Home grown veg tastes better!

[Tee Gee]

how quickly things go soft compared to the supermarket variety e.g carrots

How do you store them?

If you store them in sand/old compost or peat they will remain quite firm.

In fact there is a tendancy for them to start growing green tops again!

[Tee Gee]

[telboy]

Ah! well,
If the Tesco drivers from the distribution warehouses DO go on strike, panic buying will no doubt take place & we can all go & harvest to our hearts content(& our bodies).

[Tin Shed]

Its not only the taste of home grown veg, its the smell as well. When I bring leeks home from the lottie in the car, the leek smell is very strong and can linger all day, even after the leeks have been removed! You never get that from supermarket ones.

[lin]

I have been amazed  since I started on this plot, just how tasty everything is, there is a huge difference in taste. I agree totally about parsnips too, because mine are not ready yet and I am a parsnip lover I have been buying in shop, but there is nothing to touch the sweetness of those I grow and harvest later in the year.

And I have been picking strawberries every day (only one or two) but they are so sweet, they just melt in your mouth...mmmm!
Lin

[David R]

If you look at the name of the varieties the supermarkets grow they are never the ones you buy for home growing. I think all "grade A" stuff has to be labelled with the variety on the packet.

The supermarket varieties are designed to make as much cash as possible compromising taste for storage life etc as mentioned. They are also grown extremely quickly and probably contain much more water than home grown.

[Lauren S]

When on holiday I just love to go to the local markets (France or Spain) even just to look sometimes. Nothing is the same size or colour and you know they just picked everything that day too. Peaches, grapes, cherries and strawberries look and taste just like they ought to. None of this watery tasteless garbage on offer here.
Lauren  :D

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

it's true that markets in France have amazing veg that taste great, and such a variety too. But it's also true that the French are the biggest users of pesticides, legal and illegal, in Western Europe. They have big problems with pesticide contamination of drinking water, and also nitrates and more worryingly nitrites, from fertiliser run-off, especially a problem with pig farming, in Brittany say.
Tesco's etc may produce tastless food, but at least it gets tested for nasty pesticides
Personally i'd take the risk, and go with taste, or better still growit meself