Sue da Nimm29/4/04 5:44
"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
snip
Of course, the Jersey people will tell you that you can't grow a true
Jersey
Royal anywhere outside Jersey. ;-)
In fact they don't seem to be able to grow a true Jersey Royal anywhere
inside Jersey since they stopped carting seaweed to the fields and started
using commercial fertilizers....
Sorry, but in recent years I've been bitterly disappointed in the fall-off
in taste.
You and me and a few Jersey people would agree, I can tell you. BUT, I must
say that the other day I bought some Royals from our greengrocer in
Ashburton and they were the real thing - had the flavour I remember as a
child. They still had the soil on them BUT the washed ones I bought from
M&S a day or two later were bland, bland, bland!
I don't know what the state of play is now in Jersey but at one time it had
one of the highest levels of nitrates on the land within Europe. I hope
that's dropped because I am convinced, personally, that it makes an enormous
difference to taste, let alone health.
I have friends in Jersey who grow for their own table only and use seaweed
and the difference in taste is marked. But the Ashburton ones I bought the
other day were superb.
The problem, as with so many older varieties of veg and fruit is that
overseas sources, which fly in everything from potatoes to strawberries to
roses, mean that the market is so wide open that comparatively small and
later cropping co-operatives can't compete. So they resorted to
'encouragement' of the soil and its crop - mistake, IMO but I'm not a
farmer trying to keep family and land going.
--
Sacha
(remove the weeds to email me)