The Seed Saver

Preserving our forefathers' garden seeds

When Tuscurora Indians need centuries-old corn varieties for ceremonial events, they go to William Woys Weaver.

“It’s almost embarrassing that they have to come to me,” he muses, but it’s the only place to go, because Weaver has seeds that predate America. In fact, he saves, restores, and re-creates more heirloom seed varieties—about 3,000—than perhaps anyone in the country. With corn and beans alone he has roughly 500 varieties, not a one of which will you find in stores.

These are the seeds of our forefathers, the seeds America grew up on—and Weaver saves them because they have characteristics not found in modern hybrids. One of these is taste.

“In the 1970s, commercial tomatoes looked like Christmas tree bulbs, but tasted like cardboard,” he says. Not so with the heirlooms, such as the Brandywine tomato made famous by the Pennsylvania Dutch, or the Minnesota-born potato known as Cranberry Red, a huge potato with pink flesh and purple flowers that Weaver says could be grown for its blossoms alone, if it didn’t taste so good. It’s Weaver’s favorite heirloom.

Weaver lives in Devon, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, in a rambling, Federal-style house, the former Lamb Tavern, built in 1805. On the crossroads of the old routes to Lancaster and Valley Forge, the house and grounds breathe history—only part of which are the gardens that have been growing here for 200 years.

Gardening has been a part of Weaver’s life since early childhood, influenced greatly by his Mennonite grandfather and Quaker grandmother, and whose garden overflowed with a bounty of fresh herbs and vegetables all season.

His grandmother was an excellent cook, so he ate the best. “I saw it come to the table fresh,” he recalls.

“Grandfather had pear trees, apple trees, a sour cherry tree, grapes, and wonderful rhubarb and strawberries,” Weaver explains. “Rhubarb-strawberry pie was one of grandmother’s specialties. She always baked two—one for herself and the other for the (extended) family. And homemade ice cream. We always made ice cream in an old crank-turned maker from whatever fruits were in season. Each month seemed to have its own flavor and color.”

After his grandparents died, Weaver salvaged seeds that had been squirreled away in baby food jars in the bottom of his grandmother’s freezer. Later, he added to them with varieties from an elderly Quaker cousin, a dedicated seed saver. Suddenly, he was caretaker of an extraordinary collection of heritage vegetables and herbs that became the foundation for his organic kitchen garden.

From this, Weaver developed his present-day passions for great food and heirloom vegetables. His organic garden covers two acres, including a 60-foot greenhouse, where he not only grows a few hundred varieties of vegetables and herbs every year (breeding for the best seeds), but also “back-breeds” plants such as corn to re-create varieties grown before America was a nation, such as the Tuscurora corn.

Weaver has written several books—including Heirloom Vegetable Gardening (Henry Holt & Co., 1997)—while he also teaches culinary arts at Drexel University and serves as a contributing editor at Gourmet magazine. (“They hire me to keep food writers honest,” he explains.)

Cooking goes hand-in-glove with his love for heirloom seeds because Weaver says heirloom vegetables are unsurpassed for taste, canning, or winter storage. This makes them ideal for the home gardener, but they rarely show up in commercial catalogs or supermarkets because heirloom varieties may not ship well, or lack the perfect “look” of mass-market vegetables. They are grown only for taste, or perhaps because they are easily canned, or store well for winter.

Unlike hybrids, the heirlooms also reproduce true from seed, meaning that seeds from one tomato will produce the same variety again. And, in the case of tomatoes, the variety is endless. Fruits go by such fanciful names as Russian Black, Roman Candle, German Pink, Riesentraube, and Tommy Toe—and come in every color from dark purple to shades of white, green, orange, yellow, and even red.

These and countless other varieties have all been handed down by families through untold generations, in this country and elsewhere. Weaver grows Little Nubian Peppers, one of his grandfather’s favorites, with its near-black leaves and violet flowers, which originated on the island of Jamaica. The Aztec Indians, he says, grew a similar pepper to spice their chocolate drink.

Some plants were named for the person who bred them, such as Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Pepper, brought to America from Italy in 1887 by Guiseppe Nardello. Others take names from physical characteristics, such as the Queensland Blue squash and Tennis Ball lettuce, known for small, tight rosettes of light-green leaves that 17th-century cooks pickled in brine, he says. The Garnet Chili Potato, first grown in Utica, N. Y., in 1853, now has the same nutty, flavorful taste of a century ago.

Spring is a busy time for Weaver, as hundreds of seeds are planted in his gardens, or transplanted as seedlings from his greenhouse.

“April 15 to June 15 is my planting season, so it’s madness until everything is in the ground,” he says. “After that, I can glide into summer planting second crops.”

When one crop ripens to harvest, he plants another—30 varieties of tomatoes and peppers in any one year, plus the corn, cucumbers, beans, and so on, with his own labor and that of two part-time helpers.

“I do it for the love,” he explains. “Well, actually, it’s more like madness.”

Weaver doesn’t sell the produce he raises, but keeps the best vegetables of any variety to save for seeds and eats what’s left.

“I grow organically because I don’t need chemical fertilizers,” he explains. “My grandfather was that way. I use compost and fish emulsion. Organic produce is more robust, and I have no real problem with pests or diseases.”

Seeds for the 3,000 vegetable, herb, and flower varieties Weaver saves and plants in his gardens make up what he calls the Roughwood Seed Collection (in reference to his home’s name in the 1880s). These he shares with other gardeners through the nonprofit Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook, which includes listings of some 12,000 plants from member growers all over the country (see sidebar).

To Weaver, this stock of seed represents both a national treasure and a personal one, in knowing that he can eat the exact same beans, tomatoes, peppers, and melons that his grandparents ate, and their grandparents before them, in a priceless chain of flavor and variety that only the backyard gardener can know.

Cynthia Elyce Rubin is a folk-art historian and writer in New York City.

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