#vegetable lore

[scribefindegil]

Sugar-snap peas are one of my favorite vegetables and it's absolutely wild that the modern incarnation has been around for less than 50 years. Everyone say thank you to Calvin Lamborn, you were a legend.

[tippenfunkaport]

There's a vegetable called a ramp

and one called a yardlong which is usually only half a yard

Perfuma? Is that you?

[scribefindegil]

I'm so emotional about the thousands of years of work humanity has put into plant domestication and breeding, and I'm also so emotional about all the important work that's still being done today! With the rise of monocultures, most people don't know about the sheer breadth of varieties that exist for different food crops; there's such a focus on the cultivars most suited to industrial growth, harvesting, and shipping, which leads to valuing things like uniform growth and maturation times and the ability to be shipped long distances most highly, often to the detriment of flavor and genetic diversity.

But all these specialized varieties DO exist, and more are being developed every year! There are organizations like the Seed Savers Exchange that are dedicated to the preservation of historic heirloom cultivars that might otherwise have been lost, sometimes reintroducing a variety because a single family or individual happened to have maintained the seed. And there are people, ranging from large-scale agricultural University breeding projects to backyard gardeners, who are creating new varieties—new colors and flavors and textures, plants adapted to harsher weather or shorter growing seasons or with resistance to common pests!

If you're a gardener, it's absolutely worth it to look into what's being developed for your specific region. Even if you're not, buying local produce may let you try some more unique and locally-adapted varieties!

And if you save seeds, you can help develop your own varieties by selecting plants that have the features you like best and growing out the seed from those! You may not have the resources to trial many different plants (and probably can't do much with corn unless you have a whole field), but every time you intentionally save seed you are making a selection. The Experimental Farm Network sells a number of "grex" or "landrace" seed packets, where some traits have been selected for but there is still a great deal of genetic diversity and each plant will be slightly different. You can keep letting them intermix, or you can choose your favorite plants and work on stabilizing your own variety! And then, because usually if you save seed you end up with much more than you can use yourself, you can share it with your friends! Join in the ancient human tradition and make new plants!

[scribefindegil]

it is alternately funny and annoying that people will call any open-pollinated variety "heirloom" even if it was developed by a specific guy like 10 years ago. this is not an heirloom the breeder doesn't even have heirs yet. it can still be great! but we should learn to appreciate both old varieties that have been maintained over generations and new varieties that have just been created instead of pretending they're the same thing.

[scribefindegil]

First we tamed turnips. Then we turned them into bok choy and other veggies.

This new research represents the most complete look yet at how humans domesticated the ubiquitous species Brassica rapa, untangling the comp

Wake up babe new brassica lore just dropped!

[scribefindegil]

did you know that there's a type of kale that can grow up to 12 feet high? now you do!

[scribefindegil]

fun story about colorful carrots: I used to swear that I could tell the difference taste-wise between purple and orange carrots and my mom never believed me so she blindfolded me and made me tell her if the carrot I was eating was purple or orange and I got it right every time

I'm not surprised! There are definitely slight taste differences between carrot varieties. In my experience, orange and yellow tend to be the sweetest varieties and it's hard to find a white that isn't bitter. The purples which are orange on the inside (most of them) are similar to orange carrots to me but some of them (like the Dragon cultivar) have a slight almost spicy note to them. Black Nebula carrots, which are deep deep purple to the core, are sweet but weirdly juicy; they have a texture that's almost more reminiscent of beets than most other carrots.

[scribefindegil]

PSA: don’t eat your Halloween pumpkins!

I’ve seen multiple posts encouraging this, and while your standard big orange jack-o-lantern pumpkin is edible in the technical sense and certainly won’t make you sick, they are Not Tasty. If you roast one you’ll get stringy, watery, insipid glop. Don’t do this to yourself.

If you’re worried about pumpkin waste, you can:

Compost your pumpkins (bear in mind that unless you take very exacting care of your compost pile and monitor its temperature, seeds can survive and sprout the next year! I have experienced so many Mystery Squash from insufficiently heated compost)

Roast the seeds for a tasty snack and compost the shell (especially if you’re carving the pumpkin, but consider this even if you aren’t!)

If you or a friend has chickens, give them the pumpkin as a treat

If you DO want something that does double duty as decoration and delicious food, there are a lot of squash that fit the bill!! You just need to look beyond the standard big orange pumpkin. There are too many wonderful squash varieties to list here, but a lot of cucurbita maxima and cucurbita moschata varieties are both beautiful and have excellent table quality. Try “cheese pumpkins,” Cinderella pumpkins, various Hubbards, Buttercups, Kabocha, and more! They come in a dazzling array of shapes and colors.

If you want to eat your decorative squash, don’t leave it outside if there’s any danger of frost. However, they will keep at room temperature for months and the flavor will only improve after a month or two of storage.

Alternatively, consider heirloom gourds! These aren’t edible, but if you’re careful (maintaining consistent cool temperatures and either hanging them or rotating them every couple of weeks) you can dry gourds until they are stiff and hollow and then use them for long-term decoration or a basis for craft projects!