The author defines "weird" as involving or suggesting the fantastic or bizarre. With that in mind, enjoy this fact-filled compilation of Canadian gardening information, seen largely from an Eastern Canadian point of view. It covers the development there of early varieties of wheat, fruits, corn and other vegetables. Other topics are the effect of weather and climate change. Native food plants, organic foods, disappearing soil and 'fertilizer demystified' are covered, as are the growing of outsized prize-winning vegetables, medicinal herbs and growing under glass. Heritage plants, disappearing bees and toxic garden plants are all mentioned. Not all subjects in his view are praise-worthy; he slams the Canadian dairy industry and biotechnology in a general way. Locals will be bemused by the section on 'Weird Plant Tours' which includes Butchart Gardens for the monkey puzzle tree araucaria aracana, Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island for its giant douglas firs pseudotsuga menziesii and the UBC Botanical Garden for the blue poppy meconopsis betonicifolia!
Published by Lone Pine Publishing 2010, paperback $18.95
I would recommend the book for anyone interested in the background to many current gardening issues.
Nan Spedding
Lifetime Master Gardener, Vancouver Chapter
The weird facts can be fascinating....
- Corn has been cultivated in Canada for over 800 years. Aside from wild rice, all other Canadian grain crops are of European origin.
- The estimated value of B.C.'s 2010 marijuana crop: $7 billion.
- Clarence Birdseye, father of the modern frozen-food industry, got the idea for quick freezing foods from Inuit fishermen while working as a field naturalist in Labrador. He sold his patents in 1929 to the Postum Co which later became General Foods Corporation.
- When the first Europeans arrived in Canada, there were no earthworms - none survived the last ice age. The omnipresent Canadian worm found in all gardens is an import that has a weird relationship with weeds. They gather up weed seeds and store them deep in their burrows before birds, mice and insects consume them. Researchers at Ohio State University discovered that earthworms gather up 90% of the weed seeds around their burrow entrances. Why remains a mystery, but it helps spread invasive weed species.
- To produce the Sunday edition of the New York Times requires the destruction of around 63,000 trees.
- Of the more than 10,000 mushroom species found in North America, about 200 are poisonous and only around a dozen are deadly poisonous for which there is no antidote.
- Hydroponically grown plants and vegetables are usually more healthy and vigorous than their standard grown counterparts owing to ready availability of nutrients.
- Of the roughly a quarter million plant varieties available for agriculture, only 3% are being used for that purpose.
- The entire world's food supply depends on around 150 plant species; of these just 12 supply three-quarters of the world's food.
- The largest fruit tree collection is at Brogdale, Kent, U.K. It consists of 4500 trees, including 2300 varieties of apple trees.
- Look carefully at the tiny product label on apples and other fruits. A four-digit number indicates the fruit has been grown in a conventional manner; a five-digit number beginning with `9' indicates organically grown fruit, while five digits beginning with `8' indicate a genetically modified fruit.
- Pineapples are berries, peanuts are beans and avocadoes have the highest caloric content of any fruit, 167 per 100 grams.
- The world's slowest growing tree is a white cedar, thuja occidentalis, found on a cliffside on Ontario's Niagara Escarpment. Measured and weighed at regular intervals over a period of 150 years, the tree has grown to a height of 10.2 centimeters and weighs 17 grams.
