Heritage Seeds Are Available For Vegetables, Too

Has it occurred to you that these days when you survey the vegetable section at your favourite local supermarket the selection of choice vegetables, although fresh and healthy-looking, appears to be exactly the same throughout the entire year? Relative to the fresh taste of your own home grown vegetables, many of the ‘fresh’ veggies this time of year taste like they were strip mined in Arizona.

Seasonal, i.e. ‘local’ produce appears to have vanished altogether from many supermarkets, together with choice and taste. If you grow your own vegetables, you will be open to a far wider selection of varieties by pursuing the seed racks at the garden center than visiting the supermarket shelves for unseasonable, frequently tasteless, imports.

One of the best examples of this depletion of choice is potatoes, a staple crop of world importance; America and Europe being among the chief producers. Compared with the mid 1960’s, when at least 230 varieties were available throughout the US and Canada, potato growers now plant only two or three varieties.

This is where it pays look to the heritage seeds passed down through the generations, the first of whom no doubt originally collected and replanted these seeds for the

sheer necessity of survival. As people began to travel from place to place they would

take along their favourite seeds to plant when they arrived at their destination. This ensured maintaining a healthy diet and also kept alive a link with their roots.

This not only happened four hundred years ago when immigrants traveled to our eastern shores seeking the new world and still continues today with modern-day refugees seeking a new homeland. Back in the mid 1800’s immigrants frequently hid seeds on their body to avoid discovery and confiscation upon arrival, sometimes secreting them in the linings of suitcases and hatbands, and sewn into the hems of dresses and pants. Unfortunately economic conditions forced these people from working on the land into factories and other places of employment and consequently many heritage seed strains became extinct through lack of use.

There are many heritage seed programs in existence today involved in the preservation of rare and unusual vegetables and plants through seed exchange schemes, created to ensure we don’t allow our past inheritance to disappear for ever. Clearly we must not abandon and neglect the broad genetic base of our traditional wild and cultivated plants.

Seeds of Diversity is a non-profit association comprising a group of Canadian gardeners who collect seeds from rare and unusual garden plants for the purpose of preservation. This organization promotes a membership scheme and seed exchange programme and is dedicated to preserving heirloom and endangered flowers, vegetables and grains. Visit their website at www.seeds.com for further information and a chance to participate in their extremely worthwhile campaign

The European equivalent for heirloom seed preservation, the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA), established its seed library in 1975. Members can obtain free seeds each year from their catalogue and also join in seed exchange from the seed swap register – www.enquiry@hrda.org.uk.

Here are two very popular heritage vegetables carried by many of the seed companies this year that I think you will find well worth pursuing.

Here’s a beauty that not only lays claim to a long-life but was also good enough to be awarded the All America Selections prize in 1998, and, of course, is still going