<p>I don’t buy any produce in the supermarket. I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California and the produce there is amazing. You’d buy from the farmer and it was picked fresh. It was culture shock moving to Los Angeles. I was so excited to find good farmer’s markets, some with growers from my home town.</p>
<p>Today I’ll stop by a nursery to find out what tomatoes grow well in FL. You CCers inspire me.</p>
<p>I do grow my own pineapples, oranges & grapefruits.</p>
<p>NJ is famous for high property taxes, expensive auto insurance and through-the-roof home prices. However, our tomatoes make living in NJ oh so worth it! Nothing beats a home grown NJ tomato.</p>
<p>While we’re at it, Jersey corn, bought at a roadside stand on a hot day, coming home from the beach.</p>
<p>Agree on corn too. When I went to UW and had corn there I thought it was feed corn or something. NJ corn was sweeter and had much better texture.</p>
<p>If you love tomatoes and your municipality allows chickens, get a few and use the manure and straw to mulch your tomato plants. Your plants will be giant with loads of tomatoes! My plants are over 5 feet tall and incredibly wide, loaded with fruit. Good luck!</p>
<p>A friend has a great compost pile (usually at least a year old) and the same high plants.</p>
<p>[Barry</a> Estabrook - ‘Tomatoland’ - How Industrial Farming ‘Destroyed’ The Tasty Tomato : NPR](<a href=“Barry Estabrook - 'Tomatoland' - How Industrial Farming 'Destroyed' The Tasty Tomato : NPR”>Barry Estabrook - 'Tomatoland' - How Industrial Farming 'Destroyed' The Tasty Tomato : NPR)</p>
<p>I heard this piece on NPR few months ago - excerpt:
"As one large Florida farmer said, ‘I don’t get paid a single cent for flavor,’ " says Estabrook. “He said, ‘I get paid for weight. And I don’t know of any supermarket shopper who tastes her tomatoes before she puts them in her shopping cart.’…”</p>
<p>The problem with store tomatoes is that they are totally done to make shipping work and for shelf life, not flavor. A lot of tomatoes you find in the supermarket may be grown hydroponically, the grow them in crushed coral and use chemicals to give them nutrients, then spray them with a gas to make them turn red…when they aren’t really ripe.</p>
<p>On top of that, they also are using hybrid tomatoes that have been bred, not for taste, but for uniform size (easy to pack) and durability…and taste like a rubber ball. If you ever saw a true Jersey Beef tomato, it can be one of the ugliest shaped things you ever saw, but the taste…oh my God, nothing like it. Some of the heirloom tomatoes are pretty decent, but even hybrid tomatoes if bred for the right things taste great. One of the reasons for the grow local idea that makes sense is since they don’t have to ship it thousands of miles, they can grow them for taste, not durability. </p>
<p>One way to get better taste is to buy organic produce, though it doesn’t always measure up, a lot of it to me has better flavor, because they cannot use gas to ripen them and have to grow them in the ground, if they claim they are organic. You pay more, but I would rather eat fewer, more expensive tomatoes, then eat the supermarket crap at all.</p>
<p>The real Jersey tomato had actually gone extinct, and now, finally, has been brought back.</p>
<p>[The</a> Return of a Lost Jersey Tomato - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/dining/23toma.html]The”>The Return of a Lost Jersey Tomato - The New York Times)</p>
<p>I’m growing them this year (in Washington State - we’ll see.)</p>
<p>My husband grew up on a farm in eastern Pennsylvania and one of the things they grew were tomatoes for Campbell. In fact they were a top ten producer for Campbell for several years. He remembers they would pick them ripe and the truck would come late in the evening on the day they picked. They would pick all day, by hand (they did use some migrant labor for this, but all four boys picked as well) and stack the baskets full of ripe tomatoes at the ends of the rows. About ten at night the semi would pull into the field and they would stack the tomatoes in the truck. He says there would be a smell that is like no other – thousands of fresh, ripe tomatoes, warmed by sun, in the cool of the night. He now grows about tomatoes in our garden – and says every so often he gets a hint of that smell, but never that intensity. They grew Ramapo tomatoes.</p>
<p>The Rampapo? I remember a couple of years ago the NY Times fawning all over the Rutgers variety of tomato, when RU retintroduced the seed to the mass market after years of clamor from tomato lovers.</p>
<p>Now here’s a question. Who eats all those mass produced, gas infused tasteless tomatoes? My guess is…everyone who buyes a Burger King Whopper or the ubiquitous 7-Eleven submarine sandwich.</p>
<p>I’m growing Rutgers. Have some flowers (my wife says), but don’t know if I’m getting any tomatoes this year. (it’s one of only two hybrids I’m trying to grow, rest are heirlooms).</p>
<p>I have some Raf seeds from the Canary Islands that I’m rooting for:</p>
<p><a href=“Jamón Lovers - Conectando a las personas con el mundo del Jamón”>http://www.lopezortega.com/files/especiales/especial_tomates_pata_negra.php</a></p>