Homegrown in Earlville, Illinois
Red Ogre Gardens
Who We Are
Red Ogre Gardens is a family and woman owned specialty produce farm located in Earlville, Illinois. We began from a multi-generational love of growing amazing, healthy food. Our goal is to encourage people to try something new!
What is specialty produce?
Specialty produce refers to unique, rare, hard-to-find, not your run-of-the-mill produce. That can mean unique varieties of every day produce, like purple potatoes and Dragon Egg Cucumbers. Or, it can mean produce which is not easily found in the United States but is popular elsewhere, like Bitter Melons.
How is it different?
THE FLAVOR! In breeding produce to be able to handle the roughhousing required for mass production, traits that made the fruit or vegetable more sturdy were selected for. In doing so, much of the flavor was lost. That is why grocery store tomatoes are such a pale imitation of heirloom varieties.
What Makes Us Unique
Every fruit, vegetable, herb, and plant we sell is grown on our land in Earlville, Illinois WITHOUT the use of synthetic herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides.
Many of our varieties are too delicate for shipping, meaning they can’t be tossed into crates on industrial farms and trucked across the country to be sold at grocery stores. They require a more delicate hand.