Ever since my extra-long weekend near San Francisco last summer, I’ve involuntarily added another step to selecting strawberries at the grocery. I check their home address.
I learned long ago to look for Spanish clementines, blueberries from Michigan, Ohio-grown apples and Mexican atalfo mangoes, but a strawberry’s hometown wasn’t a significant detail until I drove through Watsonville, California. Situated in a cool valley between ocean and hills, Watsonville’s temperate Mediterranean climate and fertile soils combine to create ideal growing conditions for, among other things, strawberries.
We were en route to the Pebble Beach area, but Watsonville’s acres of strawberries, blackberries and raspberries created a rolling visual that made me wish for a twenty-five hour day and the opportunity to walk just a little deeper into the agricultural scenery. My friend told me that Watsonville would show up on the packaging information for most of my grocery bought strawberries. It does, and I smile every time I read “Watsonville, CA.”
Salinas, to the southeast is similarly known for its lettuce and artichoke output. It supplies 80% of these green goods for US consumers and is nicknamed “The Salad Bowl of the World.”
My own food gardening is unlikely to expand much beyond chili peppers and herbs; having visuals now of where some of the rest of my favorite food groups grow makes a good thing taste even better…
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