Introductory Post

Welcome to our blog! We are a pair of twins located in Southern Ontario with a growing interest in gardening. Our mom always grew vegetables from store bought plants and we would sometimes help her with the garden over the summer, but it is only recently that we became interested in growing heirlooms. Because we cannot get most heirlooms at the garden centre as plants, this is our first time growing vegetables from seed. Over the course of this blog, we will be documenting our progress growing heirlooms, while also showing what we have cooked with our vegetables (we hope we get some). Given our interest in history, we will also include some historical tidbits about the heirloom vegetables we are growing.

The vegetable seeds we are growing this summer were all bought from The Cottage Gardener, located in Newtonville, Ontario. As you can imagine, we have already started growing many of them. So far we are really impressed. These include:

• China Rose, French Breakfast, Plum Purple, and White Icicle radishes (purchased as a mix)


• Lucullus Swiss chard


• Bull's Blood, Chioggia, Cylindra, and Golden Detroit beets (also purchased in a mix)


• Mixed coloured carrots


• Little Finger carrots


• Paris Market carrots


• An heirloom lettuce mix that includes Australian Yellowleaf, Black Seeded Simpson, Cracoviensis, Green Oak leaf, and Red Deer Tongue lettuces


• Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying Peppers


• Bulgarian Carrot hot peppers


• Cherokee Purple tomato


• Zapotec Ribbed tomato


• Green Zebra tomato


• Purple Calabash tomato


• Yellow Pear tomato


• Musquee de Provence squash


• Benning's Green Tint summer squash

Stay tuned for details on our progress so far.

Jennifer and Megan