Tradition, taste and desire in the vegetable plot

Heirloom vegetables are this year’s fashion among those gardeners who keep up with such things. The seed of tomatoes with names like Green Zebra, Broad Ripple, Purple Calabash and Tigerella is available in the nursery trade. All are obsolete varieties salvaged from near extinction by organizations such as Seed Savers, a North American firm which is said to have 3,000 tomato varieties growing in the back paddock. It isn’t just old varieties of tomatoes that are being saved, although they make up the biggest number. I’ve just been admiring the pods forming on my heirloom Dutch purple-podded peas, about as colourful a vegetable in flowers and fruit as one could ever see. Its peas are for dry use, and it isn’t a competitor with the commercial broadacre- grown product; but probably no one is growing heirloom vegetables because of their productive capacity.