History, Nostalgia, and So Much More
—by Emma Onawa, HPC Member
Getting that gardening itch, now that the holidays are over and winter is soon to wane? Just imagine: purple, yellow, green, and orange cherry tomatoes, white eggplant, deep green watermelon with star- and moon-shaped speckles, black-eyed susans and petunias that grow on long vines, beans with purplegreen leaves and rose-colored pods, ribbed and striped slicing tomatoes, white sunflowers, and bushy, globe-shaped basil. With heirlooms you can add beautiful, interesting, and tasty varieties to your garden, preserve old and rare cultivars of plants, and fight agribusiness and corporate greed and control—all at the same time.
Interest in heirlooms and their preservation is increasing as gardeners become more aware of their value, politics, and availability. A relatively small variety of seeds have come to dominate the world seed market, particularly with the development of hybrids in the last 50 or so years. For example, in the early 1900s there were approximately 7000 varieties of apples in the United States; now there are fewer than 1000. A handful of large agricultural and chemical companies has taken control of the world’s seed supplies, to everyone’s detriment. These companies control our food supply by forcing farmers to abandon ancient practices of saving their own seeds from year to year, in favor of buying mass-produced hybrids every year. The stakes are enormous.
