The Magic of Heirloom Tomatoes: The Crown Jewel Farmers Never Sell
Have you ever wondered what tomatoes farmers actually put on their own dinner tables? The answer might surprise you. As one farmer said of the Hungarian Heart: “they’re very hard to grow actually. But when they grow well, they’re amazingly delicious.” These aren’t the picture-perfect tomatoes you see at the grocery store.
Farmers know something the rest of us are just discovering – the best tomatoes rarely make it to market. When you bite into something like an heirloom tomato, it’s clear that generations of farmers and gardeners saved those seeds for a reason: Many heirlooms are known for their intense or unique flavor. “Growers who produce our seeds are stewarding those old varieties that taste like home,” says Taylor, who adds that immigrants and refugees in a new place often find the flavors of their culture in heirloom seeds.
Unlike newer crops, heirlooms have never been bred to be easy to ship. They’re best harvested fresh at home or enjoyed from a local market. This is exactly why farmers keep the Cherokee Purples, Brandywines, and Black Krims for themselves – these varieties simply can’t survive the journey from farm to supermarket shelf.
Tender Lettuce Varieties That Never See Store Shelves
Walk through a farmer’s personal garden and you’ll discover lettuces that would make any salad lover weep with joy. There are many types of lettuce, but for all of them, you want to choose intact leaves that aren’t wilting. The problem is, by the time most lettuce reaches consumers, it’s already begun its slow decline.
Small farmers grow butter lettuce varieties like Tom Thumb and Tennis Ball, which have leaves so delicate they bruise at the slightest touch. These heirloom varieties have flavor profiles that range from sweet and nutty to peppery and complex – nothing like the bland iceberg that dominates grocery stores. The leaves are thin as tissue paper and wilt within hours of harvest.
The key to a delicious salad is fresh leafy greens, and this Oxo Good Grips GreenSaver is the best place to store them. While glass storage containers can also keep produce fresh, the airtight-or-breathable technology of this keeper makes it ideal for storing greens, berries and any other foods that require special handling. But farmers don’t need fancy containers – they simply pick and eat the same day.
Sweet Corn Varieties That Put Grocery Store Corn to Shame
There’s a reason for that old saying about having the water boiling before you pick your corn. The old saying that you should “have a pot of water boiling before you pick your corn” used to apply to the old types of corn. This is because the corn would convert half of its sugar to starch within 24 hours of harvest. Modern types of corn start with 2-3 times more sugar in the first place and it converts to starch very slowly.
Farmers still grow those old-fashioned varieties for their own tables because they know something most people have forgotten – modern corn might be sweeter, but it lacks the complex, nutty corn flavor that made this crop a staple for thousands of years. The tradeoff has been more sugar or less corn flavor. The only type of corn you can buy, even at a farmers market, is one of the modern varieties. If you want that old timey corn flavor, you’ll have to grow it yourself, or hunt around for a specialty seller.
Varieties like Glass Gem and Painted Mountain corn offer flavors you simply cannot purchase anywhere. These corns are grown for grinding into meal, roasting, or eating fresh when young, and they taste like childhood memories of what corn used to be.
Fragile Stone Fruits That Never Make the Journey
The peaches, apricots, and plums that farmers eat at home would make your mouth water and ruin you for store-bought fruit forever. Ripe apricots are plump, firm (but with a soft give), and uniform in color – no green tinge. But here’s the catch – truly ripe stone fruit is impossibly fragile.
Farmers grow varieties like Honey Drop pears and Red Haven peaches that must be eaten within hours of picking. These fruits are so juicy they practically burst in your hands, with flavors so intense they seem almost perfumed. Ready-to-eat mangoes will be soft and smell very fragrant. The same principle applies to stone fruits – when they’re ready, they won’t survive shipping.
Even in large grocery stores, there’s often no more than 10 types of apple for sale, but in the mid-1800s there were thousands of apple varieties being grown in the U.S. Many of those apples and other plant and livestock varieties have gone extinct. When that happens, we lose the flavor and unique traits of those varieties. Farmers are the guardians of these disappearing tastes.
Specialty Peppers with Flavor Profiles You Can’t Find Anywhere
Most people think they don’t like peppers until they taste what farmers grow for themselves. I don’t prefer peppers, but I found one variety that I savor: the sweet Italian Carmen frying peppers. I could have left this vegetable-diary entry at “sweet Italian peppers,” but I’ve tried a few varieties and find Carmens are the most suited for my garden and my taste. I also prefer the red over the yellow, but that might be about looks more than flavor.
One of my favorite summer peppers are Jimmy Nardellos, perfect for pizza. You might find them at a farmers market, but not likely at a grocery store. These thin-walled peppers are so sweet they taste almost like candy, and they char beautifully for roasting or grilling.
Farmers also save seeds from peppers with heat levels and flavor combinations that would never make commercial sense. Varieties like Fish pepper and Chocolate Habanero offer complex flavors that go far beyond simple heat – they’re smoky, fruity, or earthy in ways that mass-produced peppers never achieve.
Root Vegetables That Redefine What Carrots and Beets Can Be
Beet and carrot greens house an enormous amount of the plant’s nutrients and carry a notably wide range of uses. Tossing them into a salad, sauté, or smoothie is a great way to get a nutrient boost. But it’s not just the greens that farmers save for themselves – it’s the varieties that would never survive commercial production.
Purple carrots that are sweet as candy, white beets that taste nothing like the earthy red ones you know, and parsnips that are so sugary they caramelize just from roasting. This method will work with beets, turnips, carrots, and parsnips. These vegetables have been selected over generations for flavor rather than shipping ability or uniform appearance.
Many of these root vegetables have such thin skins or delicate flesh that they would never survive mechanical harvesting or long-term storage. Farmers dig them fresh from the ground and eat them the same day, experiencing vegetables in their peak condition when sugars are concentrated and flavors are at their most intense.
Delicate Greens That Wilt Before Noon
The salad greens that farmers grow for their own families would revolutionize your understanding of what lettuce can be. Look for radishes with smooth, brightly colored skin and fresh, green tops. Rhubarb: You want flat, rosy, celery-like stalks – and the deeper the red color, the sweeter the rhubarb. But radish greens and other tender leaves are often more prized than the roots themselves.
Varieties like mizuna, tatsoi, and young kale leaves are harvested at baby stage when they’re impossibly tender. Swiss chard: Look for crisp, glossy green leaves with firm stems. These greens have a window of perfection that lasts maybe four to six hours after harvest – they’re that delicate.
Farmers also grow specialty greens like lamb’s quarters, purslane, and chickweed that most people consider weeds but are actually nutritional powerhouses with unique flavors. Crop nutritional quality has been compromised by the emphasis on edible yield and through the loss of biodiversity due to the introduction of high-yielding, uniform cultivars. These “weeds” often contain more vitamins and minerals than conventional vegetables.
