Top Heirloom Gardening Choices
People grow heirloom vegetables for a single reason - they taste great. It is not right that heirlooms are prone to problems and difficult to grow. For hundreds of years people have saved seeds and have cultivated these plants and they are still grown today. Apart from the remarkable taste, most of them are disease- resistant.
Top ranking heirloom varieties.
- Cucumber - you can stake on the Lemon Cucumber. These yellow cucumbers are real treasure. You can pick them when they are small, the size of a lemon, and eat them as a fruit. No need to be peeled - the skin is thin and tender and the inside is juicy and crisp. These vegetables are suitable for a wide choice of pickles and salads.
- Bean: Romano and Blue Lake - these types are the best choice of gardeners with limited space. These are extremely prolific plants which are not fussy to grow.
- Eggplant -eggplants vary in size, taste, colour and shape. There are even types of eggplants which could be used unpeeled, like Violetta di Firenze. They love the heat and the sunlight which makes their taste really outstanding.
- Lettuce -Red Salad Bowl is the star here. Despite looking beautiful in a salad bowl, it is valued for its fresh taste and crisp leaves.
- Garlic - Hardneck varieties are very easy to grow, easy to peel and store for almost half a year. Spanish Roja is especially favoured for its taste. Softneck garlic varieties are prized for their excellent taste and the lack of unpleasant aftertaste typical for garlic. Garlic is very easy to plant with no concern for cross pollination - you just have to save the garlic bulbs for the winter and replant them in spring.
- Hot pepper- the star here are the Bulgarian carrot peppers. They hold up well in cooking and are used for a variety of pickles or just eaten raw in salads. They are not extremely hot and they resemble a small carrot in form.
- Sweet pepper -the most frequent choice of gardeners are the Italian frying type peppers Jimmy Nardello. These plants are prolific and able to produce large crops. They are bushy and tall and sometimes they need staking.
- Zucchini - these vegetables are very simple to plant and grow and with wide range application in cooking. The amazing variety of forms, colours and tastes could be compared only to that of the eggplants. The round-shaped Ronde de Nice is perfect for stuffing. It is predominantly grown for home consummation because shipping them to stores is not allowed by their tender skin.
- Melon-the leading vegetable of heirloom gardening is the Moon and Stars Watermelon. The fruit and even the leaves are dotted in light yellow. It is from where the name of the crop comes - the moon-shaped fruit and the yellow stars twinkling on it. It’s flesh is juicy and sweet.
- Tomato - there wouldn’t have been such interest in heirloom vegetable growing, if it was not for the tremendous taste of the tomatoes.
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