Armenian Cucumbers

We all have our tried and true heirloom plants that we like to grow every year, but it is always fun to try new varieties to see if there any we like even more. This year we grew Armenian Cucumbers for the first time and they are amazing.

I quick check on the web will tell you that Armenian Cucumbers (also called snake melon or serpent cucumber) are not really cucumbers. They are actually a member of the muskmelon family. We were pleased to find that our crop tastes just like cucumber. In fact, I don't think you would be able to tell the difference in a blind taste test.

Armenian cucumbers grow up to 3 feet long! From our experience they taste better when picked at about 15 to 20 inches long. Many sources also claim that you won't get cucumber burps from the Armenian variety. We bought ours at our local IFA store which sells heirloom varieties that work well in our area. You can also get them online through on of the heirloom seed purveyors.

What is your favorite cucumber variety?

~Michael~

Our Favorite Heirlooms

If you use heirloom seeds like we do, it's time to order your seeds. I have started to see heirloom seeds available in the local big box stores the past few years but you can't beat the variety available through your favorite seed catalog. We buy a lot of our seeds from Seed Savers Exchange. If you are new to gardening, or just want to try other varieties, here are some of our favorites. All images are from seedsavers.org.

Beam's Yellow Pear: These small, pear shaped tomatoes are great fresh. Our kids eat them like candy. They also are good in a tomato salad adding color and variety. We have grown these for 4 to 5 years now and we never have issues with them. They are very prolific and your friends will be amazed at their shape and color.

Black Beauty Zucchini : I recommend zucchini to new gardeners as it is really hard not to be successful with them. They are very hardy and two plants give our family more than we can handle. Many zucchini are hard to grow in smaller gardens as their vines tend to spread out, but this variety is bushy and stays compact.. We grew it last year in our flower garden. Great sauteed, pickled, or even as a main ingredient in fritters or bread.

Burpee's Golden Beet : We love beets raw and roasted in our house but we hate stained clothes. These beets have the taste we desire but the nice yellow color doesn't stain. These are good to plant early in the year as beets can withstand colder temperatures. If you play your cards right you can get a spring and a fall harvest from these.
 

Summer Crookneck Squash: Like the Zucchini, if you are a new gardener and your main goal is to have something that actually produces, this is a good bet. They are hardy, grow in many different climates, and you won't believe how many squash you get from one plant. Many types of crookneck spread vines all over but this one is more bushy and compact. These are best picked young, before the warts start to appear.

What are some of the heirloom varieties you like? I would like to try some new ones this year.

~Michael~

Food Storage Seeds

Many of you know that we are big fans of heirloom seeds here at Backyard Farming. We were at the store the other day and we saw a can of heirloom seeds that you can put in your food storage. We have seeds that we bought a few years ago in our freezer, but I like the idea of buying them canned. The seeds we saw said tehys are good for 4 years. The nice thing about heirloom seeds is that you can harvest the seeds from your fruits and vegetables and then plant them the next year which gives you a perpetual garden. This is not something you can do with most hybrid varieties. I decided to see what I could find online in regards to similar products and here are a few I found. Backyard Farming not affiliated with any of these sites. Our intention is not to endorse any particular site but instead to give some ideas for what is out there.

Patriot Seed Supply

• 20 varieties of hardy heirloom survival seeds passed down from our forefathers.
• Survival seeds rated for 5+ years of storage at 75F, longer at lower temperatures.
• No hybrids, GMOs, or outdated survival seeds. All harvested seeds are reusable.

 Emergency Essentials

• They allow you to harvest your own seeds, giving you the ability to plant a garden from year to year.
• Seeds have been specially dried to just the right level for long term storage.
• At 65-70°, they will store for up to 4 years.
• Hermetically sealed in E-Z Lock Reusable Triple-Layered Foil Bags.

Preparedness Seeds

•   16 large seed packets sealed in a #10 can.
•   Plants nearly 3/4 acre of Garden.
•   Will keep up to 4 years if stored at 66 to 70 degrees and much longer if kept colder
•   All Non-hybrid, open pollinated varieties

Would you consider adding something like this to your food storage? Have any of you bought something like this in the past and then used the seeds? I would be curious to know how they worked for you.

~Michael~

It's Here!

We finally got our Seed Saver Exchange Catalog in the mail. It is that wonderful time of the year where all of your garden dreams are still possible. We always like to go to our old standby seeds that we have harvested and that we know will grow well. In addition, whenever we get the catalog we like to look for 2 or 3 new plants minimum that we haven't tried in the past.

What is the Seed Savers Exchange? According to their website http://www.seedsavers.org they are a non-profit organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds or our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. When people grow and save seeds, they join an ancient tradition as stewards, nurturing our diverse, fragile, genetic and cultural heritage.

If you are a gardener and you want to be able to reuse the seeds from your harvest from year to year I would strongly recommend that you start planning on planting some heirlooms next year. Go to the Seed Savers Exchange website and order some plants online.

To learn more about the advantages of growing heirlooms check out this article from our blog.

What do you want to try planting this year that you haven't tried in the past?

~Michael~

New Seeds

Michael

We received our seeds from the seed saver exchange in the mail this weekend. We have a lot of seeds that we have collected from our heirloom plants the last few years so we didn't have to buy all of our seeds. However, we are excited to expand our garden this year and so we ordered some new seeds that we have never tried before. Here are a couple of the new seeds we ordered.

Dr. Wyche's Yellow Tomatillos

We have never grown tomatillos before. From the research I have done, they grow very similar to tomatoes and there isn't a lot different you have to do. You may ask why we decided to do tomatillos. I love authentic mexican food and a large portion of our monthly grocery budget goes to green tomatillo salsas and sauces. I decided that rather than continue to spend money on store made sauces, we could grow our own tomatillos and can our own tomatillo salsa. The description for these tomatillos says they have a delicious sweet flavor, they are very prolific and easy to grow. I am so excited to try these and see how it works out.


Bloody Butcher Corn

As Marisa and I have considered what we can do to become more self sufficient we have thought about what we are going to do for flour and bread. We have a lot of wheat in our food storage but we would like to supplement this with flour we can grow on our property. Rather than try to grow wheat we decided to grow corn and use it to make cornmeal. We chose this corn because it is drought tolerant (we live in the high desert of Utah) and it's dried kernels can be used for making flour or corn meal. I look forward to making tamales next fall with cornmeal from our yard and smother them with green tomatillo sauce from our garden.

What are you planning to grow in your garden this year. Let us know, we are excited to hear what everyone else is doing.

A seed variety to try

By Jennifer

What ARE those?

That's the question I got all summer when I shared these prickly yellow orbs from my garden with family and neighbors.
So let's slice one open, shall we?

What do you think now?

If you guessed cucumber, you're right on the money. "Lemon cucumber" to be exact, an heirloom variety dating back to the 1800s -- and we prize heirlooms here at Backyard Farming!
A lover of all things lemon-flavored, I plucked this seed packet from the store display just for the name. Even though I soon learned lemon has nothing to do with the cucumber's flavor, just its size and color, I will definitely plant it again this season. It is easy to grow and produces crisp, crisp, crisp flesh in abundance.

The cucumbers start pale green and mature to their namesake yellow when full size, about 3 to 4 inches. The picture of my bowl full of them represents one picking, and all this from one plant! I grew the plant on a trellis. At first I'd get a handful of cukes per harvest, then as summer continued I could get this many cucumbers at once, about every two weeks. 

A cucumber variety this prolific is perfect for pickling, and that's just what I did. I picked up a bread and butter pickle mix from the canning aisle at my grocery store, and it was a breeze. The package directions were to slice, combine mix with vinegar and sugar, heat, then can. No peeling required in that recipe. If you venture into pickling this summer, have all your ingredients and supplies on hand, THEN head to the garden. Cucumbers can lose their freshness quickly, so for best results make pickles as soon after harvest as possible.

Follow your recipe precisely.

As eager (practically stir-crazy!) as I am to start my garden again this year, I actually appreciate the season of evalulation and planning that winter offers. I'd love to learn from all of you. So tell us, what are some of your favorite seed varieties? 

Give me something else that will make people say, "What ARE those?" I get a kick out of that.

It's Time to Order Seeds

If you live in warmer climates, you probably should have your seeds already.  If you are in cooler climates, now is the time to start ordering your seeds. I have two favorite online sites I order my heirloom seeds from, Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek, both have tons of great seeds and tons of information. I love to get their catalogs to mark up the pages, circle possible seeds, and browse through it with the kids.  Click on the links to order your catalog!

Leave a comment about where you like to buy your seeds!

Want to know a little bit more about why we like heirloom seeds? Click on this link for Heirlooms 101.

Readers Suggested Seed Companies:

Maybelline suggests: Underwood Gardens

Catherine suggests: Hudson Valley Seed Library

David DOES NOT suggest Walmart

Quinn recommends Pinetree Garden Seeds
Daisy is going to try Southern Exposure 
Kristina is going to try Territorial Seeds 
Paul recommends  Mountain Valley Seeds
Wendy loves Johnny's selected seeds
Devon orders from Sustainable Seed Co.

Katie ordered her potatoes from Maine Potato Lady

~marisa

It's a Family Affair

by Marisa

In the past, just Michael and I have enjoyed browsing through the Seed Savers Exchange magazine together. This year I have found my kids picking up the magazine circling and making little stars or hearts next to the produce they want to grow this year. I couldn't be more proud!!! It has been so fun to include them in this stage of the process. I hope that this will help them feel even more ownership in the garden.

Where do you guys get your heirloom seeds? We collected many seeds from our produce last year, and will be planing many of those this year, but we also like to try new things.

They Grow Up So Fast

I was away at a friends cabin for a few days and Michael was busy with work so the garden was neglected for a few days. We were quite shocked to see how fast and large two of our zucchinis had grown. Our food scale only goes up to 5 lbs so we aren't sure the exact weight on these babies.

We planted heirloom zucchini this year. One of the great things about heirloom plants is the ability to collect the seeds to plant the next year. To harvest the seeds you want to let the vegetable mature and get larger than you normally would, I think these qualify the criteria.

~marisa

Heirlooms 101

This is a repost from the winter of last year but we just love heirlooms around here and thought a good amount of you might have missed it!

When my friend Meghan suggested we have a whole section dedicated to heirlooms on this blog I thought she might be placing a little too much emphasis on them. To me, an heirloom was a pretty tomato - a vegetable grown by mega-serious gardeners who wanted to impress their neighbors with rare produce. How wrong I was! After a lot of reading I am a changed (and educated) woman. I can now say that in the future I may not plant anything BUT heirlooms. Want to know why? Well first let's define what an heirloom vegetable is...

Heirlooms are:
1. Old - Usually associated with plants dating from the 1920's and older. It's hard to date them but some American heirlooms varieties are believed to be Pre-Columbian (meaning before Columbus came to America). Many heirloom seeds may have been carried by your ancestors across the ocean to America hundreds of years ago! There were reasons people held onto these seeds...

2. Open-pollinating - meaning if you gather seeds from your plants you'll get the same plant next year. You might not know this but if you tried to gather seeds from your garden center tomato plants and grow them the next year you wouldn't get the same plant from it. These plants are not able to reproduce and are often sterile. (Unless of course it's an heirloom) Over hundreds of years these seeds were gathered from the best plants of the harvest and continue to produce that same quality. Think of the savings!

3. High quality - The best of the heirlooms really are wonderful. They have it all. They taste wonderful, look beautiful, and are easy to grow. The vegetables and fruits you buy in the grocery store were not bred for flavor or quality - but for uniformity and ease of transporting. Which means that many pale in comparison when it comes to taste. Many people say that once you taste an heirloom vegetable you'll realize you have been eating the cardboard version of this veggie all your life. How exciting to taste flavors that mother nature intended you to have - unadulterated pleasure! At least as much as food can give you - which is a lot to a foodie like me!
Heirlooms were cultivated for many years to produce strong, disease fighting, climate hardy plants. In fact, some heirlooms were very locale specific - sometimes as much as a small valley with very specific weather patterns. The plants you purchase from the garden supply may tolerate your climate but they aren't complex creatures ready to thrive in your climate - but your heirlooms just may be.

Diversity and variety are good not only for our taste buds but also for our gardens. Another vital reason to maintain heirlooms is to keep their genetic traits for future use. When old varieties of food crops are not maintained, the gene pool grows smaller and smaller. This may lead to increased disease and pest problems. You may have pest or disease problems in your garden but with many different varieties the likelihood of all of your plants being affected is very low.

While this is just the tip of the iceberg(lettuce?) when it comes to heirlooms and their distinction, I hope you feel as inspired as I do to try out these treasured plants. So, this year when planning for your garden why not try some heirlooms? You may feel you are connecting to the past and sharing a heritage with your forebears in the planting of these wonderful vegetables and fruits. (There are also heirloom status livestock - animals that are better suited for the free range instead of the factory.) You can order heirloom seeds from several different companies including the Seed Savers Exchange. This company has a free seed catalog - order one even if you're not ready to plant heirlooms - just to acquaint yourself with these treasured plants!


More seed links:
Victory Heirloom Seeds
Amishland Heirloom Seeds
Heirloom Vegetable Gardener's Source


~Megan

A lot of my information came from this wonderful site and this amazing book
Images from Mike Donk & Scott Bauer

Seed Savers

The other day I went to the mailbox and got one of the greatest surprises I have had in a while. I ran home to my wife and screamed at her to come see what we had received. Our Seed Savers Exchange catalogue had finally come. This is one of the most exciting things to happen in our house as we plan out our upcoming garden and the new heirlooms that we are going to try.

What is the Seed Savers Exchange? According to their website http://www.seedsavers.org they are a non-profit organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds or our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. When people grow and save seeds, they join an ancient tradition as stewards, nurturing our diverse, fragile, genetic and cultural heritage.

Megan has a good article about heirlooms on this link.

If you are a new gardener or want to be able to reuse the seeds from your harvest from year to year I would strongly recommend that you start planning on planting some heirlooms next year. Go to the Seed Savers Exchange website and order some plants online.

One of the downsides with heirlooms is I have found it hard to determine which ones are better for my climate. This leads to some experimenting see which seeds work and which seeds don't.

If you live in the Utah desert the following plants worked well for us last year

Summer Crookneck Squash: More than our family and our neighborhood could eat and freeze from only 3 plants

Cherokee Purple Tomatoes: Abundant Fruit. Firm flesh. Unique purple color.

Mexican Midget Tomatoes: Bountiful and fruitful harvest from July to the end of October when it started to freeze.

Beam's Yellow Pear Tomato: Beautiful yellow tomato a little bigger than cherry tomatoes. Not as fruitful as the previous tomatoes that I listed.

Charantais Melon: 3 melons per plant but they were the best melons I have ever eaten. Like a cantaloupe but sweeter and juicier.

We didn't have as much success with the following plants

White Wonder Cucumber: We just couldn't get it to grow.

Brandywine tomato: We didn't get very many. However they were so good that we are going to try again.

What heirlooms have you found that thrive in your area? What ones have you found don't work as well? Is there anyone in Utah that has had success with an heirloom cucumber variety?

~michael

Our Last Great Tomato Harvest

This time of year is always so sad for me. The weather gets colder and I have to watch my garden wither and die. We had one last tomato harvest this last week, I will miss seeing all the beautiful colors and different varieties of tomatoes we planted this year. It was fun to bring our purple tomatoes to friends homes and parties (pictured on the right), people would inform us that our tomatoes have spoiled or gone bad. Then we had the chance to educate them on heirloom tomatoes. They would taste the tomatoes and be so surprised at the amazing flavor. I will be collecting the seeds and sharing them with my friends in hopes that we will increase the diversity of produce being planted, and take some power away from Monsanto.

~marisa

The Brandywine

My daughter Maya came running in the house at full speed yelling, "Mom, look at this cherry tomato!!!" Her job all summer has been to collect the tomatoes. So far, we have only really had success with the cherry tomatoes, the yellow pear tomatoes, and our purple tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes are right next to the Brandywine Tomatoes, and somehow she mistook this large Brandywine tomato for an itty bitty cherry tomato.

The flavor on this baby was AMAZING!!! I went out there to look at the Brandywine plants and we have a ton of green ones. If the cold weather holds off for a week or two longer, we will have a whole bunch of them. Pray for good weather for me! These tomatoes are heavenly!

We will be saving the seeds from these heirloom tomatoes to plant for next year, I think I'm going to have to plant a week or two earlier to ensure we get all the fruit before it freezes.

Upside Down Tomatoes

I've been reading about upside down tomato plants recently and thought I would give it a go. This might appeal to you if you live in a space where you only have a balcony, or don't want to tear up your lawn to plant a garden. Neither of the cases apply to me, but I wanted to see for myself how this actually works. Some critics of this method say that they don't produce as much, don't get as much leafage, and tend to dry out quickly. So, I've decided to do an experiment, I'm going to compare two identical plants, one planted upside down and one planted in my garden. I chose to use two heirloom Brandywine tomato plants that I started from seed.

Now, you can buy fancy expensive gadgets to hang your tomatoes, but I have also seen a site where it was done in hanging planters like this (but I never saw the end results). I also found a site that explained how to make them out of a 5 gallon bucket, but it just didn't seem as aesthetically pleasing to me.

I started by tearing a hole in the bottom, not too big, but big enough to get the root ball through it.

My husband and I debated on which end to push through the hole, my vote was to push the roots through instead of the leaves. I won, because this is my article after all! Some of the roots got smashed and broken up, but I do a little of that anyways when I transfer a plant. I still think my way was the better idea!

I repositioned some of the brown 'stuff' around the base of the plant so it wouldn't fall out.

Next, I just filled the top with potting soil and gave it a sprinkle of water. Man was it heavy.

Make sure you have a spot prepared to hang it before you start your project. My arm was about to break off, and it is still sore from holding if for so long (if you put it down, you smash your plant). Luckily we found this little screw in the fence to hold it temporarily until we got up something permanent.

Here is the twin, planted in the garden.I will keep you updated on how this experiment is going.

~marisa

My Texas Container Garden

Here are the Moyar's green beans sprouting. Aren't they pretty? They are Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans. I checked them today and they have started climbing up the poles. We made the tee-pee for the green beans to climb. It was very simple. We had some extra quarter round in the garage. We cut four long pieces and tied them together at the top. We planted three green beans around each pole, and now they can grow up to the top! It will also provide a cool place to grow lettuce in the hot summer like we have here in Texas!

A little FYI about green beans we learned through trial and error. The first year we tried green beans we had a bumper crop, but shortly thereafter they all died. We were so bummed, and being novice gardeners we ripped them all up. The next year we tried again. The same thing happened, but we never got around to ripping them up after they died, and then a few months later they came back. I don't know if this is supposed to happen, but we will try it again this year and see if it works again.

Here are our tomatoes. These are the Sweet 100's. They are growing so quickly. You can see we have 3 flowers, soon to be, God willing, 3 yummy cherry tomatoes. We also have an Heirloom Hillbilly growing. Completely inspired by this post, we tried an heirloom this year. He is growing much slower, but he seems healthy.

I'm getting a bit nervous because the sun has shifted and the leaves are starting to fill out on the trees and all my (hopeful) sunny spots in the backyard are disappearing. I don't know if this backyard will have enough sun for a full garden????

Just a gardening update,

~Sarah

P.S. Look how cute for the kiddos.

Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

If there is a required reading list for backyard farmers, or garderners, or just eaters - this book is sitting right at the top. Barbara Kingsolver, award winning author of books such as "The Poisonwood Bible", decided with her family to spend one year living off of food they could raise or grow themselves, or food that was raised or grown by someone within 100 miles. And preferably by someone they knew by name. As she puts it:

"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain...

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

The book starts by explaining why they wanted to do it and the things they did in preparation for it - including all of the anxiety and fear they had about starving or eating old potatoes for a year. They officially start with their new lifestyle in Spring and end it exactly one year later. The question running through their family's minds - as well as mine - was, "Sure you can eat well in the Spring, Summer, and Fall but what about Winter?" I won't ruin the suspense but I can say that through visiting farmers markets every Saturday, working in their 3600 sq. foot garden, raising chickens and turkeys, and canning galore they are able to reap a bountiful harvest of not only food but wisdom and understanding.

In the first few pages of the book appears this image titled the Vegetannual and honestly, it totally puzzled me. I had no idea what is was or what it meant but now I see it as a really cool guide to eating locally and in season. She explains throughout the book the idea that vegetable and fruits are plants and that as plants they all follow a basic progression. Knowing when a fruit/veggie is in season simply requires knowing what part of the plant it is. Is it a root, a seed, a flower, a fruit or a leaf? Because all plants follow basic timelines throughout the year knowing what part of the plant it is makes it easier to figure out when that food is available. I won't go into it too much but that is what inspired this chart - imagining that all plant foods came from one mother plant - and when they would be available - notice the dates to the left. I love it!

Most of my enjoyment in this book came from descriptions of gathering eggs, digging in the dirt, cooking, canning and enjoying the seasons. I love this topic and I think they whole idea of getting back to the land and to the old ways is having a comeback - thus we have this blog - and I love her thoughts on this:

"Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard." 179

Her husband as well as her oldest daughter also write short essays that are scattered throughout the book on their experiences. Overall, after reading this book a couple months ago I am a changed woman. Some parts really resonated with me and are now drifting through my mind and affecting my everyday decisions, especially the quote from Wendell Berry in the first chapter:

EATERS MUST UNDERSTAND, HOW WE EAT DETERMINES HOW THE WORLD IS USED.

I didn't know it but as she further explains in that chapter:

"each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1500 miles...if every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week(any meal) composed of locally & organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil EVERY WEEK. That's not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast." 5

Though this issue is a little political the book is not bogged down by or led by this trend - the beauty of this book is that it is a very intimate look into how this change affected her thoughts, her family, and ultimately her life. And in the end - how it affects my life. What an inspiring, informative, and and often humorous look at how living more simply or traditionally can rid our lives of so many of the problems we face. I highly recommend it for all of us who eat!

~Megan

*All of the images in this post come from www.animalvegetablemiracle.org

I got them!

I finally got my order of heirloom seeds today. I couldn't be happier! To find out more about heirlooms and why they are superior,
click here.









Here is what I ordered:


White Wonder Cucumber

Introduced in 1893 by W. Atlee Burpee of Philadelphia who obtained the seeds from a customer in western New York. Fruits are 7" long by 2½" in diameter. Ivory-white at slicing stage and ivory-yellow when past maturity. Excellent eating quality, ideal for pickles or slicing, highly productive even in hot weather. 58 days.






Charantais Melon

Considered by many to be the most divine and flavorful melons in the world. Smooth round melons mature to a creamy grayish-yellow with green stripes. Sweet, juicy, salmon flesh. Typically the size of a grapefruit and weighs about 2 pounds, perfect for two people. Ripe melons have a heavenly fragrance. 75-90 days.

Summer Crookneck Squash

C. pepo) Semi-open bush plants produce extended heavy crops of smooth light yellow fruits with curved necks, bumped developed after edible stage. Best eaten when 5-6" long. Creamy-white sweet mild flesh has excellent flavor. Keep picked clean to enjoy all season. 55-60 days. CERTIFIED ORGANIC






Cherokee Purple Tomato

Introduced to other SSE members by North Carolina member Craig LeHoullier in 1991, seed obtained from J. D. Green. Unique dusty rose color. Flavor rivals Brandywine, extremely sweet. Productive plants produce large crops of 12 oz. fruits. Indeterminate, 80 days from transplant.







Brandywine (Sudduth's) Tomato
Brandywine first appeared in the 1889 catalog of Johnson & Stokes of Philadelphia and by 1902 was also offered by four additional seed companies, but soon disappeared from all commercial catalogs. Our best selling tomato and one of the best tasting tomatoes available to gardeners today. The seed of this strain was obtained by tomato collector Ben Quisenberry of Big Tomato Gardens in 1980 from Dorris Sudduth Hill whose family grew them for 80 years. Large pink beefsteak fruits to 2 pounds. Incredibly rich, delightfully intense tomato flavor. Indeterminate, 90 days from transplant.


Bean's Yellow Pear Tomato

This was our favorite yellow pear in the 1998. Endless supply of 1½" pear tomatoes with great taste, ideal for salads. Indeterminate, 70-80 days from transplant.

Mexico's Midget Tomato

Very prolific plants continue producing throughout the entire growing season. Round ½" fruits give an incredible flash of rich tomato flavor, great for salads or selling in pints. Indeterminate, 60-70 days from transplant. CERTIFIED ORGANIC

I got these seeds from Seed Savers Exchange.

~marisa

Heirlooms 101

When my friend Meghan suggested we have a whole section dedicated to heirlooms on this blog I thought she might be placing a little too much emphasis on them. To me, an heirloom was a pretty tomato - a vegetable grown by mega-serious gardeners who wanted to impress their neighbors with rare produce. How wrong I was! After a lot of reading I am a changed (and educated) woman. I can now say that in the future I may not plant anything BUT heirlooms. Want to know why? Well first let's define what an heirloom vegetable is...

Heirlooms are:
1. Old - Usually associated with plants dating from the 1920's and older. It's hard to date them but some American heirlooms varieties are believed to be Pre-Columbian (meaning before Columbus came to America). Many heirloom seeds may have been carried by your ancestors across the ocean to America hundreds of years ago! There were reasons people held onto these seeds...

2. Open-pollinating - meaning if you gather seeds from your plants you'll get the same plant next year. You might not know this but if you tried to gather seeds from your garden center tomato plants and grow them the next year you wouldn't get the same plant from it. These plants are not able to reproduce and are often sterile. (Unless of course it's an heirloom) Over hundreds of years these seeds were gathered from the best plants of the harvest and continue to produce that same quality. Think of the savings!

3. High quality - The best of the heirlooms really are wonderful. They have it all. They taste wonderful, look beautiful, and are easy to grow. The vegetables and fruits you buy in the grocery store were not bred for flavor or quality - but for uniformity and ease of transporting. Which means that many pale in comparison when it comes to taste. Many people say that once you taste an heirloom vegetable you'll realize you have been eating the cardboard version of this veggie all your life. How exciting to taste flavors that mother nature intended you to have - unadulterated pleasure! At least as much as food can give you - which is a lot to a foodie like me!
Heirlooms were cultivated for many years to produce strong, disease fighting, climate hardy plants. In fact, some heirlooms were very locale specific - sometimes as much as a small valley with very specific weather patterns. The plants you purchase from the garden supply may tolerate your climate but they aren't complex creatures ready to thrive in your climate - but your heirlooms just may be.

Diversity and variety are good not only for our taste buds but also for our gardens. Another vital reason to maintain heirlooms is to keep their genetic traits for future use. When old varieties of food crops are not maintained, the gene pool grows smaller and smaller. This may lead to increased disease and pest problems. You may have pest or disease problems in your garden but with many different varieties the likelihood of all of your plants being affected is very low.

While this is just the tip of the iceberg(lettuce?) when it comes to heirlooms and their distinction, I hope you feel as inspired as I do to try out these treasured plants. So, this year when planning for your garden why not try some heirlooms? You may feel you are connecting to the past and sharing a heritage with your forebears in the planting of these wonderful vegetables and fruits. (There are also heirloom status livestock - animals that are better suited for the free range instead of the factory.) You can order heirloom seeds from several different companies including the Seed Savers Exchange. This company has a free seed catalog - order one even if you're not ready to plant heirlooms - just to acquaint yourself with these treasured plants!


More seed links:
Victory Heirloom Seeds
Amishland Heirloom Seeds
Heirloom Vegetable Gardener's Source


~Megan

A lot of my information came from this wonderful site and this amazing book(I'll be reviewing this book very soon.) Images from Mike Donk & Scott Bauer

Program Review: Get Naked at Home.

Against my better judgment I stayed up way past my bedtime Sunday night to watch the sneak peak of Jamie at Home on the food network. The show will premier this Saturday but it was definitely worth the late night to catch an early glimpse. Jamie Oliver, otherwise know as the Naked Chef, has come out of retirement on Food TV with a new cooking show featuring food he grows in his own backyard. The show is filmed in an outdoor cooking shed, in his kitchen, & right in his backyard where he cooks in a brick oven. It is oh so inspiring on so many levels. Sunday nights episode featured Peppers & Chilis & left your mouth watering after every recipe. Jamie is so excited the entire episode & it really gets you excited about cooking homegrown food. He seems driven by love for the ingredients he is working with & he has a very hands on approach to cooking. Many times he stirred with his hands & licked his fingers to taste, & of course we get to watch him pick his ingredients from his garden. You almost get the feeling that the food is a part of his family.
Not only did this show inspire in the way of cooking but also in encouraging a wide array of ingredients to be grown. Jamie featured many heirloom peppers & speaks of the different characteristics they all have. The colors of the dishes were incredible. One of the highlights of the show was when Jamie deseeded one of the peppers & then simply threw the seed behind him on the ground commenting that he hoped that would produce a plant next year!
You can't help but pull from Jamie's enthusiasm as you watch. The show is very fast pace & it almost feels as if Jamie is going to jump up & down with joy as he is cooking. That kind of love is addictive & you almost feel the need to run & start your own garden immediately! The show airs on Saturday mornings starting tomorrow & I don't think that time slot was unintentional. I have a feeling Jamie Oliver is going to start a new movement all on his own of urban homesteading & the results should be magnificent!
P.S.-
For those of you who don't have television, make sure to check out the Jamie at Home book where you will learn to cook & to grow stuff. Watch the funny promotional video here.

-meghan stubbs