Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Lol, I thought this would be about Canada and carbon emissions, greenhouse gasses.

As for the greenhouses, as a canadian it also makes me laugh when to buy tomatoes at Costco that were grown only a couple miles away, sans chemicals, and picked the day before. You don't need to go to a farmer's market to buy local.

View on HN

Note as well that for 50-80% of the year (depending on location), the farmers market tomatoes are just Mexico tomatoes bought at Costco.

And, well, much as I like our local industry... generally they taste nothing like a tomato.

Every tomato I've ever eaten has always tasted pretty much the same?

Nothing I can find compares to an outdoor grown tomato from Leamington, Ontario.

Nothing I can find compares to an outdoor-grown heirloom varietal.

You may be trying tomatoes from the same region. Comparing North American tomatoes (personal experiences include Ontario and N/S California) versus European (Italy/Swiss), the taste, sweetness and juicyness, is more bland in North America.

As for tomatoes from the same region, I've never really tasted a difference either.

Home grown tomatoes taste more flavourful because they're allowed to ripen on the plant. Many store bought tomatoes are indoor when picked then ripened with ethylene gas.

If you grow your own tomatoes you can use cultivars that are optimized for taste, not for looking beautiful on a shelf for several days after being transported a hundred miles. It also helps to pluck them only when they're most ripe.

> It also helps to pluck them only when they're most ripe.

And to eat them well before they even catch a whiff of a refrigerator.

Come on over in August when my garden tomatoes are ripe.

Not even in the same league.

Growing up in Northern Europe I spent the first ~19-20 years of life believing I didn't like tomatoes. Then one day when I was in Italy I had a tomato bought from a local farmers stall in some small village and realized that I tomatoes can be awesome.

Still don't like most tomatoes available at supermarkets though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com