Heirloom varieties are seeds with a story and a sense of place. Communities around the world lay claim to them with annual festivals, classic local cuisine, museum displays, tastings, tours, and vegetable kings and queens.
Writer Nicola Twilley uses the term “vegetable tourism,” observing that such events are equal parts local pride and “a crusade to revive traditional varietals and the stories attached to them.”
Traditional foods and varieties are “filled with the stories of generations of the bonds between humans and the place itself,” wrote ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan.
And let’s face it: Who doesn’t love a good party, especially when a pointy-headed cabbage or a radish outweighing a kindergartner is the guest of honor?
So, let’s dig into some of our favorite celebrated heirlooms.
Filderkraut Cabbage
Filderkraut gets its name from its homeland on the Filder Plateau of Germany, where it has been grown since the 1700s. Food historian William Woys Weaver writes that these unusual cabbages developed special sweetness and tender leaves, perhaps due to the soil in which they were grown. By the mid 19th century, Filder became a hub of cabbage production for both domestic and international markets.
The variety was ideal for sauerkraut. In 1883, merchant Hermann Fein built the first sauerkraut factory in Plieningen. From there it became a commercial center for sauerkraut production.
Today the big cone-shaped cabbage is feted each October in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, near Stuttgart. Filderkraut Fest draws a crowd upwards of 50,000 people and features a cabbage king and queen, cabbage-balancing competitions, and, of course, lots of cabbage-centric dishes. A permanent museum exhibit in Plieningen underscores Filderkraut’s importance in the region’s agriculture.
The European Union gave the variety Protected Designation of Origin status, and Filderkraut is also listed on the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity’s Ark of Taste, a list of endangered foods from around the world.
As a commercial variety, Filderkraut’s future is in doubt; these days, sauerkraut makers greatly prefer round heads because they are easier to process.
Spargel (White Asparagus)
The arrival of white asparagus is a celebrated rite of spring in many European countries, but nowhere so much as Germany.
Beginning in the 19th century, German farmers were encouraged to grow asparagus on a large scale. Advancements in canning technology made it possible for more people to enjoy asparagus year-round. In 1875, Max Bassermann founded a canning company in Schwetzingen and specialized in canning white asparagus. “Edible ivory” was no longer just the vegetable of nobility.
Today, white asparagus is Germany’s favorite vegetable, and Schwetzingen is the self-proclaimed “Spargel capital of the world.” (Spargel production was restricted during World War II because it was thought too low in calories to be worth growing for a hungry nation at war, but home gardeners continued to grow it.)
Spargelzeit, or white asparagus season, begins in April and ends precisely on June 24th, the Christian observance of the nativity of John the Baptist. During Spargelzeit, Germans eat more than 70,000 tons of the vegetable, and many make a point to eat it in at least one meal a day.
Most of the festivities are centered around the asparagus-growing regions in southern Germany, particularly the towns of Schrobenhausen (home of the European Asparagus Museum), Schwetzingen, and Abensberg. There, restaurants create special menus featuring white asparagus in almost every dish, and dinners are served with white asparagus schnapps (a specialty of Schliengen, also in the prime spargel-growing region). You can attend asparagus seminars, go for a ride along the Spargelstrasse — scenic routes that encourage asparagus tourism — and maybe visit a spargel farm at harvest time.
Sakurajima Daikon Radish
Sakurajima, in Kagoshima Prefecture, is home to Japan’s most active volcano – and its most celebrated daikon radish.
The eponymous daikon can grow to 60 pounds or more – the Guinness World Record belongs to a specimen that grew to nearly 69 pounds.
In 2025, our friend Mitch McCulloch went to the Sakurajima Daikon Festival, where he watched judges carefully weighing and measuring the girth of the massive, rounded radishes “lined up like livestock.”
“These radishes grow more like round boulders than the long, slender daikon most people are used to,” he wrote
“Locals say it’s the volcanic soil that makes them so big and so good. It's full of minerals from ash that's fallen for centuries. It’s not easy to farm here, with regular eruptions and tough ground, but what you get out of it is worth it. The daikon radishes don’t just look impressive. They’re smooth, sweet, and surprisingly tender. You can slice them with chopsticks.”
He describes a tantalizing array of dishes made with daikon, as well as gift shops selling socks, pickles, seeds, fridge magnets, all shaped or stamped with the Sakurajima daikon.
“That might sound like a novelty, but it’s not. This root means something here. Food in Japan isn’t just food,” he wrote. “It’s story, memory, and identity.”
After World War II, the Sakurajima daikon almost disappeared. Farmers moved to easier, more uniform varieties. But in the 1970s, a group of growers and researchers brought it back. Today it’s more than a crop. It’s something people feel proud to be growing again.
Datil Pepper
The Datil pepper is a culinary symbol of St. Augustine, Florida, America’s oldest city, where they are embedded in the local food scene, imagined into everything from condiments to desserts.
Saint Augustine is closely associated with Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed on the northeast Florida coast in 1513 as he looked for new territories in the Caribbean.
Today, the sweet-hot hyperlocal pepper with the murky backstory draws culinary explorers to the city. So where did it come from—and how did it become one of Saint Augustine’s cultural treasures?
Because it resembles a famous central African pepper called the fatalii, some people believe it was introduced through the slave trade. Others maintain that a group of settlers from the Mediterranean island of Menorca brought it with them in the mid-18th century when they were recruited to work at Andrew Turnbull’s infamous—and ill-fated—indigo plantation in the British settlement of New Smyrna.
Still another theory, which is backed up with some historical data, holds that a jelly maker named S.B. Valls brought it with him from Chile in 1880. What is the reasoning behind this theory? There is no mention of the datil pepper before Valls' arrival in Florida, and the word “datil” has meanings in both Spanish and Quechua, a South American indigenous language.
In any case, the Minorcans in St. Augustine wholeheartedly embraced the datil for their dishes. And the annual Datil Pepper Festival draws thousands of people to the city each fall.
Charentais Melon
With its heavenly floral, fruity fragrance and complex sweetness, Charentais melon is swoon-inducing and celebrated in Cavaillon, the Provencal town in the heart of France’s historic melon country.
Bred in the Charentes region of west central France in the 1920s, it grows beautifully in the soil and climate of Cavaillon, in the Durance River Valley. There, melons have been cultivated since at least the late 15th century, when King Charles VIII is believed to have brought seeds back from Rome.
Renaissance painter Raphael Sanzio included melons in his famous frescoes at Villa Farnasina in Rome in the early 16th century. Some historians think that melons were growing in the region well before that. Pope Clement V had moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon, France in the 14th century and melons grew abundantly in papal gardens. In fact, cantaloupe was named for the papal summer country house in Cantalupo, Italy.
French novelist Alexandre Dumas is said to have struck a deal with the mayor of Cavaillon in 1864, providing the local library with copies of his novels including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, in exchange for an annual supply of melons. And in the 19th century, as train service opened the French countryside to easier travel, people from far and near flocked to Cavaillon for the fruit.
Today, Cavaillon is still celebrated as the mecca of Charentais melon. A nine-ton statue of the fruit greets visitors at the edge of town. An annual melon festival each summer draws thousands of Charentais aficionados. It was the brainchild of chef Jean Jacques Prevot, whose Michelin-starred restaurant, Maison Prevot, celebrates the succulent melon in many of its dishes.
The original, open-pollinated Charentais melon is smooth skinned, small but variable in size, and has a fragrance of incomparable sweetness. They are finicky to grow and tricky to ship, so they fetch much higher prices in markets outside France. Most Charentais melons grown today are a hybrid variety, with an embroidered rind and bred for a slightly longer shelf life.
Mangold Beet (Mangelwurzel)
Perhaps you’ve heard of mangold hurling, which involves throwing a big fodder beet at a fixed object called a “Norman” (which is another big beet), but have you heard of “punkies”?
In the English village of Hinton St. George, children parade through the streets on the last Thursday of October carrying lanterns carved from mangold beets. (Like jack-o'-lanterns, except made with beets.)
The tradition is said to have started when a group of men failed to return from a trip to the livestock market and villagers mounted a search party to look for them.
Mangold hurling has its roots in the 19th century as a harvesttime tradition pitting field workers against their bosses in a game of strength. The Mangold Hurling Association carries on the tradition today, and Baker Creek recently held its own version, to hilarious results. Watch the video here.
Mangold, also known as mangelwurzel, emerged as a popular European fodder crop in the 18th century, due in part to its size and cold hardiness, though it also found favor as a table beet in times of food shortages, and during the Napoleonic wars it was used to make sugar.
The Mammoth Red Mangel beet can grow to a gargantuan size of 40 pounds. The roots and leaves are quite tasty, especially when harvested young, and today mangolds are having a culinary moment among vegetable-centric chefs and foodies.
