Are Heritage Veg Worth It?

I recently received my copy of Which? Gardening and there was a fascinating feature in it about the differences between heritage vegetables (ie those older varieties that would die out if not perserved) and newer hybrid varieties.

Which? are famed for their thorough testing and they certainly seemed to have tested some obvious varieties of each type of veg. The old and new varieties were grown under identical conditions, in the West Country and each were tested for yield, looks and taste. I won’t recount the whole feature here but the headline results were as follows:

Calabrese Old Variety – Green Sprouting New Variety – Ironman F1 Winner = New variety, with excellent flavour

Tomato Old Variety – Brandywine New Variety – Country Taste F1 Winner = Old variety, for flavour

Parsnip Old Variety – Tender and True New Variety – Picador F1 Winner = New variety, for all round quality

Carrot Old Variety – St Valery New Variety – Infinity Winner = Old variety, for flavour

Lettuce Old Variety – Parris Island New Variety – Chartwell Winner = Old variety, for taste

Dwarf French Beans Old Variety – Triomphe de Farcy New Variety – Speedy Winner = New variety, for supermarket-quality beans (not sure what that means, straight?)

Beetroot Old Variety – Detroit Globe New Variety – Pablo F1 Winner = Old variety, for taste and yield, New variety for looks

Sweetcorn Old Variety – Golden Bantam New Variety – Lark F1 Winner = New variety for sweetness

Courgette Old Variety – All Green Bush New Variety – Endurance F1 Winner = New variety for taste and good looks

Whether you agree with using F1 hybrid varieties or not, it’s useful to see where their strengths are and where you really don’t need to use them. Especially, since F1′s tend to be very expensive. For my part I’ll always be choosing to grow something called, ‘Triomphe de Farcy’ over its F1 rival ‘Speedy’. I mean, who wouldn’t?

Which? don’t seem to have put the article online yet, otherwise I would link to it.

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Tags: Heritage Veg, Veg   Posted in Gardening Consultant