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What Is an Heirloom?

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Almost all American vegetables were brought here by immigrants. By now some have spent many generations with one family on one plot of land. They have become heirlooms--living heirlooms that adapt in an elegant way to their own microclimate. Imagine, for example, that your great-grandfather ate a particularly huge, particularly sweet tomato of a variety pollinated by the wind and insects. He saved the seeds to plant the following year. He and his children and grandchildren repeated this process for a hundred years or so. The result? More big, sweet tomatoes and fewer small, bitter ones--and heirloom seeds worth saving.