Foodist: Cookbook Reviews

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History

By William Woys Weaver

William Woys Weaver has written an important book in Heirloom Vegetable Gardening - important for the gardener, the kitchen gardener, the cook, the historian, and any American who might wonder what one's forebears were up to when they sat down to eat. What was the food on their table? Where did it come from? How did they get it? All these questions are addressed in Weaver's elegant prose.

But there's another side to the story as well, and Weaver meets his reader there, too. And that is the question where is food headed, and what's an individual to do?

We have seen the rise of hybrid crops in the years since World War II. They are good for the seed business in that the grower can't let a few plants grow to seed, save the seed, then plant that seed next season. Hybridized plants don't yield seed that's true to the character of the plant. So the gardener has to return to the seed rack year after year. And so too does the farmer. Buying seed on a commercial level is a big deal, as is growing enough of it to meet the market. A lot of tillable land in South America isn't growing food for hungry South Americans, but growing corn seed for American farmers. The biggest use of corn in this country is animal feed. Not many hungry South Americans get to eat corn-fed American beef and pork.

In one sense, he who controls seed controls food. Or he who owns seed owns food, and the highest bidder takes all.

Heirloom seed, then, is more than a trinket and curiosity from the past. It represents the chance of survival in the future. Should an as yet unknown plant virus come along and take out the American hybrid corn crop, something that has in fact come close to happening, it's the genetic diversity available in heirloom, open-pollinated seeds that will save the bacon. Governments maintain plant gene banks. But individuals can do much the same, and authors like Weaver show the way.

What Weaver injects into the tale is the incredible pleasure that comes of growing heirloom crops and saving seed, and of eating from a table laden with 17th and 18th century foods. He shares his own history and his family's history, all of it tied up in gardening and sharing and caring - and this lovely book is an extension that can reach into any garden being dug today. In other words, don't hesitate with this tittle whether or not your interest is driven by history, science, gardening, or a rich enthusiasm for constructive ways the individual can affect the future.
Schuyler Ingle ...