What’s an heirloom?
Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. Since their founding nearly 35 years ago, SSE has distributed an estimated 1 million samples of rare garden seeds. The SSE collection was begun in 1975 when Diane Ott Whealy's terminally-ill grandfather gave her the seeds of two garden plants, Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory and German Pink Tomato, both brought to this country by his parents, who migrated form Bavaria to Iowa in the 1870s. www.seedsavers.org
Heirloom could be the vase that has always been on your aunt’s hall table. Heirloom could be the sterling silver knife your great-great grandparents used when cutting their wedding cake. Heirloom could also be the green beans on your dinner plate or the tomato in your garden salad.
Simply put, an heirloom is something of special value that is passed down through generations.
Before the industrialization of agriculture, a much wider variety of plant foods were grown for human consumption. In the industrialized world, most food crops are now grown in large, one-item (known as monocultural) plots. In order to maximize consistency, only a few varieties of each type of crop are grown. These varieties are often selected for their productivity, their ability to withstand mechanical picking and cross-country shipping, and their tolerance to drought, frost, or pesticides. In addition to greatly reduced variety within a particular category, many commercial seeds now have Round-Up herbicide spliced into their genetic code. These seeds, and the foods grown from them, are Genetically Modified and patented by agricultural giant Monsanto.
One reaction to this growing and worrisome trend is heirloom gardening.
Heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables were commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but not used in modern large-scale agriculture. Most heirloom vegetables have kept their traits through open pollination, while fruit varieties have been propagated over the centuries through grafts and cuttings. The trend of growing heirloom plants in has been growing in popularity over the last decade, and little wonder. In general the flavor and texture of heirloom variety fruits and vegetables is beyond compare.
When you visit the Freshlife produce case or the farmer’s market, when you get your weekly box from the CSA – look and listen for the term “heirloom”. If your produce is an heirloom variety, trust that you are about to enjoy the same incredible taste your great grandmother may have experienced at the wedding feast where she used that sterling knife to cut her cake.
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