My corn is a thousand years old. So are the heirloom beans I use for red beans and rice, the Friday school lunch staple I grew up with. I have garlic that’s 30 years old, winter squash that’s 20, a lima bean that produces perennial plants, and a lovely, ancient lavender purple bean from the…

The Persian melon, a honey-sweet, orange-fleshed variety dating back to its namesake empire and the progenitor of all American cantaloupes, was a standard in American gardens for two centuries, but it is now virtually unseen and in need of rescue. Montana lavender clay corn, with its striking, deep purple kernels, was blended by a Montanan…

Let’s say that you want to make your grandmother’s fabulous recipe for tomato bisque, but you don’t want to use just any tomatoes. You want to grow them yourself, just as Grandma did. But Grandma always said that the tomatoes from her garden in the old country were far better than the ones she grew…