Heirloom vegetables are full of flavor, come in all sorts of interesting shapes and colors, and bring fascinating slices of history to your table — what’s not to love? If you need to be persuaded to plant some this season, here are our top tips for growing heirloom vegetables and recommendations on what to grow.
Why Grow Heirloom Vegetables?
When you plant heirloom vegetable garden seeds, you’re a part of a long line of growers tending these special varieties. Many heirlooms have been passed down through families or shared among friends, and there’s a reason these plants continue to be favorites year after year, decade after decade.
You often won’t find heirloom vegetables in the produce aisles of your local grocery store, as the fruit can be more delicate and doesn’t ship as well — but it can also be more flavorful! And there is so much diversity among heirlooms in size, shape and color — from tiny currant tomatoes to huge Mortgage Lifters, purple broccoli to striped beets.
Favorite Easy-to-Grow Heirloom Vegetables
Choosing vegetables you can sow directly into your plot eliminates the need to start seeds indoors, harden off seedlings, and then transplant them into the garden. Here are a few direct-sow picks that’ll put fresh produce on your plate week after week.
‘Black Beauty’ Summer Squash
Before people used the term zucchini, gardeners and farmers were planting ‘Black Beauty’. This bush-type squash was introduced into U.S. markets in the 1920s, and seed companies started offering it in the 1930s. It is the familiar dark-green summer squash that made zucchini popular.
Heirloom squash come in a wider range of shapes, colors, and textures than the standard varieties. They have been preserved over decades because growers prize their complex flavors and their productivity. Many people also enjoy eating the tasty male squash blossoms stuffed with cheese and fried.
‘Early Scarlet Globe’ Radish
With this time-tested variety, you get zesty, bright red, round radishes less than a month after sowing the seeds in your garden. ‘Early Scarlet Globe’ tolerates warmer temperatures than many recent introductions, making it a smart choice where spring heats up early and for any gardeners who want to plant successive crops of radishes to keep the harvest going.
You can choose from many heirloom radishes in uncommon colors and shapes, with flavors ranging from tingly to fiery. They also give you more ways to enjoy them than just in a salad or on a crudité tray. ‘French Breakfast’ radishes have long, pink roots with white tips and a mild flavor. The globe-shaped ‘Black Spanish Round’ is dark on the outside and white on the inside. Its spicy roots are well-suited for storage in a root cellar, and they can be roasted to bring out even more flavor.
‘Blue Lake 274’ Bush Bean
To get the true green bean flavor you remember from growing up, plant heirloom varieties like ‘Blue Lake 274’. It bears long, straight, plump, bright-green pods for weeks on end. It’s a bush type, so no staking is needed to keep the plants healthy and productive.
Heirloom beans bring other colors and textures to your garden and table than the common green options. You can choose from yellow and purple varieties and flat-podded Italian types that are meaty and extra flavorful. ‘Lazy Housewife’ has an outdated name, but the buttery taste of its stringless pods has kept it in garden beds since it was first introduced by W. Atlee Burpee Co. in 1885.
‘Red Winter’ Kale
You get tender flavorful leaves about 50 days after transplanting this heirloom variety in your garden. It is highly frost tolerant, so you can grow it in spring and plant it again in late summer to early fall for harvesting into the first frigid days of the year. ‘Red Winter’ has bright green, oak-shaped leaves with dark red to purple veins.
Heirloom kale varieties offer you options with different looks, tastes, and hardiness. ‘Lacinato’, sometimes called “dinosaur” kale or Tuscan kale, has long, bluish green leaves that have a mild taste, so you can enjoy it raw in salads or smoothies, or cooked in soups, stir-fries, and other dishes. The crinkly, dense leaves of ‘Dwarf Blue Curled Yates’ make it an attractive foliage plant in ornamental beds and they have a rich flavor raw or cooked. The wide, flat leaves of ‘Portuguese’ kale are sweeter than most modern varieties.
‘Evergreen Long White’ Green Onion
This classic variety of bunching green onion, also known as scallions, shoots up long, slender, vivid green stalks atop mild-tasting, small, white bulbs. ‘Evergreen Long White’ is exceptionally cold hardy, so you can plant them in early spring and begin harvesting them about two months later.
Most heirloom bunching green onion varieties tolerate low temperatures, so they can be perennialized in many regions. That is, you plant them once, they survive over the winter, and they come back again from the same roots as the previous year. Heirloom scallions tend to be better adapted to temperature swings from cold to warm, making them a smart choice for regions where spring can be unpredictable. Many of the heirloom varieties have endured because they richer and more complex flavors than recent introductions.
Interested in growing heirloom flowers, too? Check out 5 of our favorite varieties!
Are Heirlooms Harder to Grow?
While heirloom vegetables haven’t been bred to be disease-resistant like some modern hybrids, they’ve lasted for as long as they have because they’re an excellent choice for almost any garden. To ensure a bountiful growing season, try these tips for successfully growing heirloom vegetables.
- Prepare your plot: It all begins with healthy soil, so give the ground a boost by mixing in nutrient-rich compost before you plant your heirloom seeds.
- Enrich soil as needed: Test the pH to ensure you’re moving plants into a healthy home, and amend with an organic granular fertilizer, as needed. Heirloom veggies need a little extra TLC!
- Go with the flow: Good circulation and careful watering practices will prevent leaves from staying wet, which can lead to blight. Stake and prune plants to give them space to air out, and water close to the roots or, as an extra measure, use drip irrigation.
- Keep things clean: Throughout the growing season, remove any debris and infected plants as soon as possible to avoid transmission to others in the bed.
- Mix it up: Since different plants attract different pests and soak up different nutrients, crop rotation can reduce the chances of bugs and slugs moving in and prevent the soil from being depleted of key nutrients. Try alternating what you grow in a given spot annually, with the same crop returning to that location after three or four years.
How to Save Heirloom Vegetable Garden Seeds
One bonus of growing heirloom vegetables is that you can save the seeds from the veggies you harvest this year to plant next year! Unlike hybrids, heirloom plants produce seeds that are true to type, so you know what to expect every time. (Keep in mind, you have to isolate the heirloom plants from all others in the same species or the bees may cross-pollinate.
For dry-fruited plants like beans and grains, let the pods or husks dry on the plant before collecting the heirloom seeds. With wet-fruited crops such as eggplant and cucumber, allow the fruit to mature on the plant well past when you’d pick it to eat, allowing the seeds to fully mature. Then, separate the seeds from the pulp, clean them off in water, and allow them to dry on a nonporous surface such as a plate.
Once fully dry, you can store your heirloom vegetable seeds in an airtight container in a cool, dry spot for a year or two. Pick someplace where the temperature stays consistent year-round to ensure the seeds’ viability.
Interested in growing heirloom flowers, too? Check out 5 of our favorite varieties!