There’s room for cautious optimism regarding the cold-season crop developing in my yard. Snaking vines of Waltham Butternut, Pink Banana, and Table Queen Acorn Squash dominate the three raised beds I recently built, which have successfully kept the young plants out of reach of most pests. Bull’s Blood Beets share space with Autumn King Carrots. And just beginning to come up, trays of Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard, Little Gem Romaine, and Marvel of Four Seasons Butterhead Lettuce.
There’s no pretension in the name dropping above. The point is to know something about what I’m growing, that it’s not just a bean, it’s a Kentucky Wonder. Plants have proper names just like people, and not in a freaky I’ve-personified-all-my-plants-by-giving-them-people-names kind of way. Most of the time when we eat a tomato it’s called “tomato” and that’s as far as we know it. That kind of informality results not just in Big Farm monoculture, but the perpetuation of a single variety of tomato to the exclusion — and sometimes the extinction — of all others. Such a lack of diversity is problematic, not just in limiting our access to a variety of flavors within a single type of food, but also in a very basic, Darwinian sort of way. A lack of genetic diversity within a species is a precursor to extinction. Fretting over the loss of a single squash variant may seem a bit academic. For a better explanation, watch the TED Talk below.
Today we are losing unique edibles like we’re losing languages, and those edibles that are truly unique have a cultural significance not unlike the native tongues that first described them. One thing we can do is support and protect genetic diversity by growing heirloom plants in our gardens. Not a radish lover? There are 20 varieties available at a single retailer of heirloom seeds. Maybe there’s one you like. Maybe the only way to get the chance to eat it is to grow it yourself.
Great analogy.
Fascinating. Not something I ever think about. I wonder what it would be like to do sort of a taste test of different varieties of the same thing. The only thing I think I could do would be tomatoes (they sell lots of heirlooms at the farmers market).
Uh oh. I actually gave names to some of my plants in the garden. It wasn’t totally freaky. I was growing out some F2 Sungold seeds (seeds saved from the original F1 Sungold). I named them because each plant was different and had different characteristics. I saved seed from Emma and Gabrielle since they were good growers and tasted very good. Next year their seed will be grown out. Hopefully I’ll eventually stabilize the lines, but it may be a while since I don’t have a lot of excess tomato growing room.
I grow both heirlooms and hybrids. Some of my favorite heirlooms are the really old ones that most people have never heard of (like the Magdalena Big Cheese squash) or trades with other garden bloggers (like my Trail of Tears beans). They are fun to grow because you really don’t know what your going to get. It is always a surprise.