Amy Goldman is preserving the agricultural heritage and genetic diversity of heirloom fruits and vegetables.

“The Heirloom Tomato” book was a prize find at my bookstore and I felt like the luckiest person to get the last copy on the shelf. I carried it around for weeks to work, to friends’ houses, and even to the doctors. Read more →

In her gardens in New York’s Hudson Valley, Amy Goldman does more than tend to fruits and vegetables: She is “growing miracles.”

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The best way to lengthen the postharvest life of pumpkins and winter squashes is to store them at a happy medium between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, with a relative humidity of 50 to 70 percent. These conditions, often found in basements, keep respiration and loss through shrinkage to a minimum and preserve color and quality. Read more →

Fully ripe disease-free tomatoes are the best candidates for seed saving. Seeds can be saved casually by, for example, squeezing them out in a paper napkin and air drying them, but fermentation is a better route. It removes germination inhibitors and the gelatinous sheath from seeds, and it may treat some seed-borne diseases. Read more →

Collect seeds from standard or open-pollinated varieties only—not from store-bought fruit or F1 hybrids whose seeds may be impure or not breed true. To ensure maximum seed purity, grow melon or squash in isolation from other varieties with which they could cross-pollinate—or learn to hand pollinate. Read more →