The secrets in your garden
Spring is here, the plants are starting to bloom and it might be time to start thinking about your garden! In advance of gardening season, we sat down with UVic forest biologist and expert gardener Barbara Hawkins to explore the hidden secrets of your garden. Here are a few of the interesting facts she shared!
Categorizing the fruits and vegetables in your garden
Did you know that all the “vegetables” in the squash family - squash, pumpkins, cumbers, etc. - are really fruits? A fruit is a mature ovary, containing seed. All the squashes develop from the ovary of a flower—and so are technically, fruits.
There are many different types of fruits—berries, drupes, pommes, legumes, pepos, etc. What bananas, tomatoes, red peppers, grapes and blueberries have in common is that they are all berries! A true berry develops from a single ovary, is fleshy, contains seeds, and has a thin skin.
What's the difference between fruits and vegetables?
What you didn’t know about the Arbutus tree
That Arbutus tree in your backyard loves the near-Mediterranean climate we have in Victoria. It takes advantage of the mild and wet winter by keeping its leaves active in fall and winter instead of dropping them, as do most deciduous trees. After the Arbutus flushes in the spring, it has two year’s worth of leaves. But just before the summer hits, it will drop last year’s leaves to cut canopy size in half to save water in the dry season - a perfect adaptation to dry summers and wet, mild winters.
Learn more about the Arbutus tree
What’s hiding in your soil?
Did you know that one teaspoon of soil from your vegetable garden likely contains 100 million to 1 billion bacteria, several meters of fungal hyphae, thousands of protozoa (single-celled animals) and a few earthworms, if you are lucky! All of these microorganisms are key to breaking down decaying organic matter and releasing and recycling nutrients and carbon in the soil. The soil is a living entity! Care for your soil.
Put those bacteria to use—a beginner's guide to composting
Why we hate brussel sprouts
Who hates brussel sprouts? If you are one of those who abhor the Brassicaceae (cabbage family), you have good reason. Plants in this family are full of glucosinolates, sulfur-rich molecules that, when activated, taste bad. The plant makes these chemicals to deter pests and herbivores. What is really cool is that the plant stores the glucosinolate in one set of cells and the enzyme, myrsinase, that activates the bad flavour in another set of cells. It is not until someone or something chews on the plant that the two chemicals mix together and the unpleasant sulfur flavour, sometimes called a mustard oil bomb, is created. But even though they taste bad, these chemicals are associated with reduced cancer risk - so eat your broccoli!
Learn about the connection between cruciferous vegetables and cancer
The ever-expanding brussel sprout family
Continuing with the Brassicaceae (cabbage family) … clearly some people like them! Did you know that broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and kohlrabi are all the same species? They are a great example of artificial selection, where a single wild species (Brassica oleracea) has been transformed by humans over thousands of years into a variety of distinct vegetables.
The wild ancestor likely grew in the eastern Mediterranean and was established as a garden vegetables by the time of the ancient Greeks. Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BCE), the “father of botany”, described three types - smooth and curly leaved (e.g. kale), and wild. Cabbage, selected for its large terminal bud, and kohlrabi, selected for a thick, swollen stem, originated around 100 CE. Broccoli and cauliflower, selected for many, branching flower buds, were first documented in the 1500s. The beloved brussel sprout, selected for many, large, lateral buds on the main stem, was developed in the 1700s. What did they eat with their turkey before then?
People are still experimenting. The orange cauliflower has Canadian roots as it was a mutant discovered in 1970 in a field of white cauliflowers by a farmer from Holland Marsh, Ontario, and broccolini is a new hybrid created in 1993.
Learn more about the Brassica oleracea species
Who is winning the race to germinate?
Of the 50 fastest-germinating seeds, 27 species belong to the Amaranthaceae (amaranth or goosefoot family). This family includes spinach, Swiss chard, beets and quinoa. While these vegetables are not particularly fast-germinating (5-10 days), several species in the amaranth family from desert environments are able to germinate even within one hour (e.g. Anabasis aretioides (10 min), Haloxylon stocksii (25 min), Salsola tragus (29 min) and Haloxylon salicornicum (45 min).
Take a deep dive into the Amaranthaceae family
What are you actually eating when you eat a strawberry?
Did you know that the fruits of a strawberry are actually those hard little dots scattered over the outside of the red, fleshy receptacle? The receptacle is part of the stem and the fruits, called achenes, are the small dots on the receptacle surface and have the seed inside.
Who loves the smell of fresh cut grass?
Do you enjoy the fragrance of fresh cut grass? It is actually the grass plants calling for help. When grass is mowed, the wounding triggers enzymes that break down fats and lipids to create volatile organic compounds - mainly aldehydes and alcohols. The main aroma compound is (Z)-3-hexenal, which the human nose can detect at 0.25 parts per billion. These compounds act against bacteria, and may help the wound to heal. They may also signal to other plants to switch on pathways to produced defensive chemicals or attract predatory insects against that nasty herbivore—you!