[stompy]

Hi All,

I don't know about you guys, but we got some supermarket cherry tomatoes on sunday, they were like bullets.
The skin was so hard our 3 year old spat it in the bin saying she couldn't chew it (they were'nt that bad) but they were not good either, they were quite bitter with no flavour.
Roll on the summer time when we can pick fresh thin skinned toms full of juice and flavour.

Which veg do you guys think has the biggest contrast between supermarket and allotment?

Andy

[arugula]

Carrots.

[savbo]

cucumbers

[DD.]

Sweetcorn

[Springlands]

Peas and cukes and toms and carrots and .............................................. 

[Christo]

Onions.... They're so goog straight from the lotty.

[Kristen]

Everything!

[mumofstig]

another vote for sweetcorn 

[JayG]

Sweetcorn, by a mile, but also runner beans (always expensive in supermarkets and often overgrown and stringy; you should never have to call them "string beans" if you grow the right variety properly.)

[stompy]

I never really did anygood with sweetcorn.
It never developed a full cob, i used to get half a fully developed cob at the bottom and the rest was really small and thin.
I stopped growing it after 3 failed attempts.

[Debz]

Tomatoes.  Just had some red bullets with my lunch.  No taste to them either.  Roll on spring/summer.

[Stevens706]

I'm with the tomato gang, I leave the supermarket ones out with a banana on top to ripen them some more.

[Kristen]

I never really did anygood with sweetcorn.

No! Tell me it is not so?!!

If you can be bothered: I grow mine in newspaper pots that are tall - 6" - 7" starting the seeds off by chitting on damp kitchen paper - the new F1 varieties bred for short season are very susceptible to fungal infections, and even come coated with fungicide - that way I get exactly one-per-pot, but you could sow two seeds and then thin instead.

You have only 3 weeks from sowing to needing to get the plants planted - so start hardening off after 10 days.

I think this gives them a flying start (and I also grow 3 batches in the greenhouse before the outdoor ones come on stream).

But I only get one cob per plant, so its not a high yielding crop.  Planting successional crops upwind may help them pollinate (as Jay suggests elsewhere)

The flavour is AMAZING!

[stompy]

I chitted them, got good germination, strong tall plants but they have never produced a good cob.
I grew them in block formation, watered well, fed and shook them to get good polination but never got a full cob (and i used to grow upto 40 plants, imagine how dissapointing that is 3 years running)
I don't bother now.

Andy

[Y.E.A.H]

peas, sweetcorn and cucumber