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Post by daylilydude on Jun 27, 2018 5:14:52 GMT -5
I know almost everyone on here knows the difference, but do you have certain ones that can go either way?
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dirtguy50
Pro Member
My avatar got in trouble for digging in the garden
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Joined: February 2014
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Post by dirtguy50 on Jun 27, 2018 8:50:50 GMT -5
I have grown celery in the past but way prefer store bought over home grown. My home grown was too small and very strong in flavor. Store bought it is for us.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 27, 2018 8:54:44 GMT -5
I can get some good store bought celery as well and now that the Allium Leaf Miner has invaded my area, I buy onions at the store and don't really notice a difference in taste.
I don't think that potatoes taste a lot different but I love the fact that mine are not sprayed with all of the things that they use on commercial potatoes.
They spray anti-fungals before they plant, insecticides after they plant, herbicides to kill the plants before harvest and anti-sprouting agents after harvest. I spray mine with NOTHING.
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Post by octave1 on Jun 27, 2018 8:56:53 GMT -5
Asparagus. It tastes the same to me. On the other hand, store bought cucumbers and tomatoes don't even come close to homewgrown.
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Post by bluelacedredhead on Jun 27, 2018 9:02:00 GMT -5
Beets. I don't care for them except pickled. I have a small urban garden and don't care to use what precious little space I have for them, so once a year I buy 10 lbs to pickle. Ketchup. I've tried twice, using different recipes to make ketchup from home raised veggies. Can't get that bottled texture although I've come close on taste. Husband won't eat the homemade stuff, so storebought it is.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2018 9:13:23 GMT -5
Beets, celery, asparagus, turnips.
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Post by september on Jun 27, 2018 9:14:07 GMT -5
Like dirtguy50, my home grown celery was smaller and stronger flavored. Fine for soups and cooking, but not so much for eating fresh. Prefer the taste of my own carrots, but don't have enough room to store them decently, so have to buy some for part of the year. When my mom was alive, we froze a lot of sliced and diced carrots, but it's too putsy work for just one person. Radishes - mine stay small, boughten are better.
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Post by carolyn on Jun 27, 2018 12:01:17 GMT -5
celery is a water hog. you literally could plant it in a mud puddle and its not enough water.... I plant celery next to my header line in the high tunnel. at every driptape fitting there is a leak. and I plant celery there at almost every fitting just to suck up the water. that is the secret to celery. on the other hand if you have a dehydrator cut the leaves and dry them. that is worth 14.00 a pound the last time I checked it.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 27, 2018 12:10:23 GMT -5
I agree with many already mentioned - onions are cheap, and not one of the things that much insecticide on (though ALM may change that), and celery I use more in the off season, though celery is one of those heavily sprayed veggies - I found out why when I grew it one year! Strawberries are another in this category - attacked by a lot, in my area, including birds. Beans also get bugs, but also diseases, in many places. Better to buy organics, of these types of foods. I grew potatoes one season, but they attracted sooooo many bugs, that my eggplants were decimated by the bugs, even though the potatoes appeared unharmed, they had so many leaves. Never grew them again, though the flavor was incredible.
Store-bought tomatoes, cukes, eggplants, and hot peppers are nothing like home grown. And nowhere can I find the hot peppers that I grow. Garlic and shallots (though I didn't plant these this year) I grow mainly because I use so much of them. And the odd things I can't find locally, like the bottle gourd and bitter melon. Almost all herbs I have to grow; I would grow cilantro, but it bolts, and it's easy to find, so that I always buy it.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 27, 2018 12:10:59 GMT -5
Onions and potatoes are store-bought. Corn and dried beans, too. I don't have enough space to grow or store them in large quantities. I grow green beans, but usually just for fresh use; I could grow more but I don't have enough freezer space to store them. I like to grow carrots, and I think my fresh ones are better than store-bought. I can grow a lot per SF in a raised bed. I could grow a lot more - maybe our whole supply - if I kept replanting from fall through spring. But storage is the problem. If I ever get another freezer, I expect to grow and freeze lots of carrots. As it is, we only get to eat carrots from my garden in winter and spring. Like most here, I grow tomatoes because they're better than store-bought, but I don't have room to grow enough for a year's supply of tomato products. I get tomatoes to eat fresh, plus I do a little canning of sauce and sometimes salsa when I have a bunch ripen at once. It takes way too many tomatoes to cook all the way down into paste or ketchup, so I always buy those items from the store. I grow my own radishes, but I only need a few, since I am the only one eating them. DH may nibble a couple, but he's not really a fan. I grow as many peppers as I can fit in the garden, and they are mostly sweet peppers. I can both hot peppers (mostly jalepeno slices) and sweet peppers, I freeze sweet peppers to the extent that freezer space permits, and I am trying dehydrating some paprika peppers for powder this year. But sadly I can't grow peppers year-round, so I buy bells and other sweet peppers for salads and snacking when mine are out of season. Given how pricey ripe peppers are - even in season - peppers are probably my highest dollar value crop. Plus I can grow all kinds of exotic varieties that I can't find in stores. It's just a shame I can't handle the heat, because hot peppers are even easier for me to grow than the sweet ones. Even in my little garden I could produce LOTS of habaneros and all the other wicked hot peppers if I had a use for them. I like to grow my own eggplants, especially now that I have found a large-fruited variety that is never bitter - Aswad. I really hate to buy an eggplant, get it home, and then find that it's bitter, even after salting. Ick! I grow cucumbers for fresh use and various pickles. Cucumbers are my biggest producer per SF of garden space, if grown in a SIP with a tall, strong trellis. There are other things I grow because I can't get them at the store. Plus I love trying new vegetable varieties, just for fun. Given that I'm limited to a suburban backyard, gardening is a hobby for fun, exercise, and good eats. It's not a necessity to put food on the table. Which is good, because I don't have nearly enough garden space to feed a family. EDIT: I am growing 3 cutting celery plants in a SIP and I don't know what to do with it all! It just loves the constant water supply and it still looks great despite the heat. The flavor is really strong (definitely for cooking use only), and it has tough, skinny stems. Buy that's the way that cutting celery is supposed to be. I may try regular celery in a SIP next year, given how well the cutting celery has done this year. I don't eat celery fresh, but DH does.
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Post by september on Jun 27, 2018 12:12:49 GMT -5
carolyn , you are so right about the water! I had it planted down the center of my lettuce bed, which I water heavily every day or two, depending on the heat and weather, and that wasn't enough for the celery! Looked fine, and lasted until it snowed, so it was worth it, just for the cooking usage.
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Post by september on Jun 27, 2018 12:18:13 GMT -5
I have to disagree about onions. Yes, onions are cheap, but the cooking onions you get in mesh bags at the grocery store are often old and very strong because they are grown for shipping and storage. Growing your own onions from seed gives you fresh, juicy, wonderfully mild onions that are a treat to eat raw on sandwiches and salads. If you are not a raw onion eater, then it probably wouldn't matter. To me, a generic store onion is like a generic store tomato. Unless you get in a shipment of Vidalia or good Walla Walla onions.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 27, 2018 12:42:26 GMT -5
september, I agree about the generic yellow storage onions; I don't buy those. I buy Vidalia onions in season, and there are some good sweet onions grown in Peru that are available in the fall and winter. The Peruvian onions are really similar to Vidalias. (Shhh...don't tell DH's onion-growing relatives in Georgia that I said that!) Between the two sources I can get good sweet onions all year, though they get expensive at certain times of year.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 27, 2018 15:40:04 GMT -5
september, I pretty much only use onions for cooking so the yellow ones are fine for that. I can buy Vidalia in the summer when I want to grill onions for burgers or to make grilled ratatouille. The Allium Leaf Miner has ruined onion crops across PA. It is from Europe and the first place it was discovered in the US was in my county in 2016. It is spreading and the only way to prevent its damage is to cover the onion crop with a row cover since it is a fly. The fly lays it's eggs in early spring and then dies off but when the larvae hatch a second crop of flies emerges to infect crops in the late summer. So I am able to plant onion sets in late May and we can eat "spring onions" but I will have to harvest the bulbs before mid August even if they are not full sized because when the new flies appear of they can be infected. The fly lays eggs on the leaves and maggots burrow into the bulbs. Yuk.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2018 19:54:37 GMT -5
I love strong onions, they caramelize so wonderfully, better than vidalia does, in my opinion. I like the stronger onions in just about everything, but that is also what I grew up with, so that can be a factor, too. Green onions or a thinly sliced red one in salads, but will use the strong one there, too, sliced in paper thin rings.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 27, 2018 20:44:34 GMT -5
@imp I rarely buy vidalias, either. I remember a show ATK did years ago on French Onion Soup, in which the onions are caramelized, and you would think a sweet onion would be best for this. Yet, vidalias were the least flavorful variety, and the most popular of the ones they tested was a purple variety - a strong one, not a weak variety. This surprised most people, who figured, like me, that the sweet onions would caramelize the best for things like this.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2018 22:09:26 GMT -5
I always figured if I wanted an onion that I could eat like an apple, I'd get an apple, LOL!!
My mother is to blame for my onion thing. She would slice up maybe 5 big ol' mean onions and slowly cook them down in an iron skillet, usually a chicken cooker and a dab of bacon grease. The pan starts almost over flowing, but cooks down to like a fifth of what you started with, but the taste is superb. I have been known to just eat the onions this way, <smile>, but added to almost anything else is good, too.
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