MYTH OF ZONES

By Big John Lipscomb

We test about a dozen new heirloom vegetable seeds every year to see if they will thrive well enough to be offered in our All-In-One garden kit. We have 67 varieties currently but each year we like to rotate a few new heirlooms in and the only way to do that is to test them in our experimental garden here in southeastern Kansas. We know that some heritage gardeners will prefer a certain method of gardening over another so I have several methods that we use like raised bed, trench irrigation, container and quickly becoming my favorite- the no till method. Within the raised bed method we use a bed that has a lot of compost, another that is what I call chunky because it has a lot of clay content and then a bed that is so fertile now after five years my family jokingly say that you could put a corpse in it and it would come back to life. By doing these sorts of methods I can feel assured that our customers will have success also.

After we get a 80% plus success rate with a new variety of heirloom vegetable I send the seeds that I save to about twenty fellow gardeners that grow our seeds every year since we began business. Again, they live all over the country and prefer certain gardening methods over others. I get calls, emails and letters and often photos describing their results that second year. If they have a 80% success rate on average we record their findings and have it as an option for our seed kit the third year.

However, due to a lot of people that prefer to write about growing food over growing food to eat, myths have developed and vegetable gardening has scared many people away. One such myth is zones. Now new gardeners are so trapped by the idea that a particular species of lettuce cannot grow in some zones because it is said to grow best in zone 3 and 4. Thinking that 2 and 5 and 6 and 7 are like planting it in a near death zone. You would be shocked to listen to the calls we get. Let me put that myth to rest once and for all with this story. Its not 100% true but you’ll grasp the point well enough when its over.

I had just purchased several varieties of heirloom tomatoes from a seasoned and avid heritage gardener in New Jersey back in 2007 and was on my way to Kansas, a few zones away and a thousand miles from home. Every couple of hours I would look back in the rear seat of my car and ask the tomato seeds which state we were now in and each time they were clueless. When I got home It was morning and I went ahead and planted them straight in the awaiting garden. I told them that we had driven all over the state of New Jersey and I was planting them in another part of the state. They seemed happy because they started giving me a grand bounty about 100 days later here in Kansas and now their offspring produce exceptionally well in Arizona, California, Florida and Idaho and most every other state and even some other countries. Case closed.