Heritage Varieties

Chioggia or Barabietola di Chioggia is a globe-shaped heirloom Italian variety. With a rosy orange-pink outer skin and a distinctive dartboard pattern when cut, it is sometimes known as Bull’s Eye Beet or Candy Stripe Beet. Bands of white flesh alternate with bands of pink or rosy red.

“The old Egyptian turnip or flat-rooted beetroot has the best flavour but is scarce.” Bob Flowerdew. Beetroot 'Flat of Egypt’ is a very old heritage variety that produces smooth skinned roots, often heart-shaped, with a deep red, tender and flavoursome flesh.

This lovely, old fashioned Broccoli variety is a very disease resistant, very hardy and very prolific producer of large dark green heads. Italian Green Sprouting Broccoli is very easy to grow and will produce a number of good-size side shoots once the initial head is harvested.

Flourishing famously in Mediterranean and Chinese cultures, elsewhere Raab is still a bit of a curiosity. Easy and fast growing, it can be useful as it comes ready when ordinary broccoli isn't available, but this isn't just a replacement for broccoli, it is a great vegetable in its own right.

Not all cabbages have the round shape that we usually find on the market. Cuor di Bue Grosso, literally translated means ‘Large Heart of the Ox’, a cultivar with a beautiful conical shape, large, firm, pointed hearts and sweet compact heart, and looking at its glorious shape ‘Ox Heart’ is the perfect name for it

Probably one of the most well known and reliable spring cabbages, Cabbage Durham Early produces dark green, medium-sized conical heads with good texture and tasty flavour. You can start harvesting particularly early in the season, and for delicious tender 'spring greens'.

Cabbage 'Winter Jewel' is a great spring cabbage, an outstanding introduction for overwinter production of evenly sized, smooth, dark leaved 'greens'. It has fantastic disease resistance giving a consistent crop throughout the year, left to mature it produces a head which can be eaten like a sweetheart cabbage.

A traditional autumn maturity variety, Cabbage ‘Glory of Enkhuizen’ is an excellent variety that was originally bred in 1899. The medium-large, hard round heads are light green in colour, used in slaws, salads, soups and stir fries, it is a good keeper, ideal for storage, and for kraut.

Golden Acre is an excellent early summer variety ball head cabbage. With small to medium-sized green solid heads on compact plants. Ideal for confined areas, it can be grown at 30cm spacings. This heritage variety gives excellent small heads of first rate quality and flavour.

Cabbage 'Kalibos' is a pointed cabbage variety with distinctive red leaves. For late summer and autumn cutting. A delicious cabbage that has a high sugar content, making it the perfect variety for shredding raw into salads for superb sweetness, crunch and colour.

Savoy cabbage ‘Ormskirk’ is a very old heritage variety, it gives a fine head of cabbage, solid in the centre with deep blue-green outer crinkly leaves and a pale green centre. It matures from November and can be harvested through to March and beyond.

Cabbage ‘Red Drumhead’ is a popular deep red heirloom variety which produces densely packed leafy heads with dark red, solid hearts in late summer through to Christmas. This old hardy variety from the 1860s is easy to grow, stores well and is remarkably tasty and sweet.

Cabbage 'Tête Noire'is the traditional French variety of red cabbage. Sown March to May for harvesting from August though to November, this round-headed variety reliably produces dark purple heads that are crisp, crunchy and sweet.

Cabbage 'Violaceo di Verona' is a winter Savoy cabbage from Northern Italy. A cross between a savoy and a white cabbage, with dark green and violet leaves. Frost hardy and and long standing it can be harvested from July until mid-winter with successional sowings.

Cabbage ‘Wheelers Imperial’ is a traditional heritage variety that produces solidly pointed layers of dark green leaves which form compact, heart shaped heads. Although a Victorian variety, it remains one of the best varieties for autumn sowing to stand the winter for harvesting in spring.

Chantenay is deservedly well known, a popular small variety of carrot with orange-red flesh and a fine crisp texture. A premium all purpose, intermediate, stump-rooted variety, with broad shoulders and a blunt tip. With a good, sweet flavour, they taste as carrots used to taste.