Discover the wonderful taste of heirloom vegetables

Heirloom fruits and vegetables are a tasty choice. It's no wonder gourmets are rediscovering these oldies but goodies. Here's a select list of some heirloom varieties you may want to discover and grow.

• Amaranth has been cultivated for 5,000 years for its leaves. It's prepared like spinach but has a milder taste. This seed plant needs a sunny location and lots of moisture, but don't overwater.
• Dandelion has tender leaves that make a tasty salad. It's best grown from root cuttings. Old leaves have a bitter taste.
• Winter-hardy sugar beet sprouts forth every spring and after every harvest, and can be harvested from May to October.
• Swiss chard has long stems that can be cooked like asparagus.
• Parsnips tangy, spicy flavour makes it the perfect base for clear broths.
• Common purslane or pigweed is gaining popularity because the vitamin-rich vegetable is tasty in salads, and can be easily grown in most sunny locations that are protected from the wind.
• Arugula is a delicious salad green that fetches top dollar at the supermarket. But you can grow it for pennies at home. It thrives in cool weather, becoming peppery and bitter when weather turns hot. Full heads mature in five to six weeks but you can harvest baby greens after only three weeks of growth, depending on your gardening zone.
• Rapini is an undemanding stem vegetable that prefers moderately coarse, fairly sandy soils. Sow thickly and harvest four to six weeks after planting. Prepare the young, pleasantly bitter leaf stalks like spinach or chard.
• Jerusalem artichoke is a winter-hardy tuber that should be planted about 15 centimetres (six inches) deep in the spring. Cut the stalks back to about 1.5 metres (five feet) in the fall to allow the tubers to ripen and harvest as needed.
• Kale provides more nutritional value for fewer calories than almost any other food around. This leafy green vegetable belongs to the Brassica family (which includes cabbage, collards, and brussels sprouts), noted for their health-promoting phytonutrients. It's easy to grow, even in colder temperatures.

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