To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] was FEDCO now farm&garden
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 21:14:55 -0600
The kind of garden that farmers make has been the subject of some
amusement among my friends in the past. Farmers use their tractor to plow
and plant it, come back and cultivate later using the tractor, and their
wife does lots of canning. The spacing would be the same for every row, I
can remember seeing tiny rows of onions. spaced 42" inches from the next
row, same as the tomatoes. Alas, here in Tennessee gardening is a
disappearing art. Locals are now to the point, when grandma dies, there
will be no more home grown veggies.
I can't figure out people's reasoning. What we grow, if you could buy
it retail, would be very pricy. Apart from the farmer's market, you simply
cannot buy things fresh picked, plus I never have to worry about sprays on
what we produce. And the quality.... over the years we have become so
spoiled that we didn't realize how good our tomatoes really are. I've been
saving seed from those I liked best of the 100 or more varieties I've tried
through SSE. This year I ordered some seed that some small company offered
and grew 7 plants of that variety. They didn't even taste like tomatoes,
and when cooked for canning, they smelled really weird. I had 14 other
varieties to choose from, so I wound up leaving them for the chickens to
eat. Now and then, even in SSE I'd get some variety that was completely
tasteless. Donna
Re: [NAFEX] was FEDCO now farm&garden,
Donna &/or Kieran, 01/03/2008