More Thought While Weeding: Take your garden back to the future with heirlooms

Rattlesnake pole beans, Bull’s Blood beet, Bloomsdale spinach, Ailsa Craig onions, French Cheese pumpkins, Moon and Stars melons and lettuces like Freckles, Deer’s Tongue and Marvel of Four Seasons. The names read as a litany of both the past, and a measure of the resurgence in popularity of the plant varieties of yesteryear.

And then there are the legendary heirloom tomatoes that have made a name for themselves. The flavor and texture of a well-ripened Pineapple, with its low-acid, marbled flesh, or the crimson heart of a Black Krim are superlative, and key to their role in the farm to table movement. They are in a different class than their conventional supermarket counterparts, which are frequently picked green, gassed with ethylene to develop the red color, and refrigerated to keep them fresh.