The Ozarks Chronicle/Gardening

Now that Christmas is over, gardeners turn their attention from gift-giving to garden-planning. It’s a good time of year to go to the library or book store and read books or magazine articles to find some new ideas for arranging your garden, to research some different vegetables or flowers or to learn how to grow bigger and better produce.

You might consider growing some heirloom fruits, vegetables and flowers. These open-pollinated varieties allow you to save the seeds (if you want) and grow the same plants again next year, knowing you’ll get the same variety. That isn’t the case with a hybrid.

In the Ozarks, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds over at Mansfield offers one of the biggest selections of heirloom seeds in the country. Owner Jere Gettle (who was profiled in this magazine back in April 2005) published his first catalog in 1998 when he was a teenager. He’ll issue his 10^th annual catalog this year. In those intervening years, he has traveled to South America and the Orient to collect “new” seeds of old, sometimes ancient, varieties.

Gettle said interest in heirlooms has grown phenomenally each year. Speaking at Small Farm Today magazine’s National Small Farm Conference last fall in Columbia, Gettle said about 25 percent of his customers are market growers with garden plots of one-quarter to 5 acres. They grow the colorful and flavorful heirlooms because customers seek out the purity of the homegrown foods.

Heirloom melons and squash, because of their color, are particular attention grabbers at market booths.

He also noted that some of his customers are chefs in fine restaurants. They, too, are looking for intense flavor and heirlooms are the best place to find it.

Gettle recommended gardeners wanting to try heirlooms take a look at these varieties:

Chinese Mosaic Long Bean: This lavender bean from China grows 14-15 inches long. It looks good on the vine, and it makes a great stir fry dish.

Missouri Pink Love Apple: Yes, it’s a tomato. It’s a big pink fruit that is very rich tasting. Grown in Missouri since the Civil War, it was originally thought to be poisonous and used only as an ornamental in those days.

Purple Beauty Peppers: You can grow a prodigious number of beautiful bells on these compact bush plants. They have a crisp texture with a mild, sweet flavor.

Black Zebra: This tomato is a sport (or mutant variation) off the Green Zebra. It has beautiful flesh with a nice taste hinting of citrus and smoke. The skin is dark orange with deep green stripes.

Taiwan Black Long Bean: This bean literally grows a yard long (or longer). The light green pods have black beans. Yields are heavy.

White Wonder: This is a white-fleshed watermelon with beautiful flavor. The originated in Africa hundreds of years ago. The plants yield 30 to 8-pound round melons, perfect for your icebox. Gourmet growers love them. White watermelons were common in the United States in the 1800s but disappeared from seed catalogs over time. Henry Field dropped all white watermelons in the 1970s.

Carbon Tomatoes: They are deep dark purple, and won the 2005 Heirloom Garden Show best-tasting award. The fruit is smooth and large. “This is my personal favorite,” Gettle says. “It makes the best salsa.”

Gold Medal tomato: This is a striped, old German tomato. The 1-pound fruit is sweet and mild, great for eating fresh off the vine.

Siam Queen Thai basil: It’s a strong, clove-scented basil, a must for curry and all Thai cooking. The flowers are beautiful.

Black Futsu: This is a black, Japanese squash that is flat, round and ribbed. It turns a rich chestnut in storage. The flesh is golden and has a rich, hazelnut-like taste. These squash are 3-8 pounds each.

Galeux d’Eysines: This French squash is both ornamental and tasty. It has a warty skin that is salmon or peach-colored. The flesh is orange and unusually sweet and smooth, not stringy. Good for soups or baking, it is not a good keeper.

Thai Green Cucumber: Sometimes called Siam Best, it is popular in Thailand, growing 7 inches long and two inches wide. It’s medium green and hard to find.

Thai Green Pea Egg Plant: This is eggplant the size of peas. The plant grows 7 feet tall, but the growing season is so long that you might have difficulty with it in the Ozarks.

Amaranth: This is actually a cereal grain that has beautiful flower heads that are great for ornamentation. The bright green leaves are also tasty, sometimes cooked as greens, sometimes used in salad blends. A number of heirloom varieties are available, such as Thai Round Leaf and Love Lies Bleeding (red and green versions) and Garnet Red.

Gettle recommends growing colorful produce, because medical experts say colorful vegetables are good for your health. For market growers, colorful vegetables also attract the attention of consumers.

Avoiding Frankenfoods

Heirloom vegetables growing in popularity

By Jere Gettle

Mansfield, Mo.

It is great to see heirloom varieties becoming so popular. It seems everywhere I look they are being praised. From magazines to radio, television to newspapers, the media have become hooked on the superb flavor and lovely appearance of heirlooms. People just can’t believe vegetables can taste this good.

This renewed interest in our food heritage is also due to the concern people have about the many untested gene-altered or “Frankenfood” crops that are being released onto our tables and the environment. These crops come to us with hardly any safety measures in place, but are being released into the food supply at a breakneck speed, unlabeled and unwanted by consumers.

At the same time, many experts are fearing the increase in allergies may be triggered from these foods that have been spliced with foreign genes that are toxic to Monarch butterflies and other pollinating insects. Studies have also shown that rats are adversely affected when they are fed gene-altered food, but these crops are still being dumped into our food supply with no labeling.

And to top all this, the current U.S. Administration has made it illegal for the citizens of Iraq to save their own heirloom vegetable and grain varieties, which in some cases may have been passed down since the time of ancient Babylon. This means that many thousands of Iraq’s truly unique varieties may have been lost, forever. It is a sad thought that Iraqi farmers were made to plant imported “approved” seeds from multinational corporations who promote poisons, patents and pesticides!

With all this being in the news lately , it is no wonder Americans are turning to naturally grown foods, local products and homegrown produce. It is so much better for us and you don’t have as much worry. Natural food options are showing up in many places and even many public schools are getting involved in helping educate about food safety and local foods.

I hope you will have an abundant season, and enjoy many new varieties. Let’s all work together to save our agricultural heritage and fight gene-altered Frankenfoods.

Jere Gettle is the owner of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co., Mansfield, Mo. He travels the world each year collecting open-pollinated heirloom seeds. For more information log onto one of his websites: www.rareseeds.com