If you’re a lover of heirloom varieties like we are, chances are you’ve got an eye for the unique. We love adding uncommon plants to the garden that bring with them a touch of whimsy. Here are ten distinctive heirloom varieties to add to your wishlist to make next season’s garden stand out.
Grandma Nellie’s Mushroom Pole Snap Beans
These pole beans are a true treasure! Just as their name suggests, they taste a bit like mushrooms when cooked. Grandma Nellie’s are a heavy yielder and are ready to harvest in just 56 days. They’re tender when picked at around 5 inches.
The original seed for this variety came from Marge Mozelisky and was given to her by her grandmother.
Costoluto Florentino Tomato
This uniquely shaped tomato is sure to be a standout! It’s an Italian heirloom from the Tuscan region that bares 8 to 12 oz, deeply lobed, red fruits. It’s great for slicing, sauces, and making stuffed tomatoes.
It’s also a great choice if you live somewhere hot; Costoluto Florentino was one of the most heat tolerant and productive varieties in the 2011 University of Georgia trials. It also did well in the cool wet, summer we had here in Virginia in 2013.
Mrihani Basil
This ruffled basil comes from Zanzibar off the eastern coast of Africa, where it’s used in food and perfumes. Mrihani is excellent tasting, relatively mild, with notes of anise. This basil is relatively easy to grow, slow to bolt and has excellent resistance to Downey Mildew.
Lion’s Ear (Klip Dagga)
If you like the unusual and unruly, this orange monster is for you! This plant grows large and sprawling, reaching heights of 4 to 10 feet. Lion’s Ear or Klip Dagga starts blooming in late summer, producing nectar-rich, fuzzy flower tubules that leap from sharp, spiky green bracts. These orange flowers are a favorite of hummingbirds and butterflies.
The nectar of Lion’s Ear has a sweet grapefruit taste. The leaves and flowers of this plant have been used in traditional herbal medicine in Africa and India.
Lion’s ear is moderately drought tolerant and prefers well-drained soils. It’s a tender perennial and may regrow if winter lows are above 20°F.
Balik Hot Pepper
This productive pepper is named for its unique shape. Balik, pronounced BA-luck, means “fish” in Turkish. These peppers have two lobes generally resembling a fish in shape. They are sleek, crunchy, 1 to 3 inches long, and have milder heat than most Jalapeños. The plants grow about 18 inches tall.
White Wonder Watermelon
While it may not look like most watermelons you see, it’s just as good. The creamy white flesh is crisp with a fresh, sweet taste. White Wonder produces high yields of 3-10 lb icebox-size melons.
They’re rare today, but white-fleshed watermelons were popular in the 1800s. This unique white-fleshed melon is sure to be a hit at farmers’ markets or on the picnic table!
Lemon Cucumber
This unique cucumber produces seven ft. vines covered with crunchy round yellow fruits. Lemon Cucumbers are ready to harvest in about 67 days. Pick them at 1½ in. for pickling or two in. for salads. You’ll love this excellent, never-bitter, old-fashioned cucumber flavor with a hint of nuttiness.
Wonderberry (Sunberry)
These Garden Huckleberries are an interesting relative of the tomato. They grow like tomatoes, but Wonderberry is more finicky to germinate. The tiny seeds need to keep moist for a much longer period. However, they self sow readily.
Plant genius Luther Burbank developed this variety. It produces three ft. plants that yield dozens of clusters of dark, ¼ in. berries; each cluster holds 8-12 fruits. Wonderberry’s unique, huckleberry-like flavor makes for intriguing dessert fillings, jellies, and syrups!
Don’t consume the green fruits as they are likely toxic.
Erlene’s Green Cotton
This beautiful, green-colored cotton is a family heirloom from Erlene Melancon in east Texas. Erlene said that she has been spinning green cotton for years and that her grandmother loved using colored cotton in her quilts.
Erlene’s Green produces five ft. tall plants. The fibers are light olive green and can be spun off the seed. Harvest the bolls shortly after they open so that the fiber does not fade in the sunlight. Once it is spun and washed, it turns yellowish-green.
Watercress
Rich in vitamins and used in salads for mustard-like flavor, this green stands out for the way it grows. As the name suggests, Watercress should be transplanted into a stream of cool, clean water. Alternatively, you can grow it in pots adding fresh water daily or in trays with just enough water to float the crowns. Watercress needs partial shade in hot weather.
Adding these or some of the other unusual heirlooms we carry is a great way to make your garden uniquely yours. What unique heirlooms are your favorites? Share your garden with us on Facebook or on Instagram using the hashtag #southernexposureseed and tagging us @southernexposureseed.
It can be easy to grow the whole rainbow in flower gardens, but you can do it with vegetables too! Growing a rainbow vegetable garden is fun whether you’re 5 or 55!
It can also be educational for children. It’s a fantastic opportunity to discuss light and rainbows, nutrients, and eating a balanced diet, as well as heirloom seeds!
Here are a few varieties you could use to grow your own rainbow.
This gorgeous red dent corn is a Virginia variety that dates back to 1845! The stalks grow 10-12 ft. tall and produce two ears per stalk. Bloody Butcher is great for flour, cereal, or roasting ears and makes excellent cornbread.
An Italian heirloom from the Tuscany region, this tomato was one of the most heat tolerant and productive varieties in a 2011 U. of Georgia trial. It’s richly flavorful for sauces and stuffers or just slicing!
Prior to the Civil War, one of the most commonly grown and best-documented tomato varieties in the country. Listed in the 1843 Shaker seed catalog at New Lebanon, NY, the Large Red tomato is vital for antebellum garden recreations and historic farms. Fearing Burr in his 1865 book stated, “From the time of the introduction of the tomato to its general use in this country, the Large Red was almost the only kind cultivated, or even commonly known.”
We introduced Large Red for historical reasons, but we were surprised and pleased during our 1996 trials to find that it became a favorite of a local restaurant’s chef.
Always a favorite at our tomato tastings, Matt’s Wild is from seed collected in the wild near Hidalgo in eastern Mexico. The plants bear loads of intensely sweet, tart, and flavorful, ½ in. deep red cherry tomatoes. They are vigorous, disease-resistant, and sprawling, and self-sow readily.
The Detroit Dark Red Beet dates back to 1892 and was developed from the popular variety Early Blood Turnip. It’s a widely adapted, very popular dark red beet that’s resistant to Downey Mildew.
NASA chose this stunning red lettuce for space farming. In August 2015, Outredgeous became the first vegetable grown and eaten on the International Space Station!
It was bred by Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed. Outredgeous has intensely dark red, slightly ruffled leaves that form loose heads.
A beautiful addition to any garden, Ruby Red is worth growing for the color alone. The foliage is dark green on ruby-red stalks. It’s more frost tolerant than other chards, and the plants are especially striking in cold weather.
An excellent carrot variety, Danvers is widely adapted, productive, and heat-tolerant. The dark-orange roots grow 6-7 inches long and 2 inches at the shoulder, tapering to a blunt point. They’re especially suited to growing in clay soil, and the strong tops aid harvesting.
Danvers is a good storage variety. These and other carrots can also be dehydrated and ground to create natural food coloring powder.
These 1-2 lb orange beefsteaks are delicious and perfect for a tomato sandwich! This variety is a West Virginia family heirloom that was passed to Darrell Kellogg of Redford, MI, who selected and named it.
This pre-1700 cultivar of Native American origin is still the most popular variety of large Halloween pumpkins. Also called Big Tom or the Yankee Cow Pumpkin, it produces 15-20 lbs fruits that are bright orange, slightly ribbed, and vary in shape and size.
It’s good for canning, baking, and pies. Try making pumpkin spice waffles!
Roughly translated as “Southern Unrefined,” Cateto Sulino produces ears up to 8 in. on 5-8 ft. stalks. The kernels are such a bright orange, inside and out, that Farm and Sparrow bakery in North Carolina says it’s caused customers to ask why they’d put cheddar cheese in the bread they’d baked using it!
Cateto Sulino is a blend of Argentine and Uruguayan landraces, selected in Tennessee by Joshua Gochenour for insect resistance, virus resistance, and bright orange color that indicates high carotene content. You can find more information on the history of this corn in its product description.
One of our personal favorites for its rose orange color and rewarding flavor, it produces beautiful persimmon-colored, rose-orange fruits. The fruits are typically 12-16 oz though early ones can weigh up to 2 lbs. The plants are well-branched, vigorous vined, and Late Blight Tolerant.
Renick Yellow offers high yields of small melons with sweet yellow flesh. It has much tastier rinds than most watermelons have. This unique variety comes from the Renick Family of Ashville, OH, via Linda Roberts, Bill Ellis, and SSE. It was introduced in 2020 by SESE.
Introduced by SESE 2018, this pepper is fruity and flavorful, with medium-high heat. It’s a heavy yielder and a favorite in our 2016 pepper taste test. Aji Chinchi Amarillo ripens from green to golden yellow.
Aji Amarillo peppers are a key ingredient in Peruvian cuisine. This rare “Chinchi” strain bears smaller peppers, about 3 × ½ inches, much earlier in the season than the standard Aji Amarillo. Thanks to Chris Watson for providing our seedstock.
This variety grows wild in Veracruz, Mexico! It produces ½-inch pale yellow fruits on vigorous plants. The fruits are very sweet with unusual flavor overtones, including notes of vanilla. It was a favorite in our 2015 tomato tastings.
Our earliest tomatillo and one of our sweetest, it produces heavy yields of 1½ inch cheerful yellow fruits plus an occasional cheerful purple fruit. It comes from the collection of Dr. John Wyche of Hugo, OK, one of SSE’s earliest members.
Lemon Cucumber is an excellent, never-bitter, old-fashioned cucumber flavor with a hint of nuttiness. It produces 7-foot vines covered with crunchy round yellow fruits. Harvest cucumbers at 1½ inches for pickling or 2 inches for salads.
Buhl produces 6-7 foot stalks that bear two ears of amazingly uniform sweet yellow corn of superior quality. You’ll have to fight the raccoons to enjoy it! It comes from Sandhill Preservation Center via SSE member B.W. White 1981.
A heavy yielder of light yellow pods, this bean has the unusual characteristic of tasting somewhat like mushrooms when cooked. Tender when picked at 5 inches, this bean is a true treasure. The original seed came from Marge Mozelisky, given to her by her grandmother.
The emerald flesh of Green Zebra has good flavor. The 3-5 oz fruits ripen to yellow-gold with alternating dark-green zebra-like stripes and are gorgeous sliced or in salads. Well branched vines provide good foliage cover and have some resistance to septoria leaf spot.
This variety was developed in 1985 by Tom Wagner and was chosen by Alice Waters for the famous California restaurant Chez Panisse.
This is one of the best-tasting green tomatoes anywhere! It produces 8-12 oz fruits with green flesh and green-yellow skin with amber to red color on the blossom end.
Cherokee Green was selected from Cherokee Purple tomato by North Carolina grower Craig LeHoullier. It’s an Open Source Seed Initiative variety.
A highly productive variety, Cisneros Grande produces large fruits up to 2½ inches making for easy harvest and processing. Most fruits ripen to yellow, while some stay green throughout. Fruits average about the size of a golf ball.
For a tart salsa, use the bright green fruits while the husk is still green; for a sweet and fruity flavor, wait until the husk dries. Plants grow 4-6 feet tall.
Marketmore 76 is an excellent high-yielding, 8-inch, bitter-resistant cucumber. This dependable variety grows well in the Mid-Atlantic region as well as the North and is a good choice for market and home gardeners alike. The dark green fruits are white-spined.
Black-Seeded Simpson dates back to 1850 but is still a popular variety! This old standard is one of the earliest loose-leaf types. It’s good for early spring planting for the first lettuce of the season, but quality declines in heat or late plantings.
A 1920 Ohio heirloom, this variety was selected from “Rotten Clarage.” It’s a highly uniform, semi-dent corn. Blue Clarage produces solid blue, two 8-10 inch ears on each sturdy 10 foot stalk. It has excellent Corn Rootworm resistance and tolerates crowding and smut better than many other open-pollinated corns.
Originally developed as a meal and feed corn, it has a higher sugar content than most dent corns and may be used fresh in the milk stage. As cornmeal, it has a sweet flavor. It mills easily and makes speckled blue and white flour, but white flour is obtained if the bran is sifted out. Older farmers who use this corn to feed chickens claim that the chickens will eat more, lay more eggs, and put on more meat.
A beautiful blue and white corn with a red cob, Cherokee White Eagle occasionally produces an all-blue ear. Some people can see the image of a white eagle in the kernels! This variety produces 8-10 foot tall stalks, mostly two ears/stalk, and 6-7 inch stocky ears. It was the first variety deposited in the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank!
Borage is a bushy herb with bright blue edible flowers. It’s a good choice for attracting bumblebees and other pollinators to garden plots. The plants fade in the deep summer heat and humidity but can be reseeded for late summer/early fall harvest.
The leaves can be used sparingly to add a cucumber-like flavor in salads or for flavoring cool drinks. Medicinally, the seeds contain over 20% GLA (gamma-Linolenic acid), which is extracted and used commercially as an economical substitute for evening primrose oil.
Vates Collards have stunning large blue-green leaves with good flavor. It’s slow bolting and produces high-quality frost-resistant greens especially suited to the Mid-Atlantic and the South. Plants grow up to 32 inches tall.
Developed in 1957, these productive purple beans have a natural blanching indicator. When prepared for freezing, the purple pods blanch to green after 2 minutes of boiling. They’re easy to pick too! The purple pods are easily visible against the green foliage.
The plants have short runners and need either wide row spacing or a fence for climbing. They produce 5-inch pods that are slightly curved. They’re very meaty and flavorful, great for vegetable soup. The buff-colored seeds germinate well in cool soil.
Red Acre produces beautiful, round, 5-7 inch reddish-purple heads that weigh about 3 lbs. The heads may sunburn in hot weather, so best for early spring and fall crops.
It adds festive color to coleslaw and is an excellent storage variety with resistance to cabbage yellows.
Did you know that carrots were predominantly purple for the first few hundred years of their managed cultivation? Yellow and purple carrots were first recorded in Asia Minor in the 10th century.
Cosmic Purple produces purple-skinned 7″ carrots, orange and yellow flesh. They’re spicier than regular carrots; great for adding color to salads and stir-fries.
Black Brandywine is a stunning tomato to add to your garden! It produces large dusky rose/purple fruit with rich, sweet flavor and good yields.
Black Brandywine is a 1920s Pennsylvania heirloom. It’s a cross between Brandywine and Fejee Improved tomato. William Woys Weaver’s grandfather obtained seed from the breeder, Dr. Harold E. Martin.
This Taiwanese variety produces shiny deep lavender fruits that can grow to 11 inches or longer. If plants are kept upright, the fruits can be kept straight for over ¾ of the length, making for impressive filets.
Ping Tung Long is a disease-resistant and high-yielding variety, producing over 20 fruits per plant in our garden. It also has excellent flavor.
The Purple Bumble Bee Cherry Tomato produces striking 1½ inch cherries, dusky purple with vivid lime-green streaks. They have a nice balance of sweetness and flavor. The tall, vigorous plants bear til frost. This tomato is widely adapted and has good splitting resistance.
This small kernelled variety makes surprisingly large pops, yielding a low hull/ corn ratio. It has great flavor and is highly ornamental. The 5-7 inch ears have many shiny colors, including red, blue, orange, white, and yellow. Stalks grow 6-8 feet tall.
The seedstock came from Merlyn Niedens, combining several strains of long ear Cherokee popcorn sent by Carl Barnes of Turpin, OK. Carl has helped save many of the Cherokee corns that came west over the Trail of Tears.
Rainbow Chard must grow if you’re looking for colorful plants! Originally from Australia, a multicolored rainbow of plants with stems in shades of red, orange, pink, yellow, and creamy white.
As we begin to plan and gear up for the 2018 season we’re reminded of the importance of keeping heirloom varieties alive. At Southern Exposure we define heirlooms as open pollinated varieties developed prior to 1940. While some believe that hybrids and GMOs are the answer to our current agricultural dilemmas we know that these old varieties hold incredible value and potential.
Diversity
As growers have shifted away from heirlooms we’ve seen drastic decline in crop diversity in the United States. Keeping heirlooms alive means increased diversity which in turn increases resilience. When you only grow one crop variety it only takes one problem to wipe out the entire crop. Planting multiple varieties helps to ensure your crops survival.
A diverse source of food is also better for our health. You may have heard that you should always try to eat a variety of vegetables but that’s also true for specific varieties. The purple, yellow, green, and multi colored heirloom tomatoes all have different nutrients than the couple of red varieties offered at the grocery store. The same is true for other crops as well.
Adaptability
As heirlooms have been handed down from generation to generation they’ve become adapted to specific places and climates. They’ve evolved natural defenses to certain diseases, pests, and weather patterns. These defenses mean organic farmers and gardeners can beat their local problems without resorting to chemicals.
They can also continue to adapt to different localities. If you save seed from your favorite corn variety year after year, always picking the best and most productive plants to save seed from you will adapt that variety more and more to your climate and challenges.
Flavor
Depending on who you talk to this may just be heirlooms best characteristic. Heirlooms are often the tastiest produce because seed varieties that didn’t taste great just weren’t saved. Heirlooms are those lovely varieties that were bred by small farmers around the world before they had to worry about choosing varieties that kept for weeks and weeks or shipped well.
History
Each heirloom variety is a little piece of living history. They tell the story of the people that grew them and the place that they farmed. Keeping these seeds alive maintains a connection to cultural roots, ancestral ways, and the earth.
Having a local food culture not only has an impact on the environment but on people’s health. If people once again had a tradition of growing and eating specific heirlooms they would be less likely to replace important customs with proccessed foods.
Independence
The last great thing about heirlooms is that they allow farmers and gardeners independence. Because heirlooms can be saved from year to year growers don’t have to rely on big companies to supply their gardens each year. They’re financially independent.
At SESE we believe these traits give heirlooms immense value. They’re important for growers that want independent, resilient farms and homesteads. They’re perfect for the chef who wants to create healthy dishes with unique, rich flavors. They’re the seeds that keep us connected.
Hybrids certainly have their charm but when you’re selecting seeds this year consider adding a few heirlooms to your garden. Whether it’s for their flavor, charm, or usefulness we know you’ll fall in love.
These pole beans are a true treasure! Just as their name suggests, they taste a bit like mushrooms when cooked. Grandma Nellie’s are a heavy yielder and are ready to harvest in just 56 days. They’re tender when picked at around 5 inches. 
This uniquely shaped tomato is sure to be a standout! It’s an Italian heirloom from the Tuscan region that bares 8 to 12 oz, deeply lobed, red fruits. It’s great for slicing, sauces, and making stuffed tomatoes.
This ruffled basil comes from Zanzibar off the eastern coast of Africa, where it’s used in food and perfumes. Mrihani is excellent tasting, relatively mild, with notes of anise. This basil is relatively easy to grow, slow to bolt and has excellent resistance to Downey Mildew. 
If you like the unusual and unruly, this orange monster is for you! This plant grows large and sprawling, reaching heights of 4 to 10 feet. Lion’s Ear or Klip Dagga starts blooming in late summer, producing nectar-rich, fuzzy flower tubules that leap from sharp, spiky green bracts. These orange flowers are a favorite of hummingbirds and butterflies.
This productive pepper is named for its unique shape. Balik, pronounced BA-luck, means “fish” in Turkish. These peppers have two lobes generally resembling a fish in shape. They are sleek, crunchy, 1 to 3 inches long, and have milder heat than most Jalapeños. The plants grow about 18 inches tall.
While it may not look like most watermelons you see, it’s just as good. The creamy white flesh is crisp with a fresh, sweet taste. White Wonder produces high yields of 3-10 lb icebox-size melons. 
This unique cucumber produces seven ft. vines covered with crunchy round yellow fruits. Lemon Cucumbers are ready to harvest in about 67 days. Pick them at 1½ in. for pickling or two in. for salads. You’ll love this excellent, never-bitter, old-fashioned cucumber flavor with a hint of nuttiness. 
These Garden Huckleberries are an interesting relative of the tomato. They grow like tomatoes, but Wonderberry is more finicky to germinate. The tiny seeds need to keep moist for a much longer period. However, they self sow readily. 
This beautiful, green-colored cotton is a family heirloom from Erlene Melancon in east Texas. Erlene said that she has been spinning green cotton for years and that her grandmother loved using colored cotton in her quilts.
Rich in vitamins and used in salads for mustard-like flavor, this green stands out for the way it grows. As the name suggests, Watercress should be transplanted into a stream of cool, clean water. Alternatively, you can grow it in pots adding fresh water daily or in trays with just enough water to float the crowns. Watercress needs partial shade in hot weather.
