I'd have to say the Marglobe Tomato. Sandwich of tomato salt and pepper and mayonnaise. Life is good than sometimes when out in the garden hold the Salt, pepper and the mayo. Sort of like eating fresh corn on the cob but that is # 2.
Joke
Why did not Chinese for all their achievements in science never develop botany ? Because they wondered what it would taste like.
........................
Perhaps the joke is false?
Artichokes and asparagus. In the supermarket they are to often weeks old. Aside from shrinking and toughening the flavour changes with age, I think it has something to do with sugar conversion but there is probably more to it than that.
I recall the taste of tinned asparagus from my youth. Then I tried the store-bought 'fresh' stuff, there is no comparison, I have never eaten the tinned rubbish since. Then I grew it and had it really fresh, there is some comparison but it is so much better. I still sometimes buy it in the off season if it looks good, addicts have to do things like that.
David
A junkie for real food sort of sounds science fictionish. Does the concept make sense. I look about and traditional food is being replaced by a packages. Salads prepared vs tearing out salad oneself. The package seems machined and crude with no concern for the end unit Oh I mean Person.
Guess in a way addicted to fresh is I hope common. Doubtful. The ability to grow fresh is a luxury with the idea of sprouting your own seeds close but surly no replacement. What can be done ? All I know is set an example realizing the REAL food is getting more expensive. Tomatoes $3.49 lb. that are inedible along with onions with the last cool spell in Fla. an excuse.
Paranoid Charlie may be right on .
Bill Paranoid but no where near as much as Charlie or Billy a delusional self appraisal. Paranoid folks telling us not to worry sort of like ignore that man behind the screen ..Wizard of Oz.
So follow the yellow brick road but do not eat the yellow snow. Which is just about gone here. Yea so I can plant tomorrow yeah right.
PS to be spoken in a hush voice Got any Prozac or Peyote .................
I'd have to say Chadwick Cherry Tomato. This was back in the 90's and the first heirloom/OP I had knowingly eaten. Have been "gardening" since a child, thanks to grandmother and then grandmother-in-law, but not with an eye and heart towards the soil and organic possibilities and realities. That first heirloom cherry sealed the deal and I have since planted nothing but heirloom/OP varieties, and lots of them.
TMEN (still have the first eighty-five issues and all the last six years) was/is a major influence in my thinking and worldview.
I still have, and read, an essay that you posted some years ago, that summarizes my relationship with plants and the soil. It ain't simply chemistry, no matter what Billy may claim. ;-) It's about mystery, and magic and culture...getting your hands in the soil with the organisms and receiving what they impart, both from contact and from what they impart to the food we eat. Lots of other stuff that is real, not the chimera of our "modern" world and modern food-like products.
Charlie, winamp Celtus, "Strange Day in the Country"
Yes.
Pollan. Truth. Real, Good food is more expensive. Grow it yourself or know the grower is best.
?A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.? ~~~William S. Burroughs quotes
Using that definition, one must surmise that you should be *more* paranoid than I. Delusional? Shit, bro, ain't we all to some degree.
Remember the warning in the late fifties?....I do! "Don't eat the snow, it contains fallout." I didn't have a fscking clue what fallout was, but I didn't chance eating the snow.
I trusted grownups then.
I've since seen radiation and fallout maps from the testing period. I'll likely be screwed at some point, but I'm sure the diagnosis will lay the blame upon my assorted substance abuses and lifestyle choices. I suppose I should be a patriotic bastid and be glad that I was able to ingest radioactive isotopes and possibly sacrifice my health in order to save us from the evils that beset us. Rah Rah and all that shit.
The latter will impart wisdom to a willing student, the former....will bring death of varying sorts. Ahhh....again, you revive memories and lessons of another time, lessons worth remembering and reviewing. Considering the downside of the day with the snow and rain and cold, a bright spot appears and takes hold.
You seem to have a knack for sending me down forgotten and dark paths, as well as the bright ones. ;-)
Charlie, thinking of Carlos Casteneda and wondering who borrowed those books and if they are still being read....
The way that I garden is fairly empirical and scientific but not entirely. I use mainly organic methods because: it works, it is cost effective for me and it is more sustainable.
But if it is a choice of the bugs get the crop or me I decide in my own favour and spray but use the least toxic spray that will do the job. I use potassium sulphate on my soil even though it is a purely synthetic substance because I cannot add potassium easily and cheaply any other way. The fact that it is (anomalously) an accepted input by most organic standards concerns me not at all. I don't use ammonium nitrate, another purely synthetic substance, not because the organic standard says I cannot but because it can be harmful to the soil and because I can find nitrogen easily and cheaply in several other ways which are not.
However why I garden is different. I garden because I enjoy the produce and the activity, both are good for my body and mind.
The mind has two parts, the first is an analytic and constructive part. That part says that compost tea works because it contains nutrients and useful microorganisms not because Rudolf Steiner poured it through a cow's horn and stirred it clockwise under a full moon and thus harnessed the flux emanating from the navel of earth.
The other part is more mystical and instinctive, it is involved in expression and appreciation and other things which cannot be measured. That part tells me that if I eat the fruits of my labour directly instead of employing a middle man I will feel good regardless of the difference in health giving qualities (which the analytic part says are also there). The instinctive part says that if I have a plot of earth to care for I will feel better than if I don't - disregarding the practicality that the more I care for it the more it will give back to me. Both parts need to be exercised like the body or like the body they will diminish.
David
No one vegetable turned me towards gardening. When I was a child I (for some reason) asked my dad if we could plant a garden...maybe it was some assignment from elementary school, but he went along and we planted carrots. and a few other things...I just remember the carrots...they came up and we thinned them, and they grew, and we harvested them and ate them. It was amazing to me that we could actually grow something and eat it. Fast forward 30 years, and I met the woman that would become my wife, and she had studied horticulture in college, and in our tiny backyard garden raised lettuce, habanero peppers, and a host of herbs. Now, living on 9 acres we have established asparagus beds, peaches, and grapes. We raise a variety of heirloom tomatoes and peppers. The melons we raise, and those we buy from our neighbors are impossible to buy in any marketplace and are spectacular. In my opinion, gardening is a skill that I hope more people learn. Few things are more rewarding than going to the garden and harvesting what you need to cook whatever you want in your own kitchen. It really isn't rocket surgery, just start learning and plant some seeds. You will have success, and you will have failure....such is life. But gardening is like anything else in life....and this is a fact;.
the more you learn, the more you learn you don't know...
Well spoken, David.
"Primum non nocere"
"First, do no harm", is a maxim which I attempt to follow when it comes to gardening, the soil and my relationship with our planet, to the point of zealotry, as has been pointed out...an ideal which I admittedly fall short of meeting when it comes to my interactions with humans.
I only differ with you in that when it comes to critters that are beating me out of produce, I try and discern alternatives or improve or change conditions that are causing this.... or do without.
*Anything* that is harmful to pollinators, or soil organisms, is forbidden, as we are so desperately short of them here in the midst of monsatano country. I plant lots of dill for the swarms of "sweat" bees it attracts. This year I am putting up ledges for barn swallows to use for nesting.Encouraging cardinals on the property, ie. black oil sunflower seed feeders around the garden, takes care of most hornworm problems...along with some meditational handpicking. ;-)
Eggplants are turned to lace by flea beetles in my garden, though less so as the soil continually improves. My solution is to plant them in pots away from the garden area. Every year I set out some in the garden to see if conditions have improved. When not, I destroy the garden plants and rely upon container plants.
Concerning brassica, planting late summer for a fall harvest bypasses most of the cabbage looper problem. Handpicking takes care of the rest. BTW, attacking the moths with a tennis racket is a surefire way to destroy something other than a moth or two.
I often plant several cultivars of a particular vegetable to observe it's particular resistance to adverse local and annual conditions and pests and save seeds from the most promising to see how they adapt to local conditions and pest and disease resistance.
Yes, gardening and care of each of our small pieces of our spaceship is both mentally and spiritually (one must understand their own definition of such) uplifting and challenging and is a responsibility that so few seem to realize, let alone undertake.
I wasn't clear. Spraying is the last resort. I pick 'em off by hand, enclose in cages, hose away, use BT etc if I can get a reasonable yield that way. If it gets to the point where the bugs are winning then I will spray rather than do without.
D
You were clear and I understand you spray as a last resort. That is where we differ. I *won't* spray and *will* do without.
Hell, maybe I jest be foolin' myself...what really happens when one is pushed to the edge....
?Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.? ~~~ Mark Twain
I would hope Mr. Clemens would not prove me wrong.
Charlie
Ooooh yes. Asparagus has got to be one of the best of the home grown foodstuffs.
I can't really remember any specific thing that caused me to grow veg. I've been growing veg all my adult life - "have ground, will plant".
Himself (my supposed better half) has always said he hated beans and every single time I've smuggled them into a dish (always with a heavy sauce so he couldn't really identify them before they hit his mouth) and asked him how he liked them, he's said they weren't beans but were peas. I don't bother arguing as I know they are beans not peas. It's been years since I grew them but this year I finally decided that I would grow them again and put them undisguised and obviously bean like and simply steamed on his plate. The bloody man has been eating them and enjoying them but he just won't harvest them.
There was no one vegetable that turned me on to gardening. Rather, it was the purchase of a home with a very large yard, at the time I had three little kids and the memories of my parents growing a lot of our own food on a little farm in Oregon when I was a kid. I started out with some basics that didn't do well in our clayey soil (onions, carrots), and a few that did very well (tomatoes, peppers), and sort of went fro there, expanding each year. Five years and one more child later, I now feel it's my obligation as a parent to provide my kids with the best foods I possibly can. (Plus, the cool distinction of having found ways to grow amazing amounts of food in this terrible soil!)
--S.
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