Do "freshly picked" vegetables really taste better than the supermarket variety...

Pro tip: tug weev off on your freshly-picked veggies for a delicious dressing.

I worked on a market garden farm for three years and the difference is night and day. We did blind tasting and everything, it is no contest. I used to eat my lunch right out of the rows and taste of a vegetable picked seconds ago is noticeably better than in a few hours or a few days. We were organic/low spray(depended on the year and the farmer's budget) and that also makes a huge difference for some vegetables but not all of them. For woody veg like broccoli and potatoes, onions and cabbage, it's irrelevant. for anything with a distinct floral aroma and taste, like tomatoes or zucchini, its a massive difference and organic is totally worth paying for

not really. supermarket produce is picked and shipped to coincide with its peak ripeness at the time of sale, so most of it will actually not keep as long as stuff that's been picked that morning or the day before, because it's bred for that. Most small farm varieties are chosen for flavor and reliability- most commercial farm varieties are chosen for yield, robustness and resistance to blights more or less in that order.

A small farm or home grower will have terrible results growing commercial varieties and vice versa. But yes, if you care about the quality of your veg, you buy it local, in season and fresh

Tomatoes absolutely yes

only fags make pickles with vinegar

It mostly depends on the breed of plant.
Store market plants are bred to last long while traveling and resist bruising, appearance, and longevity.
Heirloom veg were mostly bred for taste.
Compare a shitty supermarket tomato (watery, pink, flavorless), to an heirloom tomato (indigo rose is a favorite) and there's a huge difference.
This is true for other things as well like apples, peaches, cucumbers, etc

However, if you can find a good farmer's market then you don't have to grow it yourself. I'd still recommend it though, growing tomatoes, herbs, cucumbers, and the other basics isn't hard, and it's nice to have a ton of different varieties to try out in different recipes.

Organic doesn't mean shit, dude. They still use pesticides, and fertilizers (not as if this is a bad thing) they just have to use "natural" stuff. It doesn't mean they use better breeds of tomatoes or that it's fresher, or healthier.
It really depends on the brand, organic doesn't mean over all good. It doesn't mean anything in regards to quality.
If you want "chemical free" food just grow it yourself, or try to find a local grower if it's important to you.

One of my friends lives on a farm and every year his family buys a bunch of veggies from the grocery store and sells them to city folk in a roadside stand.

They always come back and talk about how 'fresh' and 'juicy' the vegetables are

>Organic doesn't mean shit, dude.

The definition, or lack of it, depends entirely on which country you live in.

Yes

As someone who grew up on a farm, yes. Yes there is a ginormous difference in flavor.
If you like tomatoes, grow you're own. They're an easy starter thing and they are one of the noticeably things it is better to have fresh.

it means plenty. I worked on a mostly- organic farm for three years. natural fertilizers mean smaller, richer tasting fruits and longer picking periods, and better tasting fruit. done right it improves the soil-yeild and quality will go up after about two years of natural tilth and soil additives like manure and green waste. not to mention overall benefits- guess which farm never had a whiff of colony collapse in their bees?

you could put our fruit next to the exact same variety from non organic farms and taste a difference, which I was always happy to let customers do.

there's a lot of commercial "organic" bs in supermarkets but not at the markets. ask the farmer, they'll tell exactly what they do and you can see tbe quality. if you can't, dont buy it. very simple

Absolutely.

Fresh is good. What's important is things picked ripe. Food is often picked before it is ripe and either ripens on way to market or artificially ripened. If you have farms near you look for a roadside stand or farmers market. Produce is almost always better at those places.

Pickles should be fermented in a salt brine. Your advice only identifies you as someone who knows nothing about food.

As others have said, tomatoes are the vegetable/fruit/thing that immediately comes to mind as being vastly better, and that's because commercial varieties are bred for yield and transportation hardiness instead of taste.
hos.ufl.edu/kleeweb/flavorresearch.html

Depends. The difference between a tomato that was actually allowed to ripen on the plant and one from a grocery store is massive. The difference between the zucchini I grow and one from the grocery is negligible. In general my vegetables have more flavor just because they are grown more slowly, not over watered and allowed to fully ripen before I pick them.

The farmers market I go to actually has better prices on (most) vegetables than my local grocery stores though. But I live in a small town, I know farmers markets can be pretty expensive in some places.