Glad to see they are having some success. What surprised me the most about growing my own fruits and vegetables in my back yard is that many of the cultivars for standard things like tomatoes, strawberries, etc. are bred to survive transport at the expense of flavor. Basically things like rock hard tomatoes when they are picked that become soft (but not very much more flavorful) after traveling to the produce market.
When you grow your own, you can grow berries that are "too delicate" to grow economically on big farms because too many berries don't survive transit. As a result it opens up different berries (and other produce) that you might not otherwise have access too.
That said, getting seeds can be a challenge, I'm super blessed to live within driving distance of an excellent Ag college (UC Davis) but reaching out to the heirloom seeds community is another strategy some have pursued.
Berries are the obvious example, as they're fragile & fiddly, typically need to be picked when ripe (plenty of other fruit will ripen after being picked), and have a short shelf life -- but there's other surprising items that home gardeners discover.
Sweet corn, for example, starts converting sugars to starch soon after it's picked. Many people don't really understand why it's called sweet corn, as they've only ever eaten corn that was picked a few days ago. Asparagus I believe is very similar, with significant flavour changes happening rapidly after harvest.
We've enjoyed dozens of varieties of cherries straight off the trees all with wonderfully distinct flavours, but a day or two after picking, they're all merely 'cherry-flavoured'.
William Alexander wrote, somewhat humorously, about the dollar & effort costs of growing produce at home [1] but in addition to unique / superior flavours, advocates will often assert the intangible benefits (a new problem domain to engage the brain, a tighter connection with your food, the near-meditative aspects of some repetitive gardening activities).
Oh, and for seed acquisition, in AU we've got a few really good options - Green Harvest, Diggers, Edens etc - that maintain many of the
heirloom varieties that found there way here, but I thought stateside you'd have way more options? Check the Seed Savers Network[2] if you haven't found them already.
I have noticed that this preference for superior produce is lacking in America. That’s mostly because there is no food culture or habit of dining together.
In Asia and even in parts of Europe, people will wait for seasonal produce and appreciate certain varieties. (White asparagus dipped in melted butter..yum. Don’t get me started about mango season in India)
The National dish of USA is the cheeseburger. And we import most of our produce. So there is no appreciation for seasonality and food is always from elsewhere. And often picked unripe and have travelled a lot of food miles. There is no anticipation or excitement for food. Everything is available in massive quantities and on demand. At some point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in.
We export commodities like nuts and fodder. We have billions of sales in worthless tasteless leafy greens like kale and lettuce. Nobody ever enjoyed a bowl of ‘yummy’ lettuce. Nobody.
As a farmer, this is very depressing to me. As a chef, I feel almost suicidal. For cooks and chefs, if there are no one enjoying or appreciating our skills, we might as well not exist.
As an immigrant who grew up in a food culture before America, it’s wretchedly depressing. The grocery stores here are designed like warehouses and farms are like factories. The goods are standardized and optimized for efficient supply chain. All the joy of food shopping is sucked dry from these sterile environments.
As a small acreage farmer who wants to automate and improve tech, the options are minimal to nil. There are some companies that try to help small farmers but I am not sure how it will pan out. Time will tell. Everything in America has to scale. Economies of scale is the killer. Must scale is the mantra.
While Europe has at least close to a dozen small acreage ag bots in the work, you don’t even hear about the handful that is working to help us small acreage farmer out..many have died out even before they can get started because of lack of funding. But that’s another topic for another day.
California is better than most places, tbh with varieties. The weather is the saving grace.
Also: There is California rare fruits association and scion exchange.
fresh dino kale (not the curly kale type) sauteed in olive oil with a bit of salt is heavenly. and various fresh lettuces are wonderful, so you should tone down your blanket condemnations
I grew up near some small farms in MD and we’d turn our nose up at yesterday’s Silver Queen (corn). It really does change over the course of just a few days.
One of the best methods for getting seeds for good tasting fruits (that breed true) is to just purchase the fruit of something you like and plant the seeds inside. I do this with tomatoes all the time, just go to the market, pick up the a few pounds of heirlooms and squish out the seeds before I eat them at home. I get so many tomato starts this way, that I generally have to transplant or kill off a few.
With other plants, it's also easy and advisable just to let some go to seed instead of harvesting them. You'll have plenty for the next round.
I think 'breed true' is the key here, for example you can't plant the seeds out of that tasty Gala apple and get a tree covered with Gala apples (in 10yr - another challenge with some food crops)[1]. But for perennials like tomatoes and chiles, it's great!
> What surprised me the most about growing my own fruits and vegetables in my back yard is that many of the cultivars for standard things like tomatoes, strawberries, etc. are bred to survive transport at the expense of flavor.
I might be in a bubble, but I would have thought this to have been common knowledge for ages?
I got gut feeling that it is even bit outdated info at this point, and the trend is swinging back towards improving flavor instead of so solely focused on yields and transportability (etc).
It’s seasonal. In North America it’s very easy to get locally grown fruits during spring and summer. But once the fruit season is over you have to import those fruits from Mexico and South America. And they will require being transportable and we’re back to flavorless.
Now I’ve seen the vegetable farms in Europe that are equipped with plastic greenhouses to extend the growing season. Which is lacking in the US. Farmers prefer GMO, hardier fruit that can stand the cold rather than expensive bubbles.
The amazing flavors you get from some varieties! No wonder people think they don't like vegetables...
The ones we have in Swedish stores are high quality, organic, but taste pretty terrible to be honest.
One thing about growing your own veggies is you realize how much work it takes to get a single tomato, carrot or potato.
Most people can't even imagine the amazing sweetness of a tomato freshly brought from the garden while it is still full of sunlight. One can have an entire meal with two tomatoes, a pinch of salt and half a loaf of bread.
1. provide ample habitat for predators of said insects
2. grow a surplus so there's enough for you and the bugs
3. use the partly-eaten produce in sauces, jams, stews and other meals where presentation doesn't matter
UC Davis grad and still live in the area. I believe almost all strawberries grown commercial come from UC Davis. Was the whole big issue with this strawberry commission thing that a few professors ran and tired to take the IP when they left. Was interesting. I love being able to grow really delicious tomatoes with almost no effort. Always look forward to tomatoes season. I cure my own homemade bacon and make sourdough bread. Best BLT sandwich even use lettuce I grow sometimes. UC Davis has some great online resources for gardening. I have even thought about starting a beehive but I am not sure I want to go through the effort.
I'm normally a 'fan' of mass produced stuff or at least the benefits of economies of scale, see home growing as an awful (to me) hobby and yet have to admit that homegrown vegetables taste much better to me even though my prior was that it should be the opposite.
Not optimizing for looks, transit and spending more resources per unit of produce are the main factors I suspect for the difference but I'm curious if there are others.
The main factor (in my considered opinion) is the life of the soil. The "secret" of getting the best taste and (I assume but have not measured) nutrition is to treat the soil itself as a kind of organism, feed it things like diluted milk, oatmeal, wood chips, kitchen scraps, etc. and it becomes "inwardly alive ... akin to the vegetative":
> Then the earth itself will have the tendency to come inwardly alive
and become akin to the vegetative.
~ Herrman Andrä, 1962, in re: Hügelkultur; (ah, he's quoting Rudolf Steiner from a "1924 lecture on biodynamics" but it's still evocative and descriptive prose despite biodynamics being pretty "woo-woo".) https://web.archive.org/web/20190715152357/http://pubs.cahnr...
When soil is healthy plants grow vigorously with minimal pest problems and no fertilizers nor pesticides, and yield and quality go up. E.g. I have lots of slugs in my garden, but almost no slug damage. You also do things to encourage the local mini-ecosystem. For example I have these plastic panels that serve as flagstones but also function as habitat for centipedes. Every couple of weeks I lift them up and throw some cuttings under there to keep it from getting too compacted. Centipedes are apex predators at their scale, like wolves or lions, so having a healthy population of them is both a indicator of ecosystem health and a crucial factor keeping other bugs from growing out of control. They cannot regulate their own moisture levels so they need a perpetually moist environment to survive. By providing that in my otherwise pretty dry micro-climate I get free pest control.
I'd be curious if home gardening is actually more resource intensive -- especially if your time & labor is considered free (whether donated or a sunk cost).
There is a huge range of output/resource ratios for home gardens...even for home gardeners who say they're trying to achieve a high ratio. (Vs. love puttering with a garden, or want small quantities of perfect-in-their-eyes baby vegetables for salads, or ...).
Note that for many modern folks, "regularly gets you outside and exercising a bit and perhaps interacting with neighbors" is a valuable output. And you should also consider the vast processing, handling, & transportation wastes (including your or a delivery driver's time at the wheel) of the alternative.
- Peace of mind
- Sense of accomplishment
- Food independece
- Giving the gift of veggies
If you don't (veg) garden, this is the most inspiring piece of content I've seen on the subject. I'm generally not a TED fan, but this one is seriously inspiring.
I remember reading a decade or more ago that high-density home gardening was a popular hobby in Russia, with a lot of competition to produce maximum output from minimal land area. But even with all that enthusiasm, home gardeners couldn't produce for less total cost than industrial farm output sold in supermarkets.
They must be factoring in labor costs of working in the garden at home. To me (small scale) gardening is a mostly relaxing activity that I can do early or in spare moments that basically has a zero opportunity costs and negligible supply costs of less that $100 a year.
Purchase fruit from the farmer's market and collect the seeds before eating them. For fruit that breed true (not apples!) you should get something similar enough.
When you grow your own, you can grow berries that are "too delicate" to grow economically on big farms because too many berries don't survive transit. As a result it opens up different berries (and other produce) that you might not otherwise have access too.
That said, getting seeds can be a challenge, I'm super blessed to live within driving distance of an excellent Ag college (UC Davis) but reaching out to the heirloom seeds community is another strategy some have pursued.