I talk first since I am a Chinese who was raised up in China, but live in US. Nine years ago my husband found a job in AR. We relocated from DC. This is the main reason that I start my growing career,.
We only found two very small Asian grocery stores with very limited supplies in the city.
First I tried to grow some vegetables.
Cucumber (seeds bought from agrohaitai)
This is Chinese cucumber that we normally found in the market in China. I havenât found any cucumbers in the store in US can beat its taste. I used to grow a lot and share with my neighbors. The mother -in-law of my neighbor in next door often watched my garden over fence. If I happened to appear in the yard, I would give her some cucumbers and tomatoes .
Tomatoes
Here are a lot of good tomato varieties. I tried many of them. The tomatoes in the supermarkets never taste good. They either plant some commercial varieties or pick too early.
Sticky corn
Once corn was my favorite food. I couldnât appeal the smell whenever I found they were sold in the store ( there are boiling corns in the store for breakfast or snack in China). Corns in the supermarkets taste so bad in US. When you bite them, only shells and sweet water. Last year my friend shared some sticky corns. I love to eat corns again.
This corn often appears on the table for our breakfast. I boiled and stored in the freezer.
Asian pears
Before I was OK with Asian pears in Asian stores / supermarkets. But they are pricy, compare to other fruits. So I started to grow my own. The year before last year I first tasted Asian pears from the trees in our backyard, so sweet, so juicy, and so crunchy, yes, very yummy! Last year late heavy frost killed almost all pears, one pear survived. My kids shared the only pear from the yard. Then I bought some Korean pears from Asian supermarket. Kids tasted one and stopped eating. I had to finish them by myself. They are juicy, crunchy, but very bland.
Jujubes
I used to buy jujubes from Asian stores. They taste very good, sweet and crunchy. Unfortunately I tasted the jujubes from my backyard, that happened to be honey jar. OK, I will still be able to stand the jujubes from the store if I never tried mine.
What is that variety of cucumber called? I totally agree about sweet corn in US grocery stores being very generic. If i had more space I would definitely grow sticky corn.
Do you get the cucumber beetle? How resistant your cucumbers to it ( or the bacteria that it carries)?
I used to grow Persian Cucumbers, which is also a very tasty variety, but the plants would completely die by early to mid July because of the beetleâŚ
I havenât met the problem of cucumber beetle, but I do have bacterial/fungal problems. The only thing that I do is to rotate each time, full sun, open air.
I heard a lot of fellows met this problem too.
Do you know insect netting?
You can buy it in asian grocery stores pretty easily FYI. Kinda pricey compared to regular corn but worth it to try, I can image it would be much better home grown.
@Barkslip@Hillbillyhort went to the Asian grocery store and picked up some of the âsticky cornâ. Not cheap but a interesting contrast to regular corn every once in a while.
