by CHRISTINE REID
Special to All Around Hays
Families often hand down antiques like dishes and furniture to their children and grandchildren, but not everyone thinks about the heirloom flowers and vegetables that have also been saved for the next generation. Plants like “Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glory” vine and “Brandywine” tomatoes are widely available today because someone years ago saved seed and passed it along to the next gardener.
Gardening experts debate about the precise definition of heirloom plants, but there are some things they all agree on: heirlooms are open-pollinated (meaning they will reproduce true to seed), they do not contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and are considered valuable enough to have been saved, maintained and handed down over the years, sometimes 50 to 100 years or more.
Seeds containing GMOs are from plants that have had their genetic material altered through genetic engineering. As one example, a gene from something as unrelated as a frog could be inserted into a plant’s DNA to make it more resistant to pesticides. Because critics feel that there hasn’t been enough testing of GMO seeds, many people cite safety, ecological and economic worries over their role in the food chain.
It used to be that family gardens all used heirloom seeds, but around 1945, growers and seed companies began introducing hybrid seeds, which were bred for disease resistance and marketability. Hybrid seeds will not reproduce true to seed and so a gardener has to buy new seed every year. In the 1970s, hybrids really began to proliferate, alarming home gardeners and small growers who saw their favorite old seed varieties slowly disappearing from the seed catalogs.
Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization based in Iowa dedicated to preserving heirloom seeds, formed in 1975. Later on, Jere Gettle, a young gardener from Missouri, started saving seeds and selling packets of heirlooms from his bedroom in 1998. He was not yet 18 when his company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, began. The success of these seed companies, and others like them, shows the increasing popularity of heirloom seeds.
If not for the heirloom seeds being grown and stored by these companies and gardeners around the country, some feel that large companies could eventually control seed variety, quality and distribution. Over time, it seems likely to many that profitable seeds would push out the less popular ones. That potential lack of diversity is part of what motivates the seed-saving companies.
Related concerns about hybrid seed quality is what drove local organic farmer Tim Miller to use heirloom seeds.
“In 1996, the U.S. seed law was changed so that GMO seeds could be sold unwittingly to farmers and the public,” he wrote in an email. “At that time, I decided to grow only heirloom crops because of the chemical interests in the food cycle.”
Miller, who owns Millberg Farm in Kyle, explained that other reasons he uses heirloom seeds include the quality of the seed, the regional characteristics of the seeds and the ability to become a steward in saving a valuable resource.
The names and descriptions of some of the heirloom varieties sound so good, they could make a vegetable lover out of a previous “meat and potatoes only” person. Vegetables like De Cicco broccoli, with its tender stalks, mild flavor and bluish green florets; the French Red Core Chantenay carrot, with its sweet, old-fashioned carrot flavor and characteristic red core and the Grey Dwarf Sugar, a petite and crisp snow pea, might encourage a person to choose lightly stir-fried vegetables over heavy, deep-fried anything.
While the advantages of heirloom seeds are plain to see, including superior taste, the fact that they don’t contain GMOs and that they can be saved, there are some downsides. Heirloom vegetables may not look as picture-perfect as their hybrid counterparts. Some of the old-time tomatoes, for instance, may develop cracks or “cat faces.” The overall yield from heirlooms may not be as high and they may produce later in the season. Also, they can be susceptible to plant diseases, though following an organic program makes that less of a problem. Hybrids, specifically bred to resist fusarium wilt and other plant diseases, look more uniform and are sometimes more prolific. However, due to the high cost of developing hybrid seeds, they are more expensive, cannot be saved from year to year and possibly include GMO material.
Luckily, homeowners can raise heirlooms as well as hybrids and reap the benefits of both, if they wish. Along with treasuring Grandma Ella’s silver bowl or Grandpa Schmidt’s rocking chair, people can also grow the Early Jersey Wakefield cabbages and Cherokee Purple Tomatoes their grandparents and great grandparents used to grow in their garden. It’s a delicious way of really connecting to the family “roots!”
