Plan To Plant For Flavor and Nutrition
Tips on how to plant for flavor and nutrition; and what seed variety to plant and where to get them.
January/February 1971
By Charles F. Jenkins
Not many of the dollars spent by colleges of agriculture and the USDA are used to develop vegetables and fruits of maximum nutrition and flavor. Today's consumer—either from indoctrination or lack of choice—buys produce almost entirely on the basis of size and color. Most developmental work, therefore, is concentrated on improving only the shipping quality, size and appearance of fruits and vegetables. It becomes a vicious circle. The grower pushes the big and bright and the customer, conditioned to accept such as "good", demands ever bigger and brighter. The few who complain about lack of taste and food value are told that only the big and bright will sell.
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The picture is dark, but not entirely black. There are a few examples of limited search for taste and nutrition and they've produced some varieties of garden fare that you should know about before you start dreaming over those seed catalogs this year. The University of New Hampshire, for instance, appears to be in the nutritional vanguard with its Double Rich tomato. This tomato—which has twice the vitamin C content of ordinary varieties—was bred at the university several years ago. Double Rich still doesn't have the charisma of hybrids such as Big Boy, however, and you may have to start yours from seed.
The University of New Hampshire is also responsible for an Eat-All Squash with high protein, edible seeds and is credited—I believe—with Sweetheart Beets, which are far more flavorful than the old standards.
Another notable advance is Purdue University's Caro-Red Tomato, which has 10 times the vitamin A content of older varieties. It is a prolific bearer, either staked or not, but the name Caro-Red may prove confusing; the ripe fruit is medium to large and Caro-Red both adds nutrition and takes salads beyond the usual dimension of red and green.
Double Rich and Caro-Red are generally classified as medium term tomatoes which means that about 75 to 85 days pass from the time the plants are set in your garden until you pick ripe fruit. If you can get sets of either variety, that is. Most likely, you'll have to start both from seed if you want to try them because commercial growers are not missionaries. They limit their investments in labor and capital to known sellers. Growing your own from the seeds of either open-pollinated variety is not difficult, however.
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