Heirloom Vegetables

Heirloom vegetables are the produce of plants grown from original seeds. In the last decades of the twentieth century and into the next millennium, old and often forgotten varieties of food plants garnered renewed interest among gardeners and the grocery-shopping public. Although they are called heirlooms, no regulated nationwide standard has ever existed for them, though most experts agree on a general definition: The plant variety must have been introduced before 1951, which was when plant breeders began to hybridize inbred plant lines, and it must have been grown from a variety at least one hundred years old. The plant also must have been open-pollinated by natural means, such as wind, dew, insects, or birds.