Heirloom lettuce

Yugoslavian Red lettuce

There is a lot of talk about heirloom vegetables right now. Most people have heard about heirloom tomatoes, but there are many heirloom varieties of other vegetables. Heirloom simply means a seed that has been saved and passed down for many generations. Some heirloom varieties are over a hundred years old, or more! The reason they are so popular is because they they tend to have a better taste than seeds that have been bred for shipping and consistency of size and shape. The tomatoes your grandmother grew may have looked funny, but they tasted great. The problem was when food buyers started demanding tomatoes in January (where they are out of season in most of the US), the tomatoes had to be shipped very long distances from California, Florida or Mexico. Shipping is very hard on ripe fruit and veggies, so they are picked when they are hard and not ripe so they can be transported thousands of miles.

Over the past few decades, seed producers have bred for characteristics in plants like long shelf life and resistance to herbicides, not flavor. As a backlash, many growers are looking to heirloom seeds for more variety and flavor in their fruits and veggies.

At One Love Farm we are growing many heirloom varieties of tomatoes and lettuce greens. One of those heirloom varieties is Yugoslavian Red (pictured above). We will be sampling this lettuce as well as several others at our annual Greens Day celebration at the Richmond Farmers' Market Saturday June 24th.