Because the vegetable gardening field is too large for me to research responsibly, I’m going to blog today about heirloom seeds, on which I’m going to focus in late spring and summer this year. Heirlooms are old cultivars, before 1951 and going back 100-150 years, according to The Heirloom Vegetable Gardener’s Assistant (www.halcyon.com/tmend/heirloom.htm). They are open-pollinated seeds, meaning pollinated by birds or insects. They have the tried-and-true advantage of being easy to grow, a reputation for quality.
Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, for example, has appeared in American seed catalogs since the 1870s. You’ll want to grow it early if you live in a hot, moist climate, as, according to the USDA, it develops a strong unpleasant smell if left out in very hot weather for too long. It’s included in the kitchen garden sampler from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants (www.monticellocatalog.org/outdoor). He and his slaves and, eventually, free men, grew nearly 300 varieties of vegetables in his 1,000-square-foot grden. The sampler, for $16, includes Brandywine tomatoes, cayenne pepper, cos lettuce, early blood turnip-rooted beet, the aforementioned cabbage, prickly-seeded spinach, thyme, and white eggplant. They will ship the sampler in early March, 2010.
The sampler will fill one of my three 5’x10’x3’ raised beds, which are made of Pacific Coast Redwood logs cut some three miles from my place when the logs’ owner wanted to thin his grove. I’ll be able to sit on the edges of these beds to weed without inconvenient bending!
Additional places for finding heirloom seeds include: Nichols Garden Nursery (Mansfield, MO and Petaluma, CA), www.rareseeds.com; R.H. Shumway (Wisconsin), www.rhshumway.com; Heirloom Seeds (Pennsylvania), which offers organic fertilizer and many other garden items including plant labels, 25 for $2.25 for those of us who can’t tell a turnip leaf from a salamander; and the intriguing Heritage Farm (www.seedsavers.org) where for a $40 membership, one can find advice on growing, the opportunity to trade seeds with other heirloomers, as well as a tremendous variety of available seeds.
Hope some of these suggestions work for you; let me know at koltun3@gmail.com.
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