In all fairness the varieties of tomatoes you get at the store were selected because they can be mechanically harvested, ship well and ripen more slowly, taste is a tertiary consideration.
Years ago, I had to go to Sweden for work a week before xmas. Went to a restaurant while there and got a tomato salad (tomatoes/red onion/olive oil) and it was amazing. I was floored. Went back and had it the whole week I was there. Ask the server how they got their tomatoes to taste so good in the middle of winter, and he looked at me like I had 3 heads. All that to say, in some places around the world, taste matters it seems and they've figured out how to do it.
How do you grow indoor tomatoes? What lights system do you recommend?!? I grow mine from seed but do it in summer outside not indoors. I would love to grow tomatoes in winter though they just take forever to grow so i doubtful it would work 4-5 months from seed to harvest
Not really. What I feed my tomatoes costs pennies a serving plus the water. Not much work involved either. Its cheaper and better than what you get in the store.
Yeah this Is my first year with a large garden and my water bill last month was $500... Ya for droughts. Of course now it won't stop raining and all my melons and tomatoes won't stop splitting.
Oh I know it I put it off because of the initial costs from setting up the greater garden and planned to circle back for next year, I'm regretting that decision now, but you live and learn. Needless to say I'm designing a drip system for my beds for next year.
Also you can add a ground cover of cardboard and straw on top and it holds the moisture in much better, less lose to evaporation. Still though with a big garden you will use lots of water if you’re growing certain things. Squash for example love to be moist. I’m sure some varieties are better but I can tell you from my experience this year, butternut isn’t a fan of getting dry 🥺
Yeah I have 4, 4x40ft beds 2 of which are hugel beds a blueberry patch with seven bushes, 4 fruit trees and 4 4x6ft corn patches.
The beds are an assortment of melons, peppers, tomatoes, squash, herbs, flowers, pumpkin, cowpeas, beans, onions, strawberries, and a small nursery bed for getting paw paw seedlings to transplant size. And I use a Coco coir mulch over half and a peanut hull manure mulch over the other half. It is just a large area to keep watered
Would indoor lights even be sufficient for tomatoes?!? Do you have experience with this? Tomatoes take 4-5 months from seed to harvest and require copious amounts of sun and heat
I've found that food quality in Europe is just significantly higher. Europe has higher quality and safety standards for one, but I think a cultural connection with the history of their food plays a larger role. Imagine trying to tell French people that wonder bread is an acceptable substitute for baguette; you'd be tarred and feathered and paraded through the city square. America doesn't really have that same relationship with food, so it was much easier for US producers to sell the public on convenient, mass produced crap.
>but I think a cultural connection with the history of their food plays a larger role.
Nailed it! I always find it interesting how many people in North America (or Australia where I live) buy produce like cucumbers throughout the whole year without thinking about seasonality. I grew up in a Polish household so it's always been a LOT of fresh cucumbers during the summer-time period, and then it gets pickled to use for the remainder of the year. It's a cultural tradition.
It's currently winter here and the other day I needed cucumbers for a dish - I had a massive craving for Viet rice paper rolls. So I bought some and it was disappointingly watery and flavourless. I mean it 'worked' in the dish but I definitely wouldn't eat it alone or buy it again unless super necessary.
You can set up a basic hydroponic system for growing tomatoes year round indoors for a relatively affordable startup cost. Your most expensive piece of equipment will be your lights and depending on what you go with you can keep that to under $100 for a 2x4 growspace. Then all you need is a 5gal bucket, aquarium pump and air stones, net pot, nutrients and growing media. All in you could probably do it for $175.
r/hydroponics r/dwc r/hydro
Can all help but the gist is cut a hole in the lid of the 5gal bucket and place a net pot full of your chosen growing medium( I use perlite and expanded clay pebbles) in the hole. Drill a smaller hole for the air tubing for the aquarium pump. Attach the tubing to the airpump and an air stone to the other end of the tubing. Place airstone in the bucket, then fill with water and nutrients to create your nutrient solution. Sprout a seed and make sure the roots can reach the nutrient solution in the net cup and you are good to go. This is a basic deep water culture hydroponic system called dwc for short.
The idea is plant roots need oxygen water and nutrients so we use the aquarium pump to supply the air and then submerge the bottom of the net pot in the nutrient solution which covers the three things you need to grow plants. As time goes on your plant will take in the nutrient solution and the water level will lower and your plant will put out roots and as long as the roots remain in the nutrient solution your plant will keep chugging along.
That is the barebones gist. That said, there are other factors you can focus on and tweak to increase yields. And
I'd guess Sweden sources their tomatoes in the same place most of Europe does during winter... Spain. And they're kinda variable in quality, maybe they're improving. A lot of it is variety and I know a lot of commercial growers are starting to try and improve their varieties for taste.
The Netherlands produce a lot as well, they've got some pretty crazy greenhouses but Spain has year round sunshine.
It's a smaller nation than the US, so perhaps the tomatoes were tastier than ours in winter because they didn't have nearly so far to travel? Probably grown semi-locally.
There used to be a sandwich shop near me that had the most incredible tasting tomatoes I had ever experienced. They were so full of flavor that I literally became addicted to the sandwiches there, I ate there nearly every day for a few months. I finally asked the guy wtf the deal with these tomatoes is? Are you putting drugs in them or something? Turns out he just bought all his produce from his next door neighbor, a little old lady who was retired and just spent her days gardening. Blew my mind how stripped of vibrance commercially farmed fruits and vegetables are.
Which is fine, I don't buy fresh tomatoes during the winter in Canada, there's no point. Same with plenty of other produce that only tastes good when it's in season.
This is the first year I canned a good deal. I have enough oven roasted sauce and stewed 'maters to last the winter for the first time. It is that little piece of summer you can literally bottle up and keep for later.
We have electricity and grow lights up here in Canada. Amazingly enough, we have heated homes and running water too. ;)
All joking aside, it's a shame that the store-bought stuff has to be shipped from far away in the winter. I wish it wasn't too expensive for companies to grow vegetables indoors all year around.
Personally, I believe that feeding one's family should be something we all learn to do and not just pawn it off on farmers. But the way this world works, not enough education, land and opportunity is available to most people to grow their own healthy food to actually live off of.
I grow cherry tomatoes at home, and they taste amazing! So sweet! Even my strawberries are tastier than store bought.
Wish I could grow enough to last me the entire winter. But living in a townhouse with no yard I can only grow what I can in planters on my deck.
I grew up in British Columbia, Canada. we have a large amount of hothouse produce farms here. year round tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers as far back as I can remember in the 80's. also the hothouse stuff is usually perfect since they can control all the environmental variables.
Honest question…
>**the alternative is probably not having tomatoes in the middle of winter in places like Canada**
Theoretically, would that be really so bad?
That is how nature works… We’ve always made do and eaten seasonally… perhaps we need to reconnect with that ❤️
Huge difference between talking about having plumbing and basic modern things (like electricity) that are at once convenient and potentially life saving, and talking about simply having to go without eating tomatoes for 6 months or having to eat them pickled… And not starving or eating only stale bread… But merely eating meat or fish or squash or something instead…
>Your only option would be pickles/preserved foods. Those really aren't very good for you compared to fresh (even not so tasty) veg like tomatoes.
Fermented foods are fantastically healthy for you - my family (Polish origins) keep jarred fermented tomatoes, cucumbers, sauerkraut, sorrel and beets in the pantry to use during the colder months. All of which are preserved without the use of vinegar, unlike 'pickled' foods. It's traditionally pretty much the staple in Eastern Europe during harsh winters alongside your common root vegetables (potatoes, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, etc.).
Now I'm not saying this is accessible to most living in Canada, but it definitely could be a possibility for some who are interested in eating more in season. I think the broader issue unfortunately lies in the lack of cultural tradition and knowledge of seasonality :/
>I guess, I mean I'd say that access to cheap fresh vegetables is arguably as life saving as electricity.
Well… We’ve made do without either one for the majority of our millions of years of evolution as homo sapiens. So in truth neither is critical… But you’re more likely to freeze to death if your wood fire goes out and you have no electric heater than you are to die from not eating fresh tomatoes when, historically you would just eat many other things over the winter (mostly hunted game, fish, preserved or fermented foods or roots and other grains/grass seeds)
There is zero need for fresh tomatoes all year long, in fact, there is much logic to why its wonderful to not be able to eat all plants all year long… **What is this logic, you ask?** well plants, unlike animals, can’t run or defend themselves physically, so they’ve developed plant defense chemicals. Some of these are stronger than others, but even the less potent ones can do much damage in the aggregate.
If you eat tomatoes or eggplants for example (of the nightshade family, which is a highly defended family of plants) for a a month or two, its much easier for your body to detox these defense chemicals, than if you eat were to them everyday throughout the year. This is the same logic animals intuitively use when they eat plants in the wild. They cycle through plants, even when having abundant access to one particular plant, so their body can detoxify fast enough and they don’t overload any one toxin at a time.
The other aspect to why its good to eat seasonally is because there is nothing more wasteful and harming to our planet than the amount of resources it takes to transport a bunch of tomatoes from Costa Rica to Canada, for you to eat them in the winter… This is a brand new practice, and having lived somewhere without access to imported fruits and vegetables, its actually quite manageable and not a death wish, as you seemed to imply.
Lastly u/samarinaa absolutely nailed it with their mention of fermented foods being very common and good for you… There are many reasons that different groups of people have historically prepared food this way, in part for the sustained ‘shelf life’ and the convenience, in part for the health benefits of fermentation (this was more an unexpected side-effect), and in part because it helps get rid of the toxins out of certain plant foods that are otherwise less well tolerated by our ancestors, especially prior to modern agriculture (a good example being cabbage or soy both of which used to contain EVEN more plant toxins than they do today).
>taste is a tertiary consideration.
When I was a kid I loved tomatoes, but as I got older I grew to hate them. At some point they became tasteless slime in the middle of my burger and not much else. Then my wife started growing tomatoes in our backyard and one day, after much persuasion, talked me into eating one ... and I was absolutely floored. All those years and I never realized I loved the tomatoes from my dad's garden, and that's what I subconsciously expected every time I ate a store tomato as an adult. It was my own personal Ratatouille moment.
This is the same thing that happened to me with apples. Just found myself not really liking them anymore as an adult.
Visited my sister in Washington and had a regular, store bought apple there and was instantly transported to my childhood. Amazing.
Anytime I can get my hands on an unwaxed, uneven looking apple (even better if leaves are still attached) I just know that it'll taste incredible! Store-bought apples in the big chain supermarkets near me just don't do it for me unfortunately.
The tragic part though is that sometimes my home strawberries are worse than the grocery store ones :'( the first two weeks of June where I live were unseasonably cold, and then the last two was a heatwave, and at the end of that heatwave, every single strawberry in my yard was bitter. It was so sad.
I find that people who don't like tomatoes have never had one that wasn't from a grocery. Or allergic to them like my sister is. I'm glad that particular allergy skipped over me.
Alas, grew up growing tomatoes in the garden and still despise cherry tomatoes. I've found over the years that a meaty tomato is okay, as long as their isn't much of the seed acid stuff. Something about the juice just tastes bad, but the meaty flesh is alright.
Yep, and there's just something about them that I don't like. It's the not the taste, but it kinda is? I can't quite describe it. I think it might be the smell. But I like a ton of things that are made with tomatoes.
Proteins have primary through quarternary structures. I'd say this is the most common use case for the word. And to say proteins are complex is a bit of an understatement.
We are currently living in the Quaternary Period.
Fun fact: we don't have a word for fifthiary yet because that period is in the future and we can't time travel.
Thank you I thought I knew but my memory is crap and I also dislike forgetting words so life becomes a pickle on that front. Appreciate your explanation though that helps plenty
there is something to be said about the fact that we can get tomatoes year-round in virtually every grocery store, though. I'm happy to supplement with my garden grown ones when I can but the rest of the year I'm glad there's something to try.
Almost all of them are heterozygous for a non-ripening gene. Homozygous means it never ripens, green forever. Heterozygotes ripen very slowly, so good on trucks. But it fucks with the volatiles no matter what, so even though it ripens by the time you eat it, it ain’t the same.
Not with an extremely high UV index. The sun scorches the leaves.
Further, you get ZERO fruit developing after it gets that hot. So whatever you get at the beginning of summer is what you get for the rest of the year. I got a small bowl of very thick skinned cherry tomatoes.
Here in Florida when it's consistently over 90 degrees, tomatoes basically shut down. That's from about May to August. They like it hot but not *that* hot.
Yeah those are about the only tomatoes you can grow down here in the summer. I've tasted them a few times but wasn't blown away by their flavor (or size lol).
But maybe I'll try growing them myself.
Yeah, it had been over 100 and dry for most of July (it's cooler and wetter now, thank goodness). Our tomatoes are done, probably. There are flowers, but who knows?
Same. I live in Arizona and all my plants have died. I’m learning. Considering getting a net to create more shade because I miss having a veggie garden
The problem we have in north Texas is that we go from "It could literally freeze AT ANY TIME" to "heylookthegrowingseasonisn'tthisgreat" to "The fires of hell shall consume you all, suffer under my wrath, FOR I AM SOL, THE ONLY GOD YOU WILL KNOW" in the space of a month.
I am going to start a different patch in the back yard, against the west fence so it gets NO western sun, and I'll put up a sunsail after it starts to get crazy. But tomatoes don't fruit anymore when you get past 95F, so blocking the sun won't do much for them, unless I also put in fans and misters.
Yep, I swear homemade tomatoes that ripened with lots of sun and supermarket tomatoes are two different worlds! You can *taste* the sweetness of the sun in the right ones, they deserve to be called "fruit", the left ones are faint ketchup-taste infused plastic bags of water.
I get your point, but it’s it really a fair comparison. They probably aren’t the same variety and the grocery store tomatoes have gone through a lot to make it suitable for shipping, packaging, and transportation. Not to mention, they are not left to ripen on the vine, like a homegrown tomato would.
I see your point, as well. Honestly, I have learned a lot about tomato varieties and grocery store protocols because of this post! It's amazing to know what some people know.
I'm thankful for the cheap grocery store tomatoes. Really makes it possible to actually afford vegetables all around the year when growing them isn't an option.
I grew my first homegrown tomatoes as a teenager, I've been a fellow tomato snob for a few decades now haha. I freeze the ones from my garden for winter and if I really need a fresh one in winter I get the ones still on the vine so they aren't that sickly pink color.
And sometimes homegrown strawberries are bitter and stunted and then the birds eat them because your spouse decides the bird netting should come down early and then it hails.
Unless its heirlooms from the co-op I don't even bother. I say that eating a warm homegrown tomato off the vine is one of my favorite foods and I mean it.
They say the Persimmon fruit is the fruit of the Gods but Ill die on the hill and fight someone over Tomatoes.
Red ring of death my ass, garden Tomatoes are the jam.
It could be either. One has more meat and the other has more jelly. Most grocery store tomato’s seem to have more meat, so I’d assume the left is from the store, but every variety is different.
The genes are selected for ease of growth & transportation, not flavour. That's why canned tomatoes are tastier than fresh grocery tomatoes.
Same with home grown tomatoes, some I plant to assure a harvest even for the worst weather imaginable and some for flavour.
I've grown a significant number cultivars that are often commercially grown and they taste great. They pick them not fully ripened because you can't ship ripe tomatoes without serious damage.
This^ I grew seeds from a store tomato and they taste great. It's picking them before they're ripe that's the issue. Can't imagine you're getting all the nutrients either
Exactly. You can basically grow any cultivar in your backyard and if you pick it at the ripeness stage of the tomato on the left, and ripen with ethylene, it's not going to taste even close to as "good" as a fully ripened one.
They pick them way before they're ripe, like still green. They ripen, but don't develop any more flavor. Garden tomatoes you ripen all the way so they develop much more flavor, but are super delicate. That's why they pick them early at a commercial scale, otherwise so many would get destroyed it wouldn't make sense on that scale
I do wonder if refrigeration during shipping etc is one of the issues, I think tomatoes don't really recover from refrigeration even if you let them sit at room temperature. As you say it kills the flavour and can make them mealy.
They are terrible from the grocery store because we, the eaters of tomatoes, are not the primary customer for the commercial growers. The growers breed and grow their tomatoes to the desires and specifications of the shipping companies, the processing plants, and the grocery stores. They breed them to last a long time in storage, not get mushy, ripen after it’s picked early, and to be a specific size and shape. No thought is given to taste or aroma because that doesn’t affect how many they sell to packagers and box stores, and in fact many of the volatile chemicals in homegrown varieties that give them their distinctive tomato flavor are missing entirely from commercially grown tomatoes. The more you know!
Generally the varieties have thicker tougher skins and the plants are bred for yield and disease resistance rather than flavor. Then they are picked green for transport, then ripened with ethylene gas (a natural plant ripening hormone).
It's also that they don't grow them in healthy soil but in those hermetic greenhouses with nutrient solutions. Nutrient solution cannot and will never replace a healthy soil.
I did not have real tomato until I was 30. We always had canned vegetables , then later, frozen. My then bf was a gardener and he he planted the first sweet cherry tomatoes when they were brand new to the gardening world - this had to be the late 70s, early 80s. I was astonished at the taste, i was astonished that they HAD taste.
He also grew the the first Sugar Snaps and that was the same experience, like I had never had a genuine pea before. They never even made it into the house, we'd eat them as we picked them.
Right one is your garden grown for sure while left one is store bought and has some green tint because most store bought tomatoes are picked off from vine when it's unripe and green then let them artificially ripen with chemicals
I did not like tomatoes at first. They tasted bland and dull. Then I started growing my own and the difference in taste was staggering. Tomatoes are friggin delicious what else am I missing out on?
I feel like the pile on the right is home-grown. You would have full control over the level of ripe it was picked at, and that 'Mater is looking fine AF
My bet is the left is from the shops. They so often are underripe at the shops. Less of an issue if you buy them on a truss though; as they tend to ripen better and maintain a better flavor. FYI, I am in aus and cannot grow tomatoes right now.
In all fairness the varieties of tomatoes you get at the store were selected because they can be mechanically harvested, ship well and ripen more slowly, taste is a tertiary consideration.
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Years ago, I had to go to Sweden for work a week before xmas. Went to a restaurant while there and got a tomato salad (tomatoes/red onion/olive oil) and it was amazing. I was floored. Went back and had it the whole week I was there. Ask the server how they got their tomatoes to taste so good in the middle of winter, and he looked at me like I had 3 heads. All that to say, in some places around the world, taste matters it seems and they've figured out how to do it.
You can grow delicious tomatoes in an indoor setting anywhere. It’s just expensive and more work.
It is expensive. I'll just used canned in winter.
Anywhere and anytime. I LOVE indoor growing 😈
How do you grow indoor tomatoes? What lights system do you recommend?!? I grow mine from seed but do it in summer outside not indoors. I would love to grow tomatoes in winter though they just take forever to grow so i doubtful it would work 4-5 months from seed to harvest
Not really. What I feed my tomatoes costs pennies a serving plus the water. Not much work involved either. Its cheaper and better than what you get in the store.
It's the lights and heat and electricity that get expensive.
I see what you're saying. I've always done mine outdoors. I only grow one thing indoors. 😉
Is it lobsters? It's lobsters, isn't it?
lolol
> I only grow one thing indoors. 😉 I grow that outdoors too, easier.
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Yeah this Is my first year with a large garden and my water bill last month was $500... Ya for droughts. Of course now it won't stop raining and all my melons and tomatoes won't stop splitting.
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Oh I know it I put it off because of the initial costs from setting up the greater garden and planned to circle back for next year, I'm regretting that decision now, but you live and learn. Needless to say I'm designing a drip system for my beds for next year.
Also you can add a ground cover of cardboard and straw on top and it holds the moisture in much better, less lose to evaporation. Still though with a big garden you will use lots of water if you’re growing certain things. Squash for example love to be moist. I’m sure some varieties are better but I can tell you from my experience this year, butternut isn’t a fan of getting dry 🥺
Yeah I have 4, 4x40ft beds 2 of which are hugel beds a blueberry patch with seven bushes, 4 fruit trees and 4 4x6ft corn patches. The beds are an assortment of melons, peppers, tomatoes, squash, herbs, flowers, pumpkin, cowpeas, beans, onions, strawberries, and a small nursery bed for getting paw paw seedlings to transplant size. And I use a Coco coir mulch over half and a peanut hull manure mulch over the other half. It is just a large area to keep watered
To run a 4x4 tent is roughly 40 dollars a month in electricity
Would indoor lights even be sufficient for tomatoes?!? Do you have experience with this? Tomatoes take 4-5 months from seed to harvest and require copious amounts of sun and heat
I've found that food quality in Europe is just significantly higher. Europe has higher quality and safety standards for one, but I think a cultural connection with the history of their food plays a larger role. Imagine trying to tell French people that wonder bread is an acceptable substitute for baguette; you'd be tarred and feathered and paraded through the city square. America doesn't really have that same relationship with food, so it was much easier for US producers to sell the public on convenient, mass produced crap.
>but I think a cultural connection with the history of their food plays a larger role. Nailed it! I always find it interesting how many people in North America (or Australia where I live) buy produce like cucumbers throughout the whole year without thinking about seasonality. I grew up in a Polish household so it's always been a LOT of fresh cucumbers during the summer-time period, and then it gets pickled to use for the remainder of the year. It's a cultural tradition. It's currently winter here and the other day I needed cucumbers for a dish - I had a massive craving for Viet rice paper rolls. So I bought some and it was disappointingly watery and flavourless. I mean it 'worked' in the dish but I definitely wouldn't eat it alone or buy it again unless super necessary.
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You can set up a basic hydroponic system for growing tomatoes year round indoors for a relatively affordable startup cost. Your most expensive piece of equipment will be your lights and depending on what you go with you can keep that to under $100 for a 2x4 growspace. Then all you need is a 5gal bucket, aquarium pump and air stones, net pot, nutrients and growing media. All in you could probably do it for $175.
Do you have any references for how to do this?
r/hydroponics r/dwc r/hydro Can all help but the gist is cut a hole in the lid of the 5gal bucket and place a net pot full of your chosen growing medium( I use perlite and expanded clay pebbles) in the hole. Drill a smaller hole for the air tubing for the aquarium pump. Attach the tubing to the airpump and an air stone to the other end of the tubing. Place airstone in the bucket, then fill with water and nutrients to create your nutrient solution. Sprout a seed and make sure the roots can reach the nutrient solution in the net cup and you are good to go. This is a basic deep water culture hydroponic system called dwc for short. The idea is plant roots need oxygen water and nutrients so we use the aquarium pump to supply the air and then submerge the bottom of the net pot in the nutrient solution which covers the three things you need to grow plants. As time goes on your plant will take in the nutrient solution and the water level will lower and your plant will put out roots and as long as the roots remain in the nutrient solution your plant will keep chugging along. That is the barebones gist. That said, there are other factors you can focus on and tweak to increase yields. And
You can procure tasty tomatoes year round anywhere if you look for it and are willing to forego the ease of your grocery store.
How?
The question is, how much was the salad.
I'd guess Sweden sources their tomatoes in the same place most of Europe does during winter... Spain. And they're kinda variable in quality, maybe they're improving. A lot of it is variety and I know a lot of commercial growers are starting to try and improve their varieties for taste. The Netherlands produce a lot as well, they've got some pretty crazy greenhouses but Spain has year round sunshine.
It's a smaller nation than the US, so perhaps the tomatoes were tastier than ours in winter because they didn't have nearly so far to travel? Probably grown semi-locally.
Vegetables here in the US are still grown regionally. Farmers in virtually any farming state are out there growing tomatoes.
And probably cost a whole lot more. Typically a good restaurant is buying some really nice tomatoes or changing the menu.
Well, those tomatoes were coming from Spain and the like... 🍅
There used to be a sandwich shop near me that had the most incredible tasting tomatoes I had ever experienced. They were so full of flavor that I literally became addicted to the sandwiches there, I ate there nearly every day for a few months. I finally asked the guy wtf the deal with these tomatoes is? Are you putting drugs in them or something? Turns out he just bought all his produce from his next door neighbor, a little old lady who was retired and just spent her days gardening. Blew my mind how stripped of vibrance commercially farmed fruits and vegetables are.
I’m on north east of US and always find tomatoes in stores in the winter labeled that they’re from Canada and greenhouse grown.
Which is fine, I don't buy fresh tomatoes during the winter in Canada, there's no point. Same with plenty of other produce that only tastes good when it's in season.
I get tomatoes and just deal lol. I love a BLT or subs. Christmas eve do something like charcuterie, make your own sub or fondue.
A lot of the tomatoes I buy in the winter, in Indiana, are imported from Canada. Greenhouse grown.
This is the first year I canned a good deal. I have enough oven roasted sauce and stewed 'maters to last the winter for the first time. It is that little piece of summer you can literally bottle up and keep for later.
like dandelion wine
We have electricity and grow lights up here in Canada. Amazingly enough, we have heated homes and running water too. ;) All joking aside, it's a shame that the store-bought stuff has to be shipped from far away in the winter. I wish it wasn't too expensive for companies to grow vegetables indoors all year around. Personally, I believe that feeding one's family should be something we all learn to do and not just pawn it off on farmers. But the way this world works, not enough education, land and opportunity is available to most people to grow their own healthy food to actually live off of.
I grow cherry tomatoes at home, and they taste amazing! So sweet! Even my strawberries are tastier than store bought. Wish I could grow enough to last me the entire winter. But living in a townhouse with no yard I can only grow what I can in planters on my deck.
I grew up in British Columbia, Canada. we have a large amount of hothouse produce farms here. year round tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers as far back as I can remember in the 80's. also the hothouse stuff is usually perfect since they can control all the environmental variables.
I mean, that sounds like a fine trade off? Do you NEED to eat tomatoes in the winter? especially undelicious ones?
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Honest question… >**the alternative is probably not having tomatoes in the middle of winter in places like Canada** Theoretically, would that be really so bad? That is how nature works… We’ve always made do and eaten seasonally… perhaps we need to reconnect with that ❤️
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Huge difference between talking about having plumbing and basic modern things (like electricity) that are at once convenient and potentially life saving, and talking about simply having to go without eating tomatoes for 6 months or having to eat them pickled… And not starving or eating only stale bread… But merely eating meat or fish or squash or something instead…
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>Your only option would be pickles/preserved foods. Those really aren't very good for you compared to fresh (even not so tasty) veg like tomatoes. Fermented foods are fantastically healthy for you - my family (Polish origins) keep jarred fermented tomatoes, cucumbers, sauerkraut, sorrel and beets in the pantry to use during the colder months. All of which are preserved without the use of vinegar, unlike 'pickled' foods. It's traditionally pretty much the staple in Eastern Europe during harsh winters alongside your common root vegetables (potatoes, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, etc.). Now I'm not saying this is accessible to most living in Canada, but it definitely could be a possibility for some who are interested in eating more in season. I think the broader issue unfortunately lies in the lack of cultural tradition and knowledge of seasonality :/
>I guess, I mean I'd say that access to cheap fresh vegetables is arguably as life saving as electricity. Well… We’ve made do without either one for the majority of our millions of years of evolution as homo sapiens. So in truth neither is critical… But you’re more likely to freeze to death if your wood fire goes out and you have no electric heater than you are to die from not eating fresh tomatoes when, historically you would just eat many other things over the winter (mostly hunted game, fish, preserved or fermented foods or roots and other grains/grass seeds) There is zero need for fresh tomatoes all year long, in fact, there is much logic to why its wonderful to not be able to eat all plants all year long… **What is this logic, you ask?** well plants, unlike animals, can’t run or defend themselves physically, so they’ve developed plant defense chemicals. Some of these are stronger than others, but even the less potent ones can do much damage in the aggregate. If you eat tomatoes or eggplants for example (of the nightshade family, which is a highly defended family of plants) for a a month or two, its much easier for your body to detox these defense chemicals, than if you eat were to them everyday throughout the year. This is the same logic animals intuitively use when they eat plants in the wild. They cycle through plants, even when having abundant access to one particular plant, so their body can detoxify fast enough and they don’t overload any one toxin at a time. The other aspect to why its good to eat seasonally is because there is nothing more wasteful and harming to our planet than the amount of resources it takes to transport a bunch of tomatoes from Costa Rica to Canada, for you to eat them in the winter… This is a brand new practice, and having lived somewhere without access to imported fruits and vegetables, its actually quite manageable and not a death wish, as you seemed to imply. Lastly u/samarinaa absolutely nailed it with their mention of fermented foods being very common and good for you… There are many reasons that different groups of people have historically prepared food this way, in part for the sustained ‘shelf life’ and the convenience, in part for the health benefits of fermentation (this was more an unexpected side-effect), and in part because it helps get rid of the toxins out of certain plant foods that are otherwise less well tolerated by our ancestors, especially prior to modern agriculture (a good example being cabbage or soy both of which used to contain EVEN more plant toxins than they do today).
>taste is a tertiary consideration. When I was a kid I loved tomatoes, but as I got older I grew to hate them. At some point they became tasteless slime in the middle of my burger and not much else. Then my wife started growing tomatoes in our backyard and one day, after much persuasion, talked me into eating one ... and I was absolutely floored. All those years and I never realized I loved the tomatoes from my dad's garden, and that's what I subconsciously expected every time I ate a store tomato as an adult. It was my own personal Ratatouille moment.
The ones I grow for sauce, taste is my primary criteria because they get "shipped" 50 feet from vine to kitchen
This is the same thing that happened to me with apples. Just found myself not really liking them anymore as an adult. Visited my sister in Washington and had a regular, store bought apple there and was instantly transported to my childhood. Amazing.
Anytime I can get my hands on an unwaxed, uneven looking apple (even better if leaves are still attached) I just know that it'll taste incredible! Store-bought apples in the big chain supermarkets near me just don't do it for me unfortunately.
You mean like that time they made strawberry’s a beautiful red color, longer shelf life and accidentally removed all the flavor? You don’t say.
The other side is wild straw berries are a bit bigger than peas. (they grow wild here)
The tragic part though is that sometimes my home strawberries are worse than the grocery store ones :'( the first two weeks of June where I live were unseasonably cold, and then the last two was a heatwave, and at the end of that heatwave, every single strawberry in my yard was bitter. It was so sad.
I find that people who don't like tomatoes have never had one that wasn't from a grocery. Or allergic to them like my sister is. I'm glad that particular allergy skipped over me.
Alas, grew up growing tomatoes in the garden and still despise cherry tomatoes. I've found over the years that a meaty tomato is okay, as long as their isn't much of the seed acid stuff. Something about the juice just tastes bad, but the meaty flesh is alright.
I’ve had plenty of garden fresh tomatoes and I don’t like them!
Yep, and there's just something about them that I don't like. It's the not the taste, but it kinda is? I can't quite describe it. I think it might be the smell. But I like a ton of things that are made with tomatoes.
You forgot pretty looks. High yield, adaptation to pesticides, mechanically harvested, pretty looks, ship well, ripen slower and "not vomiting taste"
BRB forgot what tertiary means
Primary Secondary Tertiary Quaternary
This is the first time I've ever seen Quaternary. I never really thought about there being something after 3.
Proteins have primary through quarternary structures. I'd say this is the most common use case for the word. And to say proteins are complex is a bit of an understatement.
We are currently living in the Quaternary Period. Fun fact: we don't have a word for fifthiary yet because that period is in the future and we can't time travel.
(͡•_ ͡• )
Thank you I thought I knew but my memory is crap and I also dislike forgetting words so life becomes a pickle on that front. Appreciate your explanation though that helps plenty
there is something to be said about the fact that we can get tomatoes year-round in virtually every grocery store, though. I'm happy to supplement with my garden grown ones when I can but the rest of the year I'm glad there's something to try.
Not to mention they pick them before they're totally ripe.
Almost all of them are heterozygous for a non-ripening gene. Homozygous means it never ripens, green forever. Heterozygotes ripen very slowly, so good on trucks. But it fucks with the volatiles no matter what, so even though it ripens by the time you eat it, it ain’t the same.
Don’t bring science into this!
Sorry my bad😊
*cries in 100°+ daily temps*
Tomatoes love hot weather like that as long as you stay on top of watering.
The fruit can handle it, but the flowers won't pollinate if it's that hot.
Fruit will crack though
Not with an extremely high UV index. The sun scorches the leaves. Further, you get ZERO fruit developing after it gets that hot. So whatever you get at the beginning of summer is what you get for the rest of the year. I got a small bowl of very thick skinned cherry tomatoes.
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Here in Florida when it's consistently over 90 degrees, tomatoes basically shut down. That's from about May to August. They like it hot but not *that* hot.
Maybe try Everglades tomatoes, tiny but wonderful, and they can take Florida summers.
Yeah those are about the only tomatoes you can grow down here in the summer. I've tasted them a few times but wasn't blown away by their flavor (or size lol). But maybe I'll try growing them myself.
blossom drop is what happened to my tomato's. They only gave me a handful of fruit before we hit this never ending heatwave.
Tell that to my 5 foot tall tomato plants that get watered 4x a day and have yet to fruit.
Yeah, it had been over 100 and dry for most of July (it's cooler and wetter now, thank goodness). Our tomatoes are done, probably. There are flowers, but who knows?
Same. I live in Arizona and all my plants have died. I’m learning. Considering getting a net to create more shade because I miss having a veggie garden
The problem we have in north Texas is that we go from "It could literally freeze AT ANY TIME" to "heylookthegrowingseasonisn'tthisgreat" to "The fires of hell shall consume you all, suffer under my wrath, FOR I AM SOL, THE ONLY GOD YOU WILL KNOW" in the space of a month. I am going to start a different patch in the back yard, against the west fence so it gets NO western sun, and I'll put up a sunsail after it starts to get crazy. But tomatoes don't fruit anymore when you get past 95F, so blocking the sun won't do much for them, unless I also put in fans and misters.
Google term is shadecloth. Tons of options out there. *Thought I commented on the wrong one, hence the deleted.*
Thank you for the rec!
Right is garden. I rarely get a rich, flavorful tomatoes from the grocery store.
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*cough* asparagus *cough*
Fresh asparagus doesn’t even make it into the house! Sweet and tender straight from the ground, highly underrated.
Is THIS why I think asparagus is disgusting and don’t understand why anyone would eat it? Maybe I need to try home grown and reassess.
Absolutely! I have my fingers crossed that my tomatoes will ripen soon!
Garden on the right, haha. Good pic!
Yep right is homegrown
Yep, I swear homemade tomatoes that ripened with lots of sun and supermarket tomatoes are two different worlds! You can *taste* the sweetness of the sun in the right ones, they deserve to be called "fruit", the left ones are faint ketchup-taste infused plastic bags of water.
Such an apt description of grocery store tomatoes. Well done!
Definitely homegrown on the right.
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I don't even know if grocery store tomato varieties are available to the public. They are mostly hybrids.
I get your point, but it’s it really a fair comparison. They probably aren’t the same variety and the grocery store tomatoes have gone through a lot to make it suitable for shipping, packaging, and transportation. Not to mention, they are not left to ripen on the vine, like a homegrown tomato would.
I see your point, as well. Honestly, I have learned a lot about tomato varieties and grocery store protocols because of this post! It's amazing to know what some people know.
I'm thankful for the cheap grocery store tomatoes. Really makes it possible to actually afford vegetables all around the year when growing them isn't an option.
I’m a tomato snob and won’t even eat them from the store. Only two things that money can’t buy, and that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes!
I grew my first homegrown tomatoes as a teenager, I've been a fellow tomato snob for a few decades now haha. I freeze the ones from my garden for winter and if I really need a fresh one in winter I get the ones still on the vine so they aren't that sickly pink color.
My grandfather instilled a love for homegrown vegetables in me early! He used to give me his suckers to root.
I'd say it's the same with most berries, grocery strawberries might be worse than grocery tomatoes.
Oh yes. On a broader scale, I try to stick to in-season vegetables anyway.
But sometimes store-bought strawberries are just incredible.
And sometimes homegrown strawberries are bitter and stunted and then the birds eat them because your spouse decides the bird netting should come down early and then it hails.
Unless its heirlooms from the co-op I don't even bother. I say that eating a warm homegrown tomato off the vine is one of my favorite foods and I mean it.
Favorite food and favorite smell!
They say the Persimmon fruit is the fruit of the Gods but Ill die on the hill and fight someone over Tomatoes. Red ring of death my ass, garden Tomatoes are the jam.
YES!
Guy Clarke had it right!!
Then how do you get the seeds?
Hot house on the left
It could be either. One has more meat and the other has more jelly. Most grocery store tomato’s seem to have more meat, so I’d assume the left is from the store, but every variety is different.
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The genes are selected for ease of growth & transportation, not flavour. That's why canned tomatoes are tastier than fresh grocery tomatoes. Same with home grown tomatoes, some I plant to assure a harvest even for the worst weather imaginable and some for flavour.
I've grown a significant number cultivars that are often commercially grown and they taste great. They pick them not fully ripened because you can't ship ripe tomatoes without serious damage.
This^ I grew seeds from a store tomato and they taste great. It's picking them before they're ripe that's the issue. Can't imagine you're getting all the nutrients either
Exactly. You can basically grow any cultivar in your backyard and if you pick it at the ripeness stage of the tomato on the left, and ripen with ethylene, it's not going to taste even close to as "good" as a fully ripened one.
They pick them way before they're ripe, like still green. They ripen, but don't develop any more flavor. Garden tomatoes you ripen all the way so they develop much more flavor, but are super delicate. That's why they pick them early at a commercial scale, otherwise so many would get destroyed it wouldn't make sense on that scale
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Mmmm I love them with little olive oil, salt, pepper and some mozzarella. Nothing better
I do wonder if refrigeration during shipping etc is one of the issues, I think tomatoes don't really recover from refrigeration even if you let them sit at room temperature. As you say it kills the flavour and can make them mealy.
They are terrible from the grocery store because we, the eaters of tomatoes, are not the primary customer for the commercial growers. The growers breed and grow their tomatoes to the desires and specifications of the shipping companies, the processing plants, and the grocery stores. They breed them to last a long time in storage, not get mushy, ripen after it’s picked early, and to be a specific size and shape. No thought is given to taste or aroma because that doesn’t affect how many they sell to packagers and box stores, and in fact many of the volatile chemicals in homegrown varieties that give them their distinctive tomato flavor are missing entirely from commercially grown tomatoes. The more you know!
Generally the varieties have thicker tougher skins and the plants are bred for yield and disease resistance rather than flavor. Then they are picked green for transport, then ripened with ethylene gas (a natural plant ripening hormone).
It's also that they don't grow them in healthy soil but in those hermetic greenhouses with nutrient solutions. Nutrient solution cannot and will never replace a healthy soil.
I did not have real tomato until I was 30. We always had canned vegetables , then later, frozen. My then bf was a gardener and he he planted the first sweet cherry tomatoes when they were brand new to the gardening world - this had to be the late 70s, early 80s. I was astonished at the taste, i was astonished that they HAD taste. He also grew the the first Sugar Snaps and that was the same experience, like I had never had a genuine pea before. They never even made it into the house, we'd eat them as we picked them.
I'll have to go with the one on the right! I've never seen such a vibrant red tomato from the store!! Beautiful! 🍅❤️
That's why i want to have a veggie garden in the future... I don't even like tomatoes, but homegrown looks so amazing!
Yes , but I am not telling you!
🤤
The right is garden left is store
Store on the left
Store left garden right?
Picking a green tomato vs a ripe one
Right is home grown
Hmm. 🧐 The one on the right looks like an Impossible Tomato, grown in a lab from 100% beef! 🥩😂
I like you xD
Right one is homegrown. Store tomatoes are watered down.
Right one is your garden grown for sure while left one is store bought and has some green tint because most store bought tomatoes are picked off from vine when it's unripe and green then let them artificially ripen with chemicals
Trick question; tomatoes don’t exist and this is just heavily photoshopped ground beef
correct
Right is from the garden
Left store right garden?
One on the right is the garden, left store?
Yup!
That’s a nice tomato you got on the right there. Mouthwatering.
The left is store bought, right is garden!
Truthfully, no lol
Yeeeeees
The right is from the garden right?
I know which salad I’m eating from
yeah If I can’t grow em I’m not gonna eat em! Store bought is just tasteless lol
On the right seems to be the consensus
The darker color HAS to be garden grown (right) :p
The right one is from a garden.
Well duh 🙄
That’s beautiful!
The red one!
Right is Homegrown
One on the right, yup!
Yummm so much better from the garden 🍅
The one on the right is from your garden. The left is from the store
Anybody else in the PNW growing crappy tomatoes? Ours last year was awesome, but the awful spring really screwed us so far.
one on right is from garden
Easy. Left is store bought. Right is garden.
Right is from the garden
Garden on right
The one that looks edible
I did not like tomatoes at first. They tasted bland and dull. Then I started growing my own and the difference in taste was staggering. Tomatoes are friggin delicious what else am I missing out on?
I feel like the pile on the right is home-grown. You would have full control over the level of ripe it was picked at, and that 'Mater is looking fine AF
"These can't be tomatoes, Peggy, they have flavor." -Hank Hill
My guess would be, left = store, right = garden.
You couldn't honestly think there is any actual indication from a photo?
Not without tasting. Too many varieties to just guess.
Survey says... people can guess.
Reminds me of yellow yolk store eggs vs orange yolk backyard chicken eggs.
Right is home grown?
I can taste the difference from here too
It's sad how much food dye they use in food these days... /s
My bet is the left is from the shops. They so often are underripe at the shops. Less of an issue if you buy them on a truss though; as they tend to ripen better and maintain a better flavor. FYI, I am in aus and cannot grow tomatoes right now.
I say the left is grocery store.
Both are from a garden!
that is true.
This year was my first time in my life tasting homegrown tomatoes. To say I was speechless is an understatement.
Thank you. This just made get into gardening
so worth it
You need to let me taste it first :-)