Ariel301
Attractive To Bees
This sounds more like a problem with the soil than the crops. Rather than continue trashing the soil and just find a plant that can take the abuse, why not focus on rebuilding your soil so that it has nutrients for things to grow? The land is not meant to grow the same crop year after year after year for many years...practices like crop rotation and letting the field rest once every seven years will help you to have a better yield. Soil can only take so much before it needs a break, and chemical man-made fertilizer is never as balanced or as useful as natural organic-matter fertilizers.zuks77 said:Appreciate your replies!
The problem that I have experienced is that over last couple of years my crops are getting smaller, takes much more energy + resources to grow same quality & quantity vegetables and little changes in weather (and over past 5 years the weather has become way too unpredictable & extreme in some cases) can easily affect and devastate seeds that are planted in open fields vs closed facilities that provide good shield.
Do you know of any other "magic" seeds that will give me bigger, jucier and tasting vegetables? (without adding chemicals, etc - I don't use and discourage everyone from using any chemicals to grow bigger crops...)
As far as chemicals go...GMO crops are DESIGNED to be used with chemicals like pesticides and herbicides. The point of most of them is that they are resistant to the chemicals that are sprayed on the field, the chemicals will kill everything except the GMO crop. So if you're wanting to go chemical free, GMO isn't going to do anything for you. It does often produce a bigger product, but you pay for the size gain in a loss of flavor and nutrition and also poor health caused by consumption of that product. Laboratory testing on animals has shown that consumption of GMO feed products can contribute to reproductive failures, cancer, and all sorts of bad stuff in animals, so why do we think it doesn't do the same in humans? By growing plants on depleted soil with man-made chemical fertilizer, you also lose out on taste and nutrition, this is the problem today in America with commercially produced fruits and vegetables--it takes more and more chemicals every year to get them to grow because the soil is tired and out of nutrients. Just like people, plants need proper nutrition to grow right. So we formulate something in the laboratory, spray them, and we get HUGE produce that has no flavor and is not as nutritious as it used to be...if we ate right and produced our crops right, we wouldn't NEED to all be taking so many pills and vitamins every day...With produce, what you feed the crop is what will be put out in the fruit, so if you want delicious and healthy vegetables and fruits, you have to feed them the right stuff.
I would encourage you to have your soil tested to see what nutrients it is lacking in. Build it back up, and look for some "tried-and-true" commercial-type or hybrid tomatoes, I know "Early Girl" "Better Boy" and "Celebrity" all perform well for commercial growers in the United States. All are a medium sized typical red tomato. I don't find any of them to be especially flavorful when compared to the slower growing heirloom types though. The big downside to them is that you will have to buy seed every year if you use hybrids, as they do not breed true--saving seed from a hybrid tomato will not ensure that you have the same tomato in the next generation, you will end up with several types that may or may not be as good...it's like when you breed one mutt dog to another mutt dog and none of the puppies look like each other or either parent... But buying seed every year may not be a problem to you like it is to some people.
) I think you should read these lyrics as they sum up how a lot of us feel about large AG companies who peddle GM seeds & harmful pesticides as well as virtually enslave small farmers with their ever increasing prices & demands. 
