An Heirloom Garden

  An Heirloom Garden

  It might not look like it in many areas, mine included, but spring is coming. And, if you're like me, you wait all winter for the first goose and turkey eggs (my chickens still do some laying in the winter), as well as for the first seed catalogues to arrive in the mail.

  With literally hundreds of seeds to choose from, how do you decide what goes in the garden? This year, you might think about an heirloom garden. What is an heirloom garden. It is plants of all types, most from the mid 1800's to the early 1900's, that were once common on all farms and in home gardens. With modern gardening practices, however, and the "need" for size and quick growth, many of these became out of favour, and almost lost. Fortunately, today there is a number or nurseries and home gardeners bringing back these plants. You can grow fruits, vegetables,  and flowers. Plus, if you have a period house, an heirloom garden is a perfect fit.

  Why go this route? Besides saving a species, the gardener who plants heirlooms promote bio-diversity. We are limiting ourselves too much in agriculture now days by relying on only a few strains of plant or animal. If something should ever affect one of these strains, it could be major hardship.

   Another reason is for seed saving. Unlike hybrids, seeds from heirlooms that you save this year, will guarantee you the same fruit/vegetable next. With hybrids, you could get nothing or a useless throwback.

   The last reason. An heirloom garden can be a real conversation piece. You can end up with a lot of explaining to do when you talk about heirlooms in agriculture.

   Well, you think this sounds like a good project for spring, but where to start? There are many places on the internet which carry heirlooms. On a search, type in "heirloom plant", "heirloom fruits", "heirloom vegetables", or "heirloom flowers", and you will be shown more choices than you could imagine.(Hence not including links on this one. It is impossible to choose only a few.) Some may be wholesale only, so read carefully. Some even have newsletters. I would suggest either ordering catalogues or, if they have an on line catalogue, file it to disk so that you can read thoroughly, as many include a brief history of the plant as well.

   One thing about heirlooms, and it is the reason they fell out of favour commercially. They can be slow growing, and smaller in size. However, most will say that