There is still a lot of ground left for gardens here and some of it is large areas which are owned by older people who can no longer do all the work. I know a number who rent their ground to Hispanic gardeners who raise wonderful produce and have farm stands where it can be purchased. I wanted a few things and took a few pictures.
Roma Tomato
Goliath Tomato

Bartlett Pears
Lemon Elberta Peach
Old Henry Peach

Great looking produce and great idea to put the land to use.

Very nice!

I just saw this post as I'm looking thru everything here. (New member) Here in Texas, all the roadside stands (where I live) look like they bought the produce at a store, and sell it at roadside stands. Its very disappointing. They always say their (invisible) garden is way back in the yard, and can't be seen. But, they sometimes stack up the empty onion bags, and veggie boxes where they got the food beside the stand. So, for a long time, whenever we drive by a new stand, I have been looking to see if all the tomatoes are the same size, if they are, i think they can't possibly have grown them. Since I can't get all my tomatoes the same size, I assume they can't either. They also have out of season items for sale. With that assumption, I would have driven right past those veggies. Am I wrong about the tomatoes? I would love to buy from these stands, but not if they sell store bought food. I can do that myself.

Just say you're interested in canning and ask if they have salad and cutter tomatoes for a cheaper price. If they do, they're probably growing them. If they don't, the people they're buying them from probably don't either.

Texaskitty, you are soooo right. I, as a market gardener, get annoyed by these people who pretend they grow this stuff. Here in East Texas, I see items offered for sale that I know without a doubt can not be grown in our climate. Just to mess with these guys (always seem to be crusty, mean old men) I like to ask how they "do" it! They always give me the same old song and dance (took a long time to learn how to grow this stuff...). They try to talk down to me as if I were some bonehead. When I casually mention that I too am a market gardener and have a degree in horticulture and I STILL have never been able to grow Mangos in zone 8 or shiny red apples in June, they get angry at me. Huhmm... I wonder why?
Bottom line, if it is too pretty, out of season and you have never seen it growing in someone's garden, you KNOW it is not a local product.
You were smart enough to figure this out. Many are not.
Your local farmers market are your best bet. Still, beware...some market managers allow non-vendor grown stuff. You can spot it quickly though. There generally is a rule that forces vendors to have a sign somewhere that states a % of their produce is not local- though it could be hidden behind that lovely basket of Navel Oranges (grown in Dallas, of course ).

Thank you, I was beginning to wonder if I was crazy, as no one else agreed with me. Even the Tyler farmers market now buys veggies from other areas and sell it. They say they now have permission, as nothing's growing here lately. I say, then why bother? Stay home and bake a cake. Wish I could get @dave 's input about the jacksonville farmers market. Its just as close to us.

We have an organic market "gardener" on the island. Their farm is all beautiful red soil. (I just covet it being on clay).Their produce is nearly all from off island, even from other States. Duh. I can go to general stores and get such stuff cheaper.
But there is an active movement here to get the fruit and vegetable farms going again on the Southern Bay Islands. Fingers crossed. They have a chance while land and house prices are so depressed.

Same here... we would go visit Minnesota kin in early June and the produce stands are full of 'fresh grown' yummies. Yes, maybe but not locally grown. The fields haven't even been planted sometimes.

The difference between the produce at those stands and the ones in the store, the feds regulate the labeling to tell you where it DID come from.

The consumers either don't know or don't care. And they are welcome to my share...

All produce at our Jacksonville farmers market is required to be grown in Cherokee County. We are strict about it, too, and only allow farmers to sell once they've been approved by the committee.

We need to educate ourselves.....buyer beware. I look forward each summer to sweet corn. One farm stand I frequent does buy corn before it is ready here. If I see the empty boxes I generally don't buy until later in the summer. Sometimes some of the stands which I trust have tomatoes 10 days or 2 weeks before mine and I buy a few. A peach from Chili in winter is not going to compare to one ripened on the tree here in August .

Our farmer's market in Peachtree City also has the locally grown requirement and they do a farm inspection to make sure you are growing it! But of course there are always a few vendors who cheat and slip in bought produce. When vendors complain they check into it. We are allowed to buy "Georgia grown" BUT we MUST POST that we didn't grow it.

This is really interesting. We see stuff on stands that you know was trucked over the highway from the lower 48. Especially fruit. But they make no bones about it and things like oranges, cherries ,etc are really far superior to what we see in our stores quite often. Prices are astronomical but those oranges taste like they were just picked from a tree. The little farmer's market just up the street from my neighborhood looks authentic but now I will go and look at it with a more jaundiced eye to 'imports'.

It would be great if we could all post any authentic locally grown stands from each county and state with the address, but I haven't a clue how we could "prove" it was or wasn't. Or even from keeping the venders themselves from posting lies. So far, I now know one in my area - the Jacksonville farmers market. Thanks @dave. Now, I would try and send Dave a thumbs up, but don't know how. So, here's an invisable one for you, Dave.

This is the first page of my Tomato Variety List for this year. It will be available at the farmers market so customers can scan the QR codes with their Smart Phones. And yes the codes link to the All Things Plants Database. It's a Microsoft Word Document. I had to save the file as an Acrobat PDF file. Then use Acrobat Professional to save it as a JPEG (lost a lot of resolution here) in order to get it into this comment.
The only tomatoes on the list which don't have a QR code are Better Boy F4, Ramapo Purple, Sweet Ozark Orange, (Not) Sophie's Choice TF 2012, (Not) Sophie's Choice TF 2014, and Sungold F3. And I'll be happy to explain those to any customers who ask. Hopefully I will have pictures added to the database by the time they are ready for market.

If anyone offers you a variety sheet, it's a pretty safe bet they are growing the tomatoes themselves. Claud

Very nice!

I love it!

Awesome!

Oberon46 said:This is really interesting. We see stuff on stands that you know was trucked over the highway from the lower 48. Especially fruit. But they make no bones about it and things like oranges, cherries ,etc are really far superior to what we see in our stores quite often. Prices are astronomical but those oranges taste like they were just picked from a tree. The little farmer's market just up the street from my neighborhood looks authentic but now I will go and look at it with a more jaundiced eye to 'imports'.

Actually, you made me rethink... it is good to eat fresh produce regardless. And when it is better than store bought there isn't really a down side. Thanks.

Do they by any chance indicate where the produce was grown?

I haven't bought any from one of the independent stands in a while but one of the fellows had a French accent and he said he was out of California. No one else volunteered the info. This was before we actually had two farmer's markets locally so my guess was that some may indeed have been local (rethinking the 'lower 48' comment myself) but when it was cherries, corn, apples, oranges, etc, it had to be from down south.