plant, thus transferring pollen from one plant to the other—that is, cross-pollinating the zucchini and the pumpkin. (The resulting cross-pollinated zucchini and pumpkin fruits will not be affected until the next generation.) When you plant the seed from the cross-pollinated squash the next year, the result will be a cross between the two. Sometimes that cross produces a good offspring (that’s one way to get new varieties), but usually you’ll just get a weird squash. I remember letting some squash plants that had sprouted in the compost pile mature. I got a cross between a striped summer ball squash and an acorn squash: a striped, tough-skinned, stringy summer squash.

When you intend to save seeds in order to perpetuate a variety, you must always take steps to prevent cross-pollination when you plan your garden. With plants that have perfect flowers and usually pollinate themselves before they open (such as beans), cross-pollination is seldom a problem. Others, such as those in the squash family, cross-pollinate readily, so they must be isolated to ensure that the variety remains pure.

David Cavagnaro once manager of the Seed Saver’s garden in Decorah, Iowa, harvests beans for me to sample.

There are a number of ways to isolate plants. First, if your garden is not near your neighbors’, plant only one variety of each type of vegetable, since pollination does not occur among different genera. Or plant potential cross-pollinators far apart from each other (some varieties need be separated by only a hundred feet, while others require half a mile). For instance, if you and your neighbors grow different varieties of squash or corn within three hundred feet of each other, you won’t be able to save seeds, since the pollen from the other varieties will be carried to your plants. A physical barrier might work to isolate your heirlooms: rows of tall corn between species of peppers, for example, or a building standing between your potential crosspollinators.

Another fundamental point is one I touched on earlier: saving the seeds of hybrids is wasted energy, since hybrid plants don’t reproduce themselves. You have to know which plants are open-pollinated varieties that give viable offspring and which are hybrids. (To prevent confusion, seed companies label hybrids and F1 hybrids, a form of hybrid, on their seed packets and in their catalogs.)

Finally, you have to know the life cycle of your plants. While most of our vegetables are annuals (maturing in one season), many are biennials, meaning they take two seasons to reproduce. Some popular biennials are beets, carrots, and parsley. With biennials, you get no seeds the first growing season.

With these basic botanical concepts under your belt, there are a few more particulars to master for seed saving:

Saving seeds as shown here at Old Sturbridge Village was a necessity in Colonial times as there were few seed companies.

In the Seed Saver’s garden in Decorah, Iowa the peppers and eggplants are ‘caged’ to prevent bees from cross pollinating the plants and contaminating the varieties.

1. Learn to recognize plant diseases, since some (particularly viruses) are transmitted in seeds.

2. Always label your seed rows and seed containers; your memory can play tricks on you.

3. Never plant all your seeds at once, lest the elements wipe them out.

4. Learn to select the best seeds for the next generation. Select seeds from the healthiest plants and from those producing the best vegetables.

5. To maintain a strong gene pool, select seeds from a number of plants, not just one or two. (This does not apply to self-pollinating varieties; see “Saving Bean Seeds” below.)

6. Get to know the vegetable families, since members of the same family often cross-pollinate. (A list of vegetable families is included in Appendix A, with the information on crop rotation. See page 90.)

7. Only mature, ripe seeds will be viable. Learn what such seeds look like for all your vegetables.

Everyone interested in seed saving will benefit from reading Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth. She gives detailed instructions on how to save seeds of all kinds of vegetables.

Saving Bean Seeds

Beans are the easiest vegetable seeds to save. Since they are mostly self-pollinating, you’ll be able to grow two or three varieties with few cross-pollination problems. Still, plant varieties that are very different next to each other. Then, if any crossing does occur, the resulting seed will usually look different from the original, and you’ll know that the variety has been altered.

Plant and care for your bean plants as you would ordinarily. When harvest time approaches, choose eight or ten of the plants that are among the healthiest. With snap beans, leave a dozen or so pods on each plant to mature and cook the rest. Let dry-bean types mature as usual. Beans usually ripen from bottom to top. Pick the pods as they start to crack, or the seeds will fall out onto the ground, where they will probably get wet and start to rot.

Do not save seeds from diseased plants. Diseases borne by bean seeds are anthracnose and bacterial blight. Symptoms of anthracnose are small brown spots that enlarge to become sunken black spots. Bacterial blight is characterized by dark green spots on the pods, which slowly become dry and brick red.

The most bothersome pest of bean seeds is the weevil. After you dry your bean seeds thoroughly (see below), pack them in a mason jar (or a like container), label them, and freeze them for twenty-four hours to kill any weevils. Then put them in a cool dark place. (See “An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Vegetables,” page 21, for information on saving the seeds of lettuces, peppers, and tomatoes.)

Storing Seeds

Beans are the easiest seeds to save—others require a little more effort. Seeds must be stored carefully to ensure germination the next season. The greatest enemy of seed viability is moisture, so you must dry the seeds thoroughly before storing them. Lay them out on a screen in a warm, dry room for a few weeks, stirring them every few days. Biting a seed is a good test: if you can’t dent it, it’s probably dry enough.

Another problem is heat. Seeds must be stored in a cool, dry, dark place, but many can be frozen if they’re dried properly and placed in a sealed container. They will stay viable for years in a freezer if they’re properly packaged in an airtight freezer bag. (Don’t freeze bean or pea seeds, though. They need more air than freezing permits.)

The seed room at the Seed Savers contains the seeds of hundreds of bean varieties all cataloged and sealed in jars.

heirloom garden style

A typical nineteenth-century garden would have included vegetables to be eaten fresh in the summer. But it would also be the primary supply of year-round vegetables and would include vegetables to preserve for the winter

An heirloom garden can take any form. Heirloom vegetables and flowers can be intermingled with modern varieties or grown in a garden at their own. The following heirloom gardens illustrate many planting options.

The Pliny Freeman Garden

I went to Old Sturbridge Village, an outdoor museum of living history interpreting life in New England during the fifty years after the Revolution, on a classic bright, crisp Massachusetts autumn day. By happy accident, I met Christie White, the training interpreter for horticulture at the village, as she was dodging the mud puddles, clad in her brogans and bonnet. Someone pointed her out as the person who oversaw the vegetable gardens. I introduced myself, and immediately we were comparing notes on Indian flint corn and old ‘Case Knife’ beans. I soon discovered that Christie was well on her way to seeing that the village vegetable gardens were filled with the same varieties that were grown in the 1830s. Thus the gardens would be as true to the spirit of this New England village as the saltbox houses.

Christie’s vast experience with heirlooms made her my prime resource for information on heirloom gardening in a historical context. When I interviewed her at Old Sturbridge Village, I found her perspective on these vegetables and their growers to be quite different from that of most other heirloom gardeners. Others grow heirlooms for their taste or to preserve endangered seeds, but Christie was primarily concerned with the larger historical setting of heirlooms. Christie was also fascinated by the lives of the gardeners who tilled the soil in the 1830s. The extent of her absorption didn’t really become clear, though, until I began transcribing my notes and noticed her consistent, eerie use of the present tense to refer to things that happened 170 years ago.

Christie led me to a re-created garden that is portrayed as that of a middle-class 1830s farmer by the name of Pliny Freeman. As was typical of the times, Mr. Freeman had a kitchen garden adjacent to his house in addition to the farm that provided grain, meat, and cider for the family. The kitchen garden, which covers about a quarter of an acre, would have been tended by his wife and children.

Christie had the garden maintained as closely as possible to the way it would have been in the early nineteenth century—dressed with manure and wood ashes, with crops rotated annually. The varieties, except for the cucumbers, are relatively maintenance-free, thus making them a good choice for modern New England gardeners. Christie obtained most of the seeds for the Freeman garden from Shumway’s and Landreth seed companies.

As Christie explained to me about gardening as an exercise in history, “When we plan the gardens at the village, we allot certain portions of the garden based on what we think the people emphasized in their diet, so that much of the garden space is given over to vegetables that store well—carrots, beets, and turnips, for instance. There is a generous planting of beans and peas too. We have receipts [recipes] for them. In contrast, less space is given to lettuce, for example. A farmer like Mr. Freeman probably grew only a few types of lettuce—cos, a romaine type—and a mustard, but he supplemented these greens with easily gathered wild dandelions. As was customary, wild greens supplemented the few greens people grew in their gardens. Summer squash is grown at the Freeman house, and we don’t preserve that in any way; but we might have three hills of summer squash to seven or eight hills of winter squash of various types, and pumpkins are grown right in with the field corn for winter vegetable use.

“In the Freeman garden, some vegetables interest our visitors because they’re unfamiliar. In particular, we grow ‘Boston Marrow,’ a good winter-keeping squash. It’s very large, dramatic, and scarlet orange in color. It has sweet orange flesh that is very like pumpkin in flavor. What fall visitors also notice is that the ‘Early Blood-Red Turnip Beet’ and the ‘Long Orange’ carrot are generally much bigger and much more variable in size and shape than supermarket varieties. The large beet varieties grow to five inches across without becoming woody or unpleasant, because they were designed not only to be eaten fresh but also to be stored in the root cellar. The root vegetables really have to be large before they’ll store well. Small, very thin carrots and tiny beets tend to shrivel and wither in storage.

“We grow cabbages with storage in mind. ‘Late Flat Dutch’ and ‘Mammoth Red Rock’ cabbage both form very firm, tight heads. We store them by hanging them upside down in a root cellar or we bury them in an outside pit, or grave, as it was sometimes called.

“We also grow peas, in the Freeman garden. Peas are an example of a vegetable that has been modified so much in recent years that it’s very hard to obtain authentic varieties from 1830. We did obtain an old variety called ‘Early Alaska,’ as well as ‘Prince Albert,’ but for our tall-growing peas, until recently we had to grow a variety called ‘Tall Telephone.’ Obviously, with a name like ‘Telephone,’ this pea doesn’t go back to 1830, but it is a late-nineteenth-century variety resembling tall vining varieties cultivated earlier in the century. ‘Tall Telephone’ requires staking on pea brush—dead prunings of shrubs or trees—used to support peas.

The farms at Old Sturbridge Village are recreations of Colonial farmsteads. The gardens are filled with heirloom vegetables and fruits and visitors are treated to both gardening and cooking demonstrations using open hearth methods.

“We also grow parsnips. Many of the visitors have never heard of them, but parsnips were very common in the 1830s. They store so well that we can leave them in garden rows over the winter and dig them up in March for a very sweet, delicious vegetable.

“Our bean, which we grow primarily for use as a shell bean, is the ‘True Cranberry.’ The shelled bean is as red as a cranberry. People visiting us aren’t familiar with the traditional practice of leaving pole beans on the vine to mature in the pod for threshing, shelling out, and using as a dry bean. Accustomed only to eating beans fresh, they’re often critical of our pole beans when they see them overmature. It’s very common to hear a visitor comment, ‘You should have picked your beans two weeks ago.’ Then we have to explain that people in the 1830s, if they were growing a bean primarily for storage, would pick some of those beans in the very young, tender stage for immediate cooking but would leave most of the crop in the garden to mature for threshing so they could have beans over the winter.

“In addition to the vegetables, there are a few culinary herbs growing in the Freeman garden: horseradish, sage, basil, parsley, marjoram, chives, mint, dill, and summer savory. Some were eaten fresh, and others were dried. Unusual for today’s gardens are the hops that were grown to preserve a yeast culture.

“Many of our visitors remark on how their own gardens differ from those generally grown in the last century. The modern garden is designed for fresh eating in the summer; and if the time, space, and surplus vegetables are available, the gardener will put aside some things for winter. In the nineteenth century the family garden was grown primarily for a year-round supply of vegetables; the fresh vegetables and greens of the summer months were a bonus to enjoy.”

You can visit Old Sturbridge Village and see the Freeman garden and the other historical gardens as well as attend their many events throughout the year—from herb classes to pressing apples for cider. For visitors passionate about heirloom vegetables one of the high points of the year is the annual event called “An Early Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Fair” celebrated in late September.

The gardens at Old Sturbridge Village are planted and interpreted to the public every year. Christie is doing more behind-the-scenes work these days, but with a little luck, you might run into her if you go for a visit. In speaking with her, I felt as if an important piece of my heirloom vegetable puzzle had slipped smoothly into place.

The Blüm Heirloom Garden

No one could be blasé traveling to Jan Blum’s garden. To get there, I drove northward out of Boise, Idaho, gaining altitude as I went. The highway straddles the famous Snake River Canyon, and as I continued northward I could see dry grassland and scrub for miles. The region looks so untamed, I couldn’t help wondering how anyone could garden out there. But then I came into a lush garden filled with leafy vegetables and bright flowers. Butterflies and birds flitted about, completing the idyllic picture.

This is the home of Seeds Blum, a mail-order seed company. Now, there are seed companies, and then there are seed companies. Some are exceedingly businesslike, with catalogs filled with color photos, but visiting them turns up a suite of offices with nary a plant in sight. Jan’s catalog is black-and-white, but there is plenty of color in the huge vegetable garden that surrounds the office.

Blüm is very concerned about the erosion of the gene pool and directs much of her energy toward saving such varieties as the ‘Super Italian Paste’ tomato and ‘Moon and Stars’ watermelon. She actively searches out varieties on the brink of extinction and adds the gardening information she turns up to her catalog. “A great part of my satisfaction,” she told me, “comes from people writing to say, for instance, that they haven’t seen the ‘Moon and Stars’ watermelon since the 1930s. Or, ‘I’ve kept thirty varieties of such and such alive for many years. Are you interested in having the seeds?”’

Having experienced Jan’s grand enthusiasm for heirlooms, I knew she would be great as a prototype heirloom gardener. I asked Jan and her partner, Karla Prabucki, to create an heirloom garden; when I arrived to photograph it, it far exceeded my expectations. It overflowed with unusual and historically rich varieties of vegetables.

To begin our chat that day, I asked Jan to explain what she had in mind when she put the garden together. “I had a vast bank to pull from; but I had limited space. I wanted to feature old varieties of common vegetables—for instance, ‘Red Lazy Wife’ bean. That name implies history! I also chose German-Russian varieties from the Volga River area of Russia, where my mother’s people came from. In the early 1800s there was a major flow of German people to settle the Volga area. This migration was reflected later in the gardens of immigrant families in this country. Consider the ‘Moon and Stars’ watermelon, for example. Most of Germany would have been too cold for watermelons, so this was probably originally a Russian variety that the Germans adopted. Watermelons became integrated into German cuisine, and watermelon pickles are now a tradition in German-American communities.”

Another German variety Jan included in the garden was ‘Ragged Jack’ kale, also known as ‘Red Russian’ kale, one of Jan’s favorite vegetables, as it is both tasty and beautiful, with its scalloped oaklike leaves and purple-colored veins. In its immature stage, it is also the best raw kale for salads. Jan also grew ‘Rattailed’ (also known as ‘Rat’s Tail’) radish, which differs from most other radishes in that its roots are inedible. It is prized for its foot-long seed pods, which can be pickled, used raw in salads (sparingly), or cut up like green beans in stir-fries.

The vegetable border at Seeds Blum is filled with ‘Black-seeded Simpson’ lettuces, bread seed poppies, ‘Ragged Jack’ kale, and sea kale—an old-time favorite pot herb.

The entry-way flower/vegetable bed at Seeds Blum is planted with ruby chard, chives that have gone to seed, borage, and red dianthus. The bed to the left contains ‘Blue Podded’ peas, red orach, and serpent garlic.

In addition to the German-Russian varieties, Jan couldn’t resist including some of her personal favorites: ‘Blue Podded’ peas, which have purple pods and flowers, and ‘Red Lazy Wife’ pole beans with their large, lush vines. The name supposedly refers to the beans’ being relatively stringless. She also planted the ‘Rough Vif d’Etampes’ pumpkin. Originally from France, this squat, cheese-type pumpkin (so named because it looks like a wheel of cheese), eighteen inches wide and eight inches tall, is deep reddish orange, deeply fluted, and looks like the pumpkin for Cinderella’s carriage.

During my visit Jan pointed out many plants—carrots, some lettuce plants, and three different kinds of chives—that were going to seed. As she said, “In the era this garden represents, there were, of course, few seed companies or produce markets. People were dependent upon the garden, and at any given time during the growing season there would be seedlings filling in, produce ready for harvesting, and seed heads forming for next year’s seeds. These seed heads are a bonus; in addition to producing seeds, the extra heads can be used in all their different stages. Fresh carrot blossoms are long-lived, white, and lacy—excellent for flower arrangements and attracting beneficial insects.” She noted that other seed heads used for arrangements include those of orach, bread-seed poppies, chives, elephant garlic, and leeks. “Sometimes,” Jan concluded, “our modern gardens can seem sterile and one-dimensional in comparison.”

Jan explained that not just heirloom vegetable varieties but also old, open-pollinated flower varieties, are endangered. In Jan’s garden old varieties of red dianthus surrounded the ruby chard, and the hollyhocks were in bloom—the graceful single white ones called ‘Tomb of Jesus’—as was another old-timer, ‘Love-Lies-Bleeding’ amaranth, with its long, “pink chenille” tassels. The flowers softened the look of the vegetable beds and, to the untrained eye, made them appear to be part of a lovely front-yard cottage garden.

interview

Kent Whealy

Kent Whealy is director of the Seed Savers Exchange, an organization devoted to saving endangered open-pollinated varieties of vegetables. More than 1,000 members offer heirloom vegetable seeds through Seed Savers publications and help keep alive a gene pool of such unusual vegetables as ‘Montezuma Red’ beans and ‘Afghani Purple’ carrots. Seed Savers operates Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, which maintains more than 18,000 varieties of heirloom vegetables. Kent, who has a degree in journalism, has compiled the Garden Seed Inventory (now in its fifth edition), a book listing and describing nearly 6,000 open-pollinated vegetable varieties sold by 240 companies in North America.

When I asked Kent to share some of his experiences with heirlooms, he first told me about the ‘Moon and Stars’ watermelon. This intriguing pink-fleshed watermelon is similar to many dark green ones but is covered with many small yellow spots, or “stars” and usually a large yellow spot, or “moon,” which can be as large as four inches wide. Kent said that exchange members had tried for about five years to find the ‘Moon and Stars’ watermelon through their network. Then in 1981, “we were living in Missouri and I did a television spot about the Seed Savers. After it aired, I got a call from Merle Van Doran, who told me he had ‘Moon and Stars’ and asked if I wanted some seed. I went to his farm, by chance only fifty miles away, and he had a whole field of the melons.”

Kent talked, too, about the ‘Cherokee’ bean. Not all our heirloom varieties came from Europe, Africa, or Asia; many are native. According to Kent, “there was an old fellow, recently deceased, named Dr. John Wyche, a dentist of Cherokee descent from Hugo, Oklahoma. Dr. Wyche’s people had traveled on the Trail of Tears, an Indian death march [the forced relocation of the Cherokees from their native lands in the southeastern states to Oklahoma], in 1838. He gave me several varieties of seeds that his people had carried [on the march; one we call the ‘Cherokee’ bean or the ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’ bean, which is a snap bean. The seeds are black, and the pods are very long and purple and grow on vigorous climbing vines.”

Then there’s the tomato called ‘Stump of the World.’ Kent thinks that of the 510 varieties of tomatoes he has grown, this is one of the best. It’s a large, meaty, pink tomato that’s incredibly flavorful. Kent doesn’t know where the name came from, only that the seeds came from the late Ben Quisenberry, who ran a company called Big Tomato Gardens, which offered tomato seeds for thirty years.

Kent Whealy is the director of the Seed Saver’s Exchange, an organization of seed savers devoted to saving an endangered vegetable gene pool.

Kent also mentioned an especially sweet white corn. “It’s so sweet,” he said, “you can’t dry it for seed on the plant, or it will mold. It’s called ‘Aunt Mary’s’ sweet corn.” According to Kent, a fellow named Berkowitz visited his aunt Mary in Ohio in the 1930s, became enamored with her corn, and obtained some seeds from her. Two of Berkowitz’s friends, W. W. Williams and his father, helped him produce the seeds. Forty years later Williams gave the seeds to Kent. As Kent said, “When someone like Williams gives me the seeds of something he’s kept pure for forty years, I feel it’s a gift from the past and I have an obligation to keep it going.”

The ‘Old Time Tennessee’ muskmelon is another heirloom that Kent likes. He said it grows larger than a basketball and is unusual because, instead of being smooth, the rind has very deep creases. The way it grows is amazing: at first, it’s very long and creased, like a deflated football; then, as it grows, it balloons and fills out.

‘Grandpa Ott’s’ morning glories bedeck the side of the Seed Savers barn. The teepees are covered with heirloom bean varieties.

Anyone interested in joining Kent and other seed savers can send for a free color catalog detailing the projects and publications of the Seed Savers Exchange (see Resources, page 102). Realize, though, that you are not merely sending for a seed catalog. The Seed Savers Yearbook offers 11,000 heirloom varieties. As a member, you have access to this incredible collection of wonderful vegetables and fruits that are not commercially available—but that’s simply a benefit of what Kent refers to as “saving the sparks of life that feed us all.”

The garden at the Seed Savers in Decorah, Iowa is filled with hundreds of open-pollinated varieties of vegetables. Different selections are grown out each year and the seeds cataloged and saved. The many ‘cages’ are to protect the different vegetables from cross-pollination by bees, thus contaminating the gene pool.

A harvest from the Seed Savers garden includes corn, pole snap beans, and old-fashioned green-shouldered tomatoes.