With inbreeding, it doesn’t matter if you are a royal or a dog or a tomato. Disease builds up and weak traits multiply. With tomatoes the roots are susceptible to disease and are smaller; fewer fruits are formed and plants are feeble. Its no surprise. We have been breeding from the same few original plants for 200 years.
It is early days yet but the tomato competition is heating up as fruits ripen early in the greenhouse. The same varieties planted outdoors are no where near ready but that’s why I built the greenhouse. Okay if you get technical my husband built it – but why be so picky? The early birds come from the greenhouse, not from the sunny, south facing back yard right up against the house.
This season I am bragging about my bigger than yours pumpkin patch. The patch is in the front yard where a view-blocking hedge was ripped out this spring. The “patch” is now spilling over the bank and threatening to cross the road. And just to set the record straight it is not all pumpkins. There are butternut squash, spaghetti squash, watermelons and zucchini as well as pumpkins in one giant – by town standards – patch.
Yesterday I got back something I gave away. In the spring I gave extra seedlings to a friend and yesterday she gave one back- as a fully grown plant. The Tiara cabbage was a new venture for me. Described as a lettuce-like cabbage with tender leaves in the William Dam catalogue.
In the past, when SAIT instructors asked chef apprentices to get fresh vegetables from the school’s large walk-in coolers, they sometimes received blank stares. Names and appearances of vegetables were a mystery to many new apprentices. “The main reason we put so much extra time into the garden is to simply connect our students to the food. It’s one thing to teach them the skills of how to cook but a whole other thing to teach them about FOOD…”
The more you know about your food the more you will enjoy it. I believe there is a ‘moral’ taste of food, if you know what went into producing it (socially and environmentally) your perception of what it will taste like is heightened. And the best way to appreciate good food is to grow it yourself and prepare it for friends and family – tell the story of food.
