If you want variety, superior flavor, unusual colors and shapes and unique histories, heirloom gardening is a wonderful alternative to growing the F1 hybrids featured predominately by many large seed companies. Most home gardeners and growers don’t need tomatoes with skins tough enough to withstand cross-country shipment, or potatoes that will pass the McDonald’s uniformity test. Since the 1940s the hybrids have been the most marketed varieties to home gardeners. Choices grew increasingly smaller as the seed companies discarded those varieties that did not fit the factory-farm, monoculture mold. Although the old time varieties were worthy of continuing, many were dropped by seed companies in favor of the hybrids and gradually home-growers couldn’t get the same tomatoes and peppers they remembered from childhood. An entire generation grew up believing that all tomatoes were red, round and identical in taste. However, heirloom gardening is putting an end to that myth! There are hundreds of different tomato varieties, and although some are red and round there are many others with incredibly complex flavors and a virtual rainbow of colors! Many heirloom varieties can be recognized by their names as having folk origins. These gems were often grown by generations of families, ethnic enclaves and communities and are usually found in isolated and mountainous regions. Frequently they took the name of their ethnic origins, as in Zapotec Ribbed and Cherokee Purple tomatoes. Sometimes they were named after the family or person who bred them or made them available to other gardeners such as Djena Lee’s Golden Girl tomato and Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying Pepper. Some got their name from unusual physical traits, examples being Moon and Stars Watermelon and Rattlesnake Snap Bean. The Aconcagua Pepper was named after Mt. Aconcagua in Argentina, where it originated.

If you aren’t already convinced that you want to try growing heirlooms, another one of their desirable traits is that the ripening process is staggered, which means you get produce that ripens on an ongoing basis. Many hybrids were bred to ripen at the same time, which optimized mechanical harvesting. This trait is a disadvantage for the home gardener who might want to pick ripe tomatoes over a period of weeks, not days.