eGarden © 2005 Ed Mues

From The Garden of Ed. Submitted for publication in The Towne Crier on November 30, 2005

Cornucopia One More Time.

Those of you who know me, know I am fond of collecting horticultural odds and ends that I find interesting or, maybe, even useful. I cannot resist sharing them from time to time with friends. I did it in February, last year and again in December. It's been too long for me not to break free and share once more before the close of this year. I hope some of it is interesting to you, my readers. I suppose I could have called this column "Hort. Trivia and Related Minutia".

Transforming cocoa beans into chocolate is among the largest industries in support of U. S. agriculture. For every dollar of cocoa imported, about $ 1.50 in other agricultural products is used to make chocolate confections. Source: The American Cocoa Research Institute

Of the commonly eaten raw fruits, the one with the highest caloric value is the avocado, 741 to the pound. The one with the lowest, the cucumber with a modest 73 per pound.

The Empire apple is the result of a cross between the Mc Intosh and Red Delicious. Developed by Dr. Roger Way of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, it combines the best qualities of both. Because of its outstanding characteristics and New York roots, it was named Empire.

One mole can move up to ten pounds of soil in twenty minutes. This is fifty times its own weight. He can also tunnel more than 300 feet in a single night. (I wonder if there is a training program with possible employment at the end.)

A home scale genetic-engineering lab can be assembled for under $ 4,000. Paranoid over bio-terrorism and bio-weapons? Now you have a reason. (On the other hand, maybe it's time for a grass-roots guerrilla health food creation organization.)

Toads eat three times their weight in insects every day. Did you ever weigh a toad? Their favorites are .... slugs. Yeah!

If one measured the surface areas of every particle in a single ounce of clay soil and added them together, the total surface area would be equal to about ten acres.

Native sunflowers (Helianthus) have been cultivated on American soil for hundreds of years. In 1510 seeds were being sent back to Spain where the blooms were both a curiosity and a specimen for the gardens there.

Tomato seedlings cannot tolerate exposure to even small amounts of gas (natural or propane). If they die or grow poorly in kitchens or above water heaters, suspect a gas leak. Nursery growers place tomato seedlings among other greenhouse crops to monitor for leaking gas heaters.

Not long ago, the "tallest and oldest New Yorker" as reported in a New York Times article was a tulip tree in Alley Pond Park in northeast Queens. Called the Queens Giant, it was 134 feet tall and 450 years old.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. Scary, but true.

Hypertufa, lightweight artificial rock made from a mix of cement, peat moss, other fibrous material and perlite had its start in England more than 175 years ago.

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

The word, "daisy", originated as a poetic allusion to the way the flower opens brightly every morning to greet the sun: it was the "day's eye". I like this a lot.

Popcorn was introduced to the English colonists by Native American Indians , who brought it to the famous Thanksgiving Day dinner in 1630.

Johann Schiller, german poet and dramatist, always kept a rotting apple on his desk. He insisted he could not write without the odor.

Did you know Luther Burbank once developed white blackberries?

The chief cause of the rapid expansion of apple orchards in the U. S. westward was the high demand for hard cider.

I include this one because the orange is a fruit. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.

The most potent U. S. strain of penicillin ever developed came from micro organisms found on a rotting cantaloupe in a fruit market in Peoria, Illinois.

In his book, "The Insects", naturalist, Url N. Lanham, reported that the aphid reproductive cycle is so rapid that female aphids are born pregnant.

Twentieth century American horticulturist, Rudolph Boysen, crossed a blackberry, a raspberry and a loganberry and created a new fruit named a boysenberry.

Broom corn is the cane like grass that brooms are made of. All broom corn grown in the U.S. today is descended from three seeds Benjamin Franklin found in a whisk broom.

Flies, bees and butterflies are born full-grown. The thought that they continue to grow comes from the fact that smaller species are present earlier in the season before the larger species emerge and are noticed.

Wheat flowers have a life span of about two hours.

From the record sleeve of Music to Keep Your Plants Healthy and Happy (1975) comes the following quote: "The effect of music on plant growth has been studied at least since 1906. Bose (1906) suggested that plants may be nearly deaf. However, one of his followers, Singh (1965) states that plants excited by pure notes of high frequency give direct responses and that under musical radiation certain plants have improved both in yield and quality." This Amherst Recording by Baroque Bouquet features such pieces as Ode to a Philodendron, Baby Tears, Lady Palm, Pink Brocade among a dozen songs meant to stimulate your houseplants.

From The Garden of Ed. Submitted for publication in The Towne Crier on November 30, 2005

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