Topic: Do you know local heirloom varieties of veg?

[pigeonseed]

I wondered whether we could exchange names of local vegetable varieties, which we know of? So we could find ones from the area where we live.

Do any of you grow a variety, which comes from your local area? Or from somewhere else in the UK?

Whenever I read about heritage varieties of vegetables, they so often come from Italy or France or the US. And as one of the great things about these landraces is supposed to be how well-suited they are to their local conditions, it seems a shame not to grow real locals and keep them going.

But if I try and find Sussex or Kent varieties on the internet, I only get people talking about apples. Surely they must have eaten something else in the olden days! At least a turnip or two.  ;D

If anyone knows any British heritage/heirloom veggies - please share your knowledge!

[saddad]

Well... once I've got "Newton Wonder" ( a great cooking apple!) out of my system I think the "Blaby Tomato" is the nearest to sunny Derby...  :)

[galina]

Thanks to the Heritage Seed Library I am growing Northamptinshire Shallot, a pea from Desborough Allotments, another from the Luton area and a Bedfordshire onion.  I am looking forward to seeds from the Blaby tomato for next year from the Seed Circle.  Cambridge Gage was chosen because Cambridge is not too far away from us.  Come to think of it there really isn't very much that is really local and heirloom afaik.

[pigeonseed]

It sounds like you've done well to find so many, Galina. I wonder whether they'll grow particularly well for you?

I suppose whether you can find old varieties from your locality depends on whether any local types were selected for selling as named varieties in seed catalogues. Otherwise Sussex peas would just have been 'peas' before the days of the catalogue.

I looked up the Blaby tomatoes - it sounds like it might be a very tasty one! Have you grown it yet, saddad?

[pigeonseed]

I suppose famously there are Kentish cobnuts - we're near the border with Kent here!

[aj]

Monastic Coco Climbing French Beans, used to be grown in a monastary in Kent if I remember correctly.....do you want some? Grown in the Midlands for the last few years....but I did live in Kent for 25 years...which is why I bought them.

Send me a message with your address if you do.

[artichoke]

I was given seeds 40 years ago by an elderly lady nearby who had saved her own for decades....she called them Ragged Jack, but I find they are now widely available as red Russian kale, so not exactly local. I moved away from that village and met another elderly lady who also saves her seed, so they are local in that sense. I find this kale extremely useful, tender and not bitter, and bursts into fresh life in the spring.

[saddad]

I've grown the Blaby Tomato... nice but not exceptional enough to be in my "every year" category.. as I have about 60 varieties...  ::)

[galina]

It sounds like you've done well to find so many, Galina. I wonder whether they'll grow particularly well for you?

Not unusually so.  There is a webpage, if anybody is interested I'll find the url which will take a bit of 'digging', and this gives the soil condition for all areas of England and Wales.  Turns out that just a few hundred feet away from my location, the soil conditions are very different.  But the weather is of course the same over a much larger area.  Certainly they do well, but others from hundreds of miles away, do just as well.

I have yet to find a gardener who has problems with growing Cherokee Trail of Tears beans.  These seem to be successful in all areas that can grow beans.  There are other 'super' heirlooms that do well wherever they are grown.  It is ok to 'adopt' them, because they are so good.

Britain has a long tradition of importing seeds rather than growing them here.  Maybe this is why there are many fewer local heirlooms than in the US for example.

[saddad]

We have lots of "local" varieties... from local and regional seedsmen who were bought up or put out of business since the Second World War... many have found there way into seed banks like the HSL. Without splitting hairs between Landraces/heritage or heirloom varieties there are lots to choose from.

[Robert_Brenchley]

When it coimes to warm-climate crops like beans or squashes, you can understand why they're imported. Maybe we need to make more effort to breed our own cold climate varieties of some veg. A lot of the heritage peas available in the US were bred here; English peas were fashionable there in Victorian times.

[pigeonseed]

Some interesting stories, and I do like that about saving and swapping seeds - they come with people and stories and not just a tempting photo and write up.

And I agree, Galina, I don't want to be a vegetable nazi, looking for a race of pure sussex vegetables! I know most of them came from somewhere else sometime.

Well, without Europeans 'discovering' the Americas what would we eat?! French beans, tomatoes, potatoes, sweetcorn... squashes... I expect I've missed more.

Half of these heirlooms will perhaps not be that old at all. And perhaps never static anyway, constantly changing.

(aj that is an extremely kind offer, thank you)

[ruud]

Here at the other side of the pond we have some seedsaving companies who try to keep the old heirloom vegetables alive.The famoust one is called vergeten groenten,that is translated as forgotten vegetables.They also ask allotmenteers to grow forgotten vegetables.I grew two years ago a kind of dry bean called kievietsboon,it looked like a borlotto,but it was once a part of the daily life here in holland.They also have a collection of old potato vatieties.

[1066]

If you do hear of any local to Kent and Sussex (other than cobnuts!) let me know. I know from reading various posts and sites that there are lots of peas which as heritage, but none from round here  :)

[pigeonseed]

vergeten groenten

Sounds really interesting, Ruud. I had a look at their site, and they mention Brave Hendrik, which we call Good King Henry, and I now have that thanks to saddad's donation of a plant from his garden. It hasn't got big enough to eat yet, I'm letting it settle in.

I'm starting to remember all the Dutch I learnt years ago and then forgot, because there are some really good seed sites from the Netherlands! But one word I just couldn't work out on the forgotten veg site is 'oersla.' And Google Translate is no help.  is. Does it mean wild lettuce or something? (I'm just guessing!)

1066 - I will keep you fully informed if I find anything! Actually, you know if aj's monastic coco grow this summer, I'll be able to send you some of those!

[markfield rover]

pigeonseed, I have spare Blaby Special tom seed if you would like any .

[saddad]

Like the Good King Henry there were other plants we used to eat but don't any more... like Skirret and Jack by the Hedge....  :-X

[chriscross1966]

Britain has a long tradition of importing seeds rather than growing them here.  Maybe this is why there are many fewer local heirlooms than in the US for example.

Patrt of the reason is the ease of communication/shipment in the UK... The majorly inhabited areas have been linked byt canal and then rail for the best part of four hundred years, therefore the sellign of seeds over the whole country became possible here earlier than almost anywhere else (small countries didn't have the capital neccessary to grow that industrially)... THe move towards more capital intensive farming as people left the land to go to work in the expanding industrial cities also helped this effect.... as a result most of what we think of as "heirlooms" are nothing of the sort, they're just old commercial varieties.....maybe they'd be better referred to as something other than heirloom....

CTOT on the other hand is a true heirloom, and it's a decent enough bean, certainly holding its own on my plot this last year.... will I grow it again?... probably not, but I'll put a lot more seed back out than I used to grow mine so the movement won't suffer for my dalliance.

chrisc

[ruud]

Hi pigeonseed,good to hear that your dutch is coming back,great language lol ;D ;D spoken all over the world ;D ;D,but now some serious stuff.Oersla is the true wild version(variety) of lettuce all the other modern varieties are somehow find his roots from oersla.Oersla doesnot form a head.Its is a stem with leaves,and you pick the leaves.In holland we got stengelsla,if you translate it in english,it is something like lettuce on a stem.I always say it looks like a normal lettuce who is gone to far and wants to bloom.
 

[pigeonseed]

Thanks ruud - what vocab I'm learning, not just Dutch, but unusual Dutch vegetables! I love languages actually, and so that's why I just can't resist learning them. Whether I ever use them or not, well, that's another matter!  ::) In fact it seems unlikely I will ever have a conversation which requires the words oersla or stengelsla  ;D
 
chriscross - that sounds like a good explanation. A lot of the old varieties linked with one village or one small area come from places that were perhaps more spread-out like rural France, Italy and the US.

saddad - I love jack by the hedge, it's delicious. I've never eaten skirret, but I think some seed catalogues have it. Has anyone tried skirret - is it nice?

markfield rover - that's ever so kind of you to offer, but I'd better decline. I haven't had good tomatoes because of late ripening and blight, so I might stick with tigerella next year - very early. Have you hfound blaby toms to be good?