Why Heirloom Tomatoes Are Trending

Heirloom vegetables, herbs, and flowers are having a moment right now! You’ll find them in most top restaurants and sitting supreme in your local market but they’re not a new thing- in fact they’ve come to us from the past. What are they and what do they mean for our health?

- Keith Culhane

The seeds are what make an heirloom tomato an heirloom tomato. They are passed down from season to season, taken by the farmers from the tomato plants that produced the best fruit. The seeds are open-pollinated, meaning they rely on pollination from insects or the wind. Usually, heirloom plants are grown using traditional techniques and are raised from seeds that are at least fifty years old, but many are hundreds, and a few are thousands of years old. This means that they have either never been hybridized by man, or the variety has been known, unchanged, for at least fifty years.

Why should we care how old a plant is, or whether or not man has hybridized it? Besides, say the pleasure of eating something that’s exactly the same as our ancestors ate a sort of epicurean visit to the past? There are a number of very important reasons, for ourselves for our children, and for our planet:

Heirloom plants are the opposite of GMO (genetically modified organisms) plants. They are from a “wild” stock, which means they naturally adapted to the living conditions where they grow. They did not need pesticides, hormones, chemically induced resistance to insects or the weather in fact, no interference or “help” from a man in any way. GMO plants have been artificially modified by man to become, in some way or other, more efficient, and therefore more profitable, for the person selling the food.

An heirloom vegetable, flower, or herb is completely free of any artificial modification, adapted naturally to its environment, and pure creation of nature. This makes it easier to grow in that environment, hardier, with natural disease and insect resistance, able to reproduce naturally, there are no sterile heirlooms and usually, because it needs no extra care or chemicals, cheaper and more fruitful. It is also part of a naturally occurring ecosystem, think strawberries in the forest.