Why heirlooms?

Why talk about heirloom vegetables? Aren't there hybrid seeds overrunning the aisles in the local farm store and ChinaMart? Don't hybrid seeds produce a huge yield and tolerate chemical fertilizer? Yes. They also grow uniformly in size and shape, develop tough skins to help them survive long-distance shipping, and they have extended shelf life. So why heirlooms?

Image credit: USDAgov

"If you are only transporting a tomato from the backyard to the kitchen table, you don't need a thick-skinned, tasteless fruit like the ones you find in the supermarket," Benjamin Watson writes in Taylor's Guide to Heirloom Vegetables. "Granted, any variety of tomato tastes better when grown and harvested vine-ripe at home, but why should home gardeners have to settle for the same high-test hybrids as the large commercial growers, who expect so much more (and so much less) from their vegetables?"

When I grew hybrid tomatoes in my backyard garden a few years ago, I could have bought the same tomato at the store, but it's tough to find a store selling Brandywine tomatoes, or Golden Bantam corn. Scientists will talk about how heirlooms do the crucial work of preserving genetic diversity, and I suppose someone sees the benefit in that, but the simple fact is that heirlooms offer more variety than do store seeds. And you can save seeds from your heirloom and replant them next year, enjoying the entire process--both the frustration and joy--of the growth cycle.

We have too many seeds. I'll bet 75 percent of these are worthless and wouldn't germinate.

For me, growing heirlooms is more fun than growing hybrids because not many of my friends can say that they're growing Forellenschluss lettuce or Alisa Craig onion. Heirlooms give old-time variety that's still prized today.