The interest in heirloom vegetable gardening is gaining in popularity in recent years.
In the past, all the seed of plants and vegetables that were grown every year were from seeds that had been collected in previous years.
These seeds were planted the next year and this was the method that was applied every year to grow the same variety of plants.
However, with the advent of genetic engineering nowadays plant and vegetable seeds are produced in mass quantities and most gardeners no longer save their seeds.
But the old method of seed collecting is still being continued by a few, and gaining in popularity.
So what characteristic should a plant have to make it liable to become an heirloom plant? To start, it must be open pollinated.
It also should have a long history of use and have been passed down through many generations.
For those with an interest in trying some of the historical vegetable varieties, there are many varieties of heirloom vegetables available for you to grow in your garden.
You usually will not find these vegetables in your local grocery store or your supermarket.
Part of the reason they are often not available in stores, is that many heirloom varieties do not store or ship well, and are best eaten fresh.
However, they also tend to have much better flavor than those grown for commercial distribution, and are often more nutritious as well.
There are many heirloom vegetable seeds available in the market.
For example, there are dozens of heirloom dried bean varieties you can try in your garden.
Another popular heirloom vegetable variety to try are lemon cucumbers.
These are yellow in color and are sized as small as a lemon.
They can be consumed just like a fruit and are extremely tasty and juicy to eat.
Excellent for salad preparation, the lemon cucumber is just amazing.
There are also some great heirloom eggplant varieties - Violetta di Firenze is one fantastic option, but you will find heirloom eggplants in a wide variety of colors and sizes.
This variety of vegetable is only available through heirloom gardening.
Their is also a great selection of heirloom peppers to choose from - the Bulgarian carrot Peppers is one of my favorite, but you will be able to grow many different peppers from central and south America that you can not normally find in supermarkets.
However, probably the most popular heirlooms are found in the tomato family.
There are hundreds of heirloom tomato varieties worth trying, everything from Lillian's Yellow Tomatoes to the Brandywines.
If you were to grow just one heirloom vegetable variety in your garden, you should definitely consider growing one of the Brandywine varieties of tomato.
The taste of a Brandywine tomato simply cannot be beat.
These are just a few examples of the thousands of heirloom vegetable varieties available.
If you are interested in learning more, there are many organizations set up in the United States dedicated to preserving heirloom seed varieties.