Looking for Italian-American Gardeners

14 years ago

Hi everyone,

I, being an Italian-American who is very in tune with his culture, am on a mission to collect as many vegetable seeds, herb seeds, and fruit trees as I can that are Italian heirlooms. I'm am looking for any other Italian-American gardeners who share my passion. I'd love to trade or purchase seeds and cuttings from other Italians so I can widen my collection. In the future, I hope to make my collections available to all Italian-Americans, so that we can all experience the hobbies of our forefathers.

By the way, my family comes from Pratola Peligna, Chieti, Abruzzo, and Popoli, Pescara, Abruzzo, as well as Bergamo and Chiesabianca in the north. For this reason, Abruzzese seeds are very important to me.

Thank you everyone, hopefully together we can preserve our heritage.

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Comments (5)

oath5
14 years ago
You might want to contact Marianna's Heirloom Tomatoes, they specialize in Italian paste tomatoes and I'm not sure if the current owners are Italian-American, but they've apparently been in the seed trade business since the 1950's. I'm sure they have contacts!

http://www.mariseeds.com/seedcatalog/contact.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Contact Site at Marianna's Heirloom Tomatoes
doku
14 years ago
I am not an Italian-American.. I'm a German, Swedish, English, Cherokee, Blackfoot, Iroquois, Dutch - American.... But I have some Italian onions if you'd like to trade some. lol

As for the Abruzzese tomato seeds, you can get them here: http://www.italianseedandtool.com/product/VPM48/VPM48---Tomato-Red-Pear-Abruzzese.html

Those people ARE Italian-Americans... I ordered my onions from them, as well as a bunch of other stuff. They also run http://www.gourmetseed.com/ which is basically the same website, just a different name.. I order stuff from there as well.

CherryGal.com also has those tomatoes, but she's currently out of them.. I just checked.

You can likely find the same tomatoes on ebay and dozens of other seed places online. I've actually been meaning to buy some myself, I just haven't gotten around to it, yet, sorry!
aubade
14 years ago
I'm an Italian-American gardener, though admittedly I have no idea what part of Italy my family comes from. I do love cooking Italian though.

Italian plants I'll be growing this year:
Tromboncino Squash
Cubanelle Peppers
Marconi Golden Peppers
Peperoncini Peppers
Genovese Basil

I was going to grow San Marzano tomatoes, but decided instead to go with good 'ol Jersey tomatoes - Rutgers and Ramapo.

I'll be buying everything as starts from the nursery except the squash though, so I don't have anything to trade.

I'm also looking for a few other good basil varities - do you have any suggestions?
cherrygal
13 years ago
I am Italian American on my mother's side. Her family came from Turin, in the Piedmont. My grandfather had a restaurant until his too-early death and my great Zio and Zia were vintners until their deaths a few decades ago. My grandmother fed a family of eight during the Depression from a garden the size of most driveways today. Both my parents gardened and I was tasked from an early age with garden chores. I have gardened all my life and love the Italian heirlooms especially (although when you research you will find that many of them are more correctly described as "european" since they are also claimed, under different names, by other cultures. I would love to share heirloom variety info with you or any other gardener who has a family history of gardening such varieties.
spinonitaliani
Original Author
13 years ago
cherrygal-

I would love to discuss Italian heirlooms with you. Are you also the same cherrygal from Cherrygal.com which was mentioned above? Please post back with more info.