Heirloom Vegetables with Simon Rickard

Heirloom Vegetables: A Guide to Their History and Varieties is a new book by Simon Rickard. Simon is best known as the former head gardener at the Diggers Club, in which role he oversaw the magnificent gardens of Heronswood and the Garden of St Erth until 2009. Until 2012 he collaborated with restaurateur Annie Smithers, designing and operating her kitchen garden in country Victoria. These days, Simon works as a garden designer, gardening coach and garden communicator.

Simon states: ‘Heirloom vegetables were a revelation to me. Right off the bat they appealed to my sense of aesthetics and my love of the quirky and, above all, they appealed to my tastebuds. But the more I got to know heirlooms the more I began to appreciate them for their stories. It turns out that their stories are our stories, too. Thousands of years of human history are written in their genes if we only know how to look for it.’

Simon Rickard

Turk's turban pumpkin

Heirloom vegetables have been enjoying a renaissance since the 1980s. With their often unusual appearance, surprising flavours and multifarious culinary uses, heirlooms have become the darlings of the horticultural and foodie sets. They have breathed new life into gardening and cookery, encouraging a whole new generation to take up those noble pursuits.

These days, heirloom vegetables are so frequently encountered at farmers’ markets and on the tables of fine dining establishments that it is hard to imagine we nearly lost them completely. Yet until their revival three decades ago, these precious horticultural jewels teetered on the edge of extinction.

Mantovano Cabbage

Since the 1950s our society has abdicated responsibility for its food supply to agribusinesses and middlemen. It was their business models which came to dictate which vegetable varieties farmers would be allowed to grow and which varieties people would be able to eat. Such decisions were taken out of the hands of food producers and consumers. As a result, vegetable breeding businesses became obsessed with homogeneity. Seed companies bred dozens of new hybrid vegetables each year but, far from giving consumers more choice, they began to converge on a single point of uniformity.

Many of us remember the days, not so long ago, when you could buy any kind of tomato as long as it was red, round and tasteless, any kind of lettuce as long as it was ‘Iceberg’, and any kind of cucumber as long as it was eight inches long and the prescribed shade of dark green.

Sweet pea flower

Then heirloom vegetables came along and reawakened our jaded eyes and palates. Far from being alarmed, we were fascinated by them. Heirlooms reminded us that food could be a complete sensory experience. Heirloom vegetables were beautiful to behold and delicious in unique ways; they had unusual names and interesting stories to tell about their provenance or culinary use. Heirloom vegetables snapped us out of our stupor. They woke us up to what was happening to our food under our very noses. So what exactly are heirloom vegetables and why are they special?

Loosely speaking, heirloom vegetables are varieties which pre-date WWII. As the name suggests, heirloom vegetables have been handed down through families or communities for generations. Just like your nanna’s wedding ring or your granddad’s fob watch, or a beloved local custom like the Birdsville Races or the Melbourne Cup, heirloom vegetables are cherished as precious cultural touchstones. They mean something to the people who grow and eat them. Heirloom vegetable varieties have been selected over many generations with two aims in mind. First, they have been selected for their culinary attributes: their flavours, textures and usefulness for specific purposes in the kitchen, such as bottling, drying, and eating fresh. Naturally, different cultures have their own culinary preferences, and this in itself has driven an enormous amount of diversity.

The second attribute for which heirlooms have been selected is to grow well under particular climatic conditions. For example, the onion Tropeana Rossa Lunga was selected in Sicily to thrive in the hot, dry conditions there, while Ailsa Craig was selected in Scotland to cope with that country’s cool, wet summers. This means that there is an heirloom variety suited to just about any set of local conditions.

Jaune Flamme is a tomato that ripens reliably in cool summer districts. Gold Rush is a lettuce that resists bolting in hot, dry climates. Modern hybrid vegetables are by their nature one-size-fits-all (or, perhaps more accurately, one-size-fits-none).

Violetta artichoke

For example, the French like small, crisp radishes for eating fresh while the Japanese like huge, solid radishes for pickling and cooking. On the other hand, the French like enormous pumpkins while the Japanese prefer pumpkins that fit in the palm of your hand. Heirloom vegetables are exquisitely beautiful, sublimely delicious, fascinating and unique; one can easily run out of superlatives when describing these masterpieces of human ingenuity. Far from being moribund museum pieces, heirloom vegetables are still being created by a vibrant network of individual breeders and organisations around the world. Vegetables and people have come a long way together, and I believe we have a lot further yet to go.

Viroflay spinach 

Heirloom Vegetables: A Guide to Their History and Varieties by Simon Rickard