One of the biggest trends to recently hit gardening, aside from organic gardening, is the use of heirloom seeds.

That may sound like an intimidating task best left for die-hard gardeners, but it’s something anyone can do, and the fruit — or vegetables — of your labor will make you glad you gave it a try.

What, exactly, is an heirloom vegetable? There are probably as many definitions as there are vegetable varieties, but Bill Pioch of Nature’s Heirlooms Farm in Lapeer defined it easily.

“An heirloom vegetable is one that comes from a seed that has been saved and protected from genetic diversity for over 40 years,” he said. “And we’ve been losing that to bigger farms.”

In their place, hybrid seeds have been taking over. Hybrid seeds are created by crossing two selected varieties for a specific purpose, like a sturdier plant or bigger crop yield. Heirloom vegetables, on the other hand, are old-time varieties, the seeds of which are saved and handed down through generations of families.

Virginia Knag of Thread Creek Farm in Grand Blanc enjoys some of the same fruits and vegetables grown by her great-great-grandmother.

She said her family has divided the rhubarb grown by earlier generations as well.

“My grandmother used to say that rhubarb is like a spring tonic,” Knag said. “Although it’s a vegetable it has fruit traits. We have several kinds of daffodils that she started, and a peony plant that has extremely strong stems. It doesn’t have any of the disease problems that peonies are prone to. We call it Hannah’s Favorite, after my great-great-grandmother.”

According to Knag, heirloom plants “possess a certain amount of traits the owner warranted saving. It wasn’t always an uncommon thing; people saved their seeds,” she said. “If you purchased the seeds to start with and saved the seed, you wouldn’t have to purchase them again. If you saved the seed from those plants in your crop that are particularly robust and healthy, you will basically have a genome-type plant, particularly adapted to your own specified growing environment. That’s definitely a benefit as I see it.”

Getting started

Check out Web sites like www.seedsavers.org.

“They will tell you what countries particular vegetables came from, and they’ll tell you stories about them,” said Knag. “That's particularly interesting to me, because I live in a place where my ancestor lived.”

Perhaps the most common heirloom is the tomato.

“Tomatoes were grown in many parts of the world,” said Knag. “As ethnic communities established themselves here, they brought seeds from their old country that had a particular taste and trait. It was part of their heritage.”

Pioch said the best way to start growing your own heirlooms is to buy at least two or three varieties of a vegetable — a tomato for instance. Once they’re grown and eaten, save the seeds.

Saving tomato seeds is easier than saving some others.

“Squeeze the seeds into a jar, adding a little water until they ferment, causing a nasty-smelling foam,” he explained. “That takes about 10 days. Put them onto a paper plate and dry them for about 30 days. From there you can put them into an envelope to save for next planting season.”

Other seeds that are easy to save are beans and peas. Pioch said they can be left in their pods and cracked open for planting in the spring. Lettuce is also very easy to seed, as are pumpkins and squash.

The only tricky part of growing heirloom vegetables is that you can’t always be sure of your success.

“They have to be open-pollinated, meaning it comes true to plant when reproduced,” Pioch explained.

The problem with hybrids, on the other hand, is when they’re cross-pollinated, you can’t be sure of what you’ll get as an end result,” Pioch said. “Some, however, like the Burpee Big Boy tomato has been successfully cross-pollinated for a great tomato.”

Once they take off, however, they don’t require any special treatment.

“Grow them the same as you would any other vegetable, that’s it,” Pioch said. He recommends using compost and manure aged for one or two years as fertilizer.

The fruits of your labor

The biggest benefit of growing heirlooms is, hands down, their taste and variety.

“They come in unique tastes, shapes and sizes,” said Pioch. “A tomato can come in bright orange golds and burst like the Northern Lights. And it has a great tomato flavor. We all know Roma tomatoes, but look for the San Remo or San Marzano. They’re more like a tropical fruit.”

After years of creating hybrids, taste and nutrient have been sacrificed. Hybrids have been bred to be picked green and gas-ripened for shipping. But instead of the old-fashioned juicy, tangy taste, we get a bland impostor.

In addition to easy shipping, higher crop yields have possibly compromised nutrition. Research, as cited on Seedsaver.org, has shown that newer vegetables and grains are significantly less nutritious than their heirloom counterparts.

“Every time we’ve messed with Mother Nature,” Pioch said, “we’ve been haunted by it.”