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Heirloom Program

Project Grow's 2007 Tomato Tasting Favorites!!

1. Green - beefsteak
2. Pirestin Yellow - (unknown bicolor) Bicolor beefsteak
3. Aremenian - bicolor beefsteak
4. Aunt Lillians - yellow beefsteak
5. Rose - red beefsteak
6. Cherokee Purple - purple beefsteak
7. German Johnson - red beesteak
8. Oroxagen Jewel (Oaxacan Jewel) - bicolor beefsteak
9. Gold Brooks -  yellow
10. Aunt Ruby Green - beefsteak
11. Bisignano - fat red plum
12. Dunneaux - long red plum
13. Ethyl Watkins - red saladette
14. Black Krim - black beefsteak

Heirlooms, what's growing on???

You can't read a seed catalog these days without seeing some mention of the words heirloom or heritage attached to some vegetable variety. Often these are followed with words of high praise and excitement about flavors, textures, aromas, colors and other unique qualities. Is this marketing hype or should you go out of your way to make room for these varieties in your garden? Those of you who have been to the Project Grow tomato tasting know the answer to this question. And it's not just about tomatoes. There are heirloom varieties of every type of fruit or vegetable you can grow in your garden that are worthy of the catalog claims.



But there is a more important reason to grow heirlooms in your garden. At one level, all vegetable varieties must be regarded as heirlooms--if they are to exist in the future, they must "passed down" from one year to the next. It used to be that farmers and gardeners had to produce and save seed if they wanted to have seed to plant in following years. This is how agriculture got started in the first place!

Imagine what it used to be like: Every community that produced food maintained its own collection of cultivated plant varieties. Over time these varieties diverged from the original stock and adapted to local tastes and growing conditions. This resulted in a proliferation and stabilization of plant varieties that encompassed considerable genetic diversity. It is from this wealth that seed companies in the 1800's gathered the varieties to offer in their catalogs. Many of these are now the heirloom vegetable varieties of today.

But the seed companies of the 1800's didn't gather all of the different varieties that were being grown at the time. Many of these have been lost as farmland and garden plots have given way to urban and suburban development and farmers and gardeners have turned to other occupations. As the world becomes more industrialized, not only are we losing cultivated heirloom varieties, but we are losing our capacity to nurture and sustain the biological diversity that these varieties represent.

The USDA recognizes the need to recover, protect and sustain this resource to maintain the vitality of commercial crops. USDA seed banks currently store seed from hundreds of thousands of different plant varieties in cold storage. Seed from these seed banks is distributed free of charge to plant breeders and educational and research organizations who use them to develop new plant varieties, study plant genetics and in some cases, reintroduce commercial cultivation of a particular variety.

The USDA periodically refreshes its collection by planting out seed from a given variety in isolated plots. Seed produced from these plantings is used to refresh the collection and is distributed to other growers. Each year, only a small percentage of the seed bank is refreshed in this manner. While this is a step in the right direction, the long term viability of this collection would be much greater if each variety were actively cultivated every year. This would happen naturally if there were still millions of farmers who save seed year to year to replant in their fields. The good news is that there are millions of gardeners who could do this in their back yards or community gardening plots! In fact, many of them do.
So what does it take to get growing?

Find the seed.

In addition to the USDA, there is a growing number of non-profit organizations and commercial growers who are making a large number heirloom varieties available to home gardeners. Seed Savers Exchange, Native Seed/SEARCH, Eastern Native Seed Conservancy, the Sand Hill Preservation Center and the Heirloom Seed Project of the Landis Valley Museum offer seed and serve as clearing houses for networks of gardeners who sustain tens of thousands of different vegetable varieties in their home gardens. Project Grow is joining this effort with the foundation of the Project Grow Seed Savings and Loan Association and our Heirloom Seed Swap in March This is no problem for beans, squash, melons, lettuce and other seeds that can be sown directly in the garden. But tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and other vegetables get a better start if they are started indoors under lights or in a greenhouse. If this is too much trouble, come to the Project Grow plant sale in May. This past year, the sale offered many, many different heirloom tomatoes and heirloom peppers. Be sure to come early for the best selection.

Grow it and collect it.

Seed saving doesn't present much hardship for home gardeners. In many cases it is a simple matter to reserve some of the harvested grain to plant the following year. Vegetables such as squash, melons, tomatoes, peppers and egg plant require only a little forethought and in some cases some patience, to extract, clean and prepare viable seed for storage. Peas and beans harvested in their dry state are easy to save. The true challenge lies with vegetables that must be allowed to grow beyond their usefulness as food in order to produce seed. These include lettuce, radishes, carrots, cabbage family members, spinach, beets and most greens. In some cases seed is only produced in the following season. Those of you with perennial plots in Project Grow gardens are in a good position to collect seed from these biennials.

Store it.

Cool, dry, air tight and properly labeled are the key concepts here. It seems that the smaller the seed is, the longer it will keep in storage. Properly stored tomato seeds will remain viable at least 6 years in a 35mm film canister stored in the basement. But long term storage is really not the point. While it is a good idea to reserve seed in the event of crop failure, the true benefit in collecting seed comes from getting it back in the ground the following year.

So join in the fun, save your seed money and help maintain the diversity of our agricultural heritage. Not only will your food taste better, but you'll have some heirlooms to pass down to your great-grandchildren.

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