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View Full Version : Top Heirloom Vegetable Varieties for Home Gardeners



Julie
01-13-2010, 09:24 AM
About.com
Gardening
Growing Heirloom Vegetables
Top Heirloom Vegetable Varieties for Home Gardeners

By Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide
There's only one reason needed to try growing heirloom vegetables - Taste. There are thousands of heirloom vegetable varieties available for the home vegetable garden. Heirlooms vegetables became heirlooms because people prized them enough to save seeds. You won't find many of these varieties in your grocery store because they weren't developed for mass production or storage. That's all the more reason to make room for growing some heirloom vegetables in your own vegetable garden.
1. Bean: Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder and Romano
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If a vegetable can be popular for hundreds of years and still be grown today when there are hundreds of new introductions each year, it deserves some respect. That's certainly true of this trio of beans. Blue Lake is a particular favorite of mine because it is so prolific and I have limited space. [p]A very popular hybrid of Blue Lake and Kentucky Wonder heirloom pole beans is the All America Selections winner 'Kentucky Blue', shown here. 'Kentucky Blue' has some disease resistance and vigor bred into it, but many gardeners still prefer one of its parents. The final taste test is up to you.

2. Cucumber: Lemon Cucumber
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Usually yellow cucumbers are a bad thing, but lemon cucumbers are a real gem. Pick them small, about lemon size, and you can eat them like a fruit. The pale yellow skin is thin and the inside flesh is crisp and juicy. They make an excellent edible bowl for salads and an interesting choice for pickles.

3. Eggplant: Violetta di Firenze
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Eggplants are stars among heirloom vegetables, because of the variety of size, shape, color and flavor you won't find elsewhere. Violetta di Firenze is a heat lover, but it's worth the extra work. The stunning lavender fruits are striped with creamy white. Picked early, the skin is thin enough to leave unpeeled. The flavor is at its best when given plenty of sun and heat. Violetta di Firenze can be the silver lining of the dog days of August.

4. Garlic: Spanish Roja and Red Toch
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If you live where the winters are cold, it's hard to beat the flavor or Spanish Roja. It's a hardneck variety with 6-10 cloves per bulb. Spanish Roja is prized for its taste and it also stores well for up to 6 months. Red Toch is easily one of the best softneck garlics. The large, pink-streaked cloves can be eaten raw, with no unpleasant aftertaste usually associated with garlic. Since garlic isn't grown from seed, you can safely save garlic bulbs to replant each year, without concern for cross pollination.

5. Lettuce: Red Salad Bowl
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Red Salad Bowl What's so wonderful about lettuce is that it is one of the few vegetables we all eat fresh. Salad bowl is a classic favorite and red salad bowl does it one better by being beautiful too. This looseleaf variety is very slow to bolt, making for an even longer harvest. The beautiful bronze tinged leaves are crisp and inviting.

6. Melon: Moon and Stars Watermelon
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Moon & Stars has been called the poster vegetable of heirloom gardening. It is quite an attention getter with its dark green rind speckled with tiny yellow stars and usually at least one larger moon. Even the leaves are dotted with yellow. Inside all of this beauty is wonderful sweet, rich red flesh. These are large melons, about 20-30 pounds apiece, with a sprawling vine to sustain them.

7. Pepper, Hot: Bulgarian Carrot
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Bulgarian carrot peppers are in the mid to extreme section of the Scoville Heat Scale, but they have flavor as well as heat. They do somewhat resemble a small carrot, maturing to a bright orange and about 4 inches long. They also have thick, crisp walls that hold up well in cooking.

8. Pepper, Sweet: Jimmy Nardello
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This is one of the Italian frying type peppers. The long, slender fruits can easily grow to 8-9 inches. The plants are tall and bushy and may require staking because they produce a large crop. The peppers are extremely sweet when red and nice and tangy when picked green.

9. Squash: Ronde de Nice
You may think the last thing you need is more zucchini, but Ronde de Nice makes itself useful. It is, in fact, round and it can be picked small enough for single servings. The thin skin is very delicate, which means you won't find it shipped and sold in stores. The flesh is creamy and rich and the bowl shape makes it perfect for stuffing.

10. Tomato: Lillian's Yellow & Brandywine
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If it weren't for the incredible flavor of Brandywine tomatoes, I'm not sure there would be that much interest in heirloom vegetables. Brandywines reminded people of what tomatoes used to taste like. I've given them a tie here with Lillian's Yellow, because Miss Lillian wins so many local taste tests. If she can beat out Brandywine, imagine what you're missing.

cHeroKee
01-13-2010, 10:18 AM
Very nice information.

signseeker
01-13-2010, 10:46 AM
I'm going all heirloom veggies from now on in my garden and I'm going to practice saving seeds from now on, too. I'll be planting some of my tomato and cucumber seeds I saved from last year here in another two months.

I've already told you what I think of Brandywine. :thumbdown: I had 6 Brandywine plants and combined they didn't produce as much as one plant of either Homestead or Eva Purple Ball. Plus by the time I cut off all the cracks and weird bottom ends it just wasn't worth it. I hardly got one decent full slice off of each tomato. They must work great for other people. I'm just going to keep what works well for me. A lot of the Brandywine's blossoms fell off, too. I don't want plants that "need help" pollinating, either.

Thanks for the list, Julie! :thumbsup:

cHeroKee
01-13-2010, 11:06 AM
I'm going all heirloom veggies from now on in my garden and I'm going to practice saving seeds from now on, too. I'll be planting some of my tomato and cucumber seeds I saved from last year here in another two months.

I've already told you what I think of Brandywine. :thumbdown: I had 6 Brandywine plants and combined they didn't produce as much as one plant of either Homestead or Eva Purple Ball. Plus by the time I cut off all the cracks and weird bottom ends it just wasn't worth it. I hardly got one decent full slice off of each tomato. They must work great for other people. I'm just going to keep what works well for me. A lot of the Brandywine's blossoms fell off, too. I don't want plants that "need help" pollinating, either.

Thanks for the list, Julie! :thumbsup:
It's you and your soil and your watering.
Cracking is a physiological disorder caused by soil moisture fluctuations. When the tomato reaches the mature green stage and the water supply to the plant is reduced or cut off, the tomato will begin to ripen. At this time a cellophane-like wrapper around the outer surface of the tomato becomes thicker and more rigid to protect the tomato during and after harvest. If the water supply is restored after ripening begins, the plant will resume translocation of nutrients and moisture into the fruit. This will cause the fruit to enlarge; which in turn splits the wrapper around the fruit and results in cracking. The single best control for cracking is a constant and regular water supply. Apply a layer of organic mulch to the base of the plant. This serves as a buffer and prevents soil moisture fluctuation. Water plants thoroughly every week. This is especially important when the fruits are maturing. Some varieties are resistant to cracking, but their skin is tougher.

signseeker
01-13-2010, 12:35 PM
The Brandywines were the ONLY ones who did this. I had SIX varieties. ONLY the Brandywines did this. I'm done making excuses for them and I will not blame myself. The Homesteads and Cherokee Purples and Eva Purple Balls and Borgo Cellanos were perfect with no cracks. They were NEIGHBORS... getting the same water and same soil.

Cracking may be physiological and the weird deformed butts may be, too... but Brandywines have the DNA for it. They're out. Culled. No more. They could go extinct for all I care. (Okay, maybe I'm not that harsh.)

I'm off the Brandywine Fan Bus. :thumbdown:

prairiemom
01-13-2010, 01:16 PM
You're right--some varieties do better under some types of soil/weather, others do better in different soil/climate/water circumstances. That's why there are different varieties. If they all did equally well, there would eventually only be one variety.

I too have not had great luck with Brandywine, but that Lillian's Yellow sounds intriguing. I might try that this year. My favorite paste tomato is Amish Paste--very flavorful and BIG fruits. We also like Purple Prudens. Brownberry is a very flavorful cherry.

I have tried the Ron de Nice--very nice zuke. As soft as butter and beautiful flavor. Not as productive, though, as traditional zukes, which some might welcome.

The best heirloom broccoli I've tried is Waltham.

We tried the Romano Purpiat beans, purple beans that turn green when cooked. The flavor was so-so, subduction was great, but the beans weren't very big. I've never grown a flat green bean before and found I really don't care for it too much.

signseeker
01-13-2010, 02:00 PM
I'm buying some Amish Paste to try this year.