What Are Heirloom Seeds?

Heirloom seeds, to me, are simply seeds of plants that started the "seed - plant - seed" cycle before seeds were genetically modified (had their DNA altered by genetic engineering techniques).

Seed Savers Exchange, an almost 40-year-old organization devoted to preserving heirloom plants through regeneration and seed exchange, defines "heirloom" as "open-pollinated varieties that are more than 50 years old and have been handed down through generations."

Per the Daily Green, "Heirloom vegetables sound fancy but are simply the kinds of vegetables everyone ate before the days of mass-produced produce. These are veggies that look and taste the way nature intended..."

Anyone who has tasted a homegrown heirloom tomato can't deny that it has a superior taste to a mass-produced, store-bought variety, which is cross-bred to crapola. Its shelf-life may have increased by a week or two, saving the grocer a few pennies, but the supermarket tomato now tastes a little like a red rubber ball.

The case for genetically modified (GMO) produce is potentially much worse than being palate-displeasing...we think. I say it that way because long-term testing of GMO produce is incomplete. After all, GMO foods were only put on the market in 1996! There are no long-term studies to definitively tell us how these laboratory-altered products affect the human body, and yet, by 2010, per the National Agricultural Statistics Board, 93% of the planted area of soybeans, 93% of cotton, 86% of corn grown in the United States were GMO. More on GMO in a separate post. For now my focus is on heirloom, and out I go to water my little planted treasures.

Sources:

"Genetically modified food," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food.

"Heirloom Seeds," The Daily Green, http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/definitions/heirloom-seeds.

Seed Savers Exchange, http://www.seedsavers.org.