GARDEN SOMETIMES MEANS VEGETABLES!

April is National Garden Month, packed with garden tours and garden shows, and it’s almost all about flowers. But 35% of U.S. households grow vegetables, fruits and, “other food”—whatever other might mean. I was pleased to find these great garden statistics at Ruby Home and Cooped Up Life. (Please note: garden plants can be poison!)

Who Gardens?

  • Gardening by Gender:
    • Male 52.5%
    • Female 47.5%
  • Gardening by Age: More than half of all gardeners are under forty-five.
    • Ages 29-34 (millennials) – 29%
    • Ages 35-44 – 35%
    • Other – 36%
  • Gardening by Marital Status: Married people are by far more likely to garden.
    • Married – 71.6%
    • Single – 11.6%
    • Widowed – 6.8%
    • Divorced – 5.6%
    • Other – 4.5%
  • Gardening by Income: The 2021 national median annual income was $79.9K, but here’s the breakdown among gardeners.
    • $100K and higher – 34.1%
    • $75-$99K – 20.5%
    • $50-$74K – 2.6%
    • $25-$49K – 17.1%
    • $25K and lower – 5.8%
    • (And I don’t know why the total is less than 100%!)
  • Gardening by Education Level:
    • I was surprised that 79% of people who garden attended college or are college graduates.
Balcony Garden
  • Gardening by Dwelling:
    • 91% of people who garden live in a single-family dwelling and garden in their backyards
    • 2 million (5%) – grow food at neighbors, family or friends
    • Some homeowners as well as apartment dwellers—1 million (3%) – grow food in a community garden, aka urban farms.

Only 1% grow food at other (unknown) locations. That 1% is still significant. Condominium or apartment owners and renters often grow herbs indoors, on window sills or with the help of grow lights. Plants grown in containers or hanging pots on patio or balcony, and rooftop gardening are becoming more popular options.

Terraced Roof Garden, Fukuoka, Japan

Why Garden?

Overall, 55% of U.S. households (71.5 million households) garden. Of those who garden, 55% garden primarily to create a beautiful space, and 43% garden primarily to grow food.

Growing Activity Percent of Gardeners
Flowers 72.90%
Vegetables 51.40%
House plants 47.00%
Shrubs 43.70%
Ornamental/perennials 38.20%
Fruit trees 18.80%

Clearly, gardeners often garden in more than one way! But growing food (fruits, vegetables, berries, and others) has been the fastest-growing gardening category in the past five years.

According to the National Gardening Association, 35% of U.S. households, or 42 million households total, grew vegetables, fruits, and other foods in 2021, an increase of 6 million from five years prior. Having 1 in every 3 American households growing food is a massive 200% increase since 2008. Most of the growth came from millennials and families with children.

The average U.S. garden is 600 sq.ft. but the median garden is 96 square feet (12 feet X 8 feet). In other words, 50% of the U.S. gardens are 96 square feet or smaller.

Garden Size Hours/WeekPeople Fed/Year
100-199 sq.ft.0.5-1 hr1 person
200-399 sq.ft.1-2 hrs1-4 people
400-799 sq.ft.3-5 hrs2-6 people
800-1499 sq.ft.4-6 hrs4-8 people
1,500-2,000 sq.ft.6-8 hrs6-10 people

Community Gardens

Kaylin Mrbral grows produce with StreetScapes, an organization in South Africa that creates urban gardens as a method of creating work for those living on the streets, providing food for people facing food insecurity, and beautifying the urban landscape.

Humans have worked together as communities to grow food since our very early ancestors first started experimenting with agriculture. People in small groups grazed animals or raised food plants on communally-held land. Even when humans began to divide up land and consider property to be a privately-held commodity, groups of people still worked together to perform tasks that were very labor intensive or time-sensitive, such as harvesting crops.

Community Garden in South Beach, Miami

In the US, community gardens started to regain popularity in the 18th century. Moravians created a community garden for Bethabara, Winston-Salem, in North Carolina to encourage families to come together and grow their crops on shared land. Since 2012, the number of community gardens has increased 44%. Today there are 29,000 community gardens in the 100 largest U.S. cities.

Community gardens play an important role in addressing food insecurity and food deserts in urban areas. According to the USDA, approximately 13.5 million people in the US live in an area with little to no access to grocery story or supermarket; some researchers put the estimate as high as 19 million. In such areas, community gardens provide residents with critical access to fresh produce as well as simply having more food in general.

School Garden

Community gardens in schools or on school grounds provide even more benefits. In addition to improving students’ diets and the quality of school lunches, these gardens provide students with hands-on lessons about biology, plant life cycles, nutrition, and patience. Children who garden regularly come into contact with beneficial soil microbes that improve their immune systems. They also practice self-regulation, experimental mindsets, empathy, and observational skills. When students grow food in a school garden, research suggests that the entire neighborhood benefits from cross-generational learning, community involvement, and better health.

Why Grow Food?

Because the average garden produces $600 worth of food, and the average return on investment is enormous: it was 757% in 2021. Even a small food garden of 100-200 sq.ft. can feed one person year-round.

Within the food category, growing vegetables was the most popular trend. And what are the most popular vegetable to grower?

Vegetables by Percentage of Gardens
  • Tomatoes 86%
  • Cucumbers 47%
  • Sweet peppers 46%
  • Beans 39%
  • Carrots 34%
  • Summer squash 32%
  • Onions 32%
  • Hot peppers 31%
  • Lettuce 28%
  • Peas 24%

Food gardening is pretty evenly distributed across regions of the U.S. This somewhat even distribution per region demonstrates people’s willingness to garden no matter where they are – in Florida, where the growing season is year-round, or New York, where gardening is limited to just five months a year due to the weather conditions.

  • South 29%
  • Midwest 26%
  • West 23%
  • Northeast 22%
Sustainable Gardening Instruction at the University of Hawaii

Other Benefits of Gardening

But what if you don’t need to garden to put food on the table?

Of the entire U.S. population who grow vegetables, 25% do so because it tastes better, and they prefer their products to be as fresh as possible. A lot of produce has a higher nutrituonal content when eaten shortly after being harvested than when it sits in transit and on store shelves for days or weeks before being eaten.

And if you are fine with supermarket taste and freshness? Do it for your health and well-being! As an exercise, gardening is comparable to biking, walking, or jogging. Gardening activities, such as pulling weeds, strengthen cardiovascular health and increase muscle tone and dexterity.

Additionally, multiple scientific studies linked gardening to emotional well-being and an increased sense of accomplishment and happiness. Here are some of the key findings from research studies by UNC Health and Princeton University:

  • Gardening fosters self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment.
  • Gardening relieves stress, anxiety, and depression.
  • Gardening increases the level of vitamin D, vital for the normal functioning of the immune system.
  • Gardening increases the level of serotonin, a brain chemical responsible for the feeling of happiness.
During WWII, many Americans grew food in Victory Gardens as part of the war effort.

Gardens of any sort are good for the environment! Plants act as highly effective air cleaners, absorbing carbon dioxide, plus many air pollutants, while releasing clean oxygen and fragrance. Also, a dense cover of plants and mulch holds soil in place, reducing erosion and keeping sediment out of streams, storm drains, and roads. Gardens create an ecosystem for birds and insects. Increasingly, gardeners choose plants and locations with an eye to incorporating native species, attracting pollinators, or reducing watering cost.

Bottom line: Gardening is good for what ails you—and if nothing is ailing you, it’s good for you anyway!

Claude Monet in the garden at Giverny, an inspiration for many of his paintings.

HOW SWEET IT IS!

Periodically, a friend of a friend gifts me with a few pawpaws. Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a little known and (IMHO) not a pretty fruit. They are especially not pretty when left in the fridge during a week at the beach.

Pawpaws

These are what remain of my most recent gift, received two days before I left town. Surprisingly, five of them are not just edible after a week in the fridge; they’re delicious. Which brings me to wax poetic—or at least, try to—about this fruit native to Virginia and most of the eastern United States and southern Canada.

Pawpaw seeds

For one thing, it’s the only fruit native anywhere in North America that resembles tropical fruits. It is also the largest edible fruit native to North America. Open a pawpaw and you’ll find a sunshine-yellow pulp dotted with dark brown/black seeds. The flesh is the consistency of pudding and tastes like some combination of banana, mango, and pineapple. What’s not to love?

In 1541, a Portuguese explorer who accompanied explorer Hernando de Santo wrote, “The fruit is like unto Peares Riall [pears royal]; it has a very good smell and an excellent taste.”

Pawpaws are high in vitamin C, magnesium, iron, copper, and manganese. They are a good source of potassium and several essential amino acids, and they also contain significant amounts of riboflavin, niacin, calcium, phosphorus, and zinc.

I eat it “as is” but people who have enough to save for later can freeze the flesh for baking, or make it into preserves. Pawpaws will not ripen if plucked from the tree too early, but unripe pawpaws can ferment into a sweet wine that pawpaw connoisseurs highly prize.

Pawpaw seeds

And about those seeds: as the largest edible fruit native to North America (5-16 oz., 3-6 inches long), there is plenty of room for seeds. The seeds are reminiscent of lima beans in shape, and adorn the flesh in two rows, 10-14 seeds per fruit. Each seed is 1/2 to 1-1/2 inches. Reputedly, pawpaws grow easily from seeds, but I’ve never tried. In the wild, pawpaws send out suckers, creating the “pawpaw patch” of song. Pawpaw cultivators frequently grow new trees from grafts and can produce fruit up to a pound and a half in size.

When sucked clean, the seeds feel satin smooth. One might be tempted to carry one as a lucky charm or worry “stone.”  I can imagine these seeds used in children’s games: money, tokens… But if one chooses to play with dry pawpaw seeds, be aware that dry seeds won’t germinate.

Unlike most fruit trees, pawpaws do not attract bees for pollination. The flowers attract carrion flies and beetles. Pawpaw leaves are the only host for zebra swallowtail butterfly larva.

Pawpaw History

If you aren’t familiar with pawpaws, you aren’t alone. You might know them as a poor man’s banana, Indiana banana, prairie banana, frost banana, custard apple, fetid-bush, or bandango. They aren’t easy to store or ship and so haven’t been developed as a commercial food until recently.  Food scientist Neal Peterson is one of many pawpaw enthusiasts who has spent decades breeding and cultivating pawpaws to make them commercially viable, greatly widening their availability.

Pawpaw cross-section

But they were a key component of American Indian diets; indeed, the Shawnee even had a “pawpaw month” (ha’siminikiisfwa) when they harvested and preserved pawpaws. It was a cultivated food for many tribes along the Eastern Seaboard.  Archaeologists have found huge quantities of pawpaw seeds and remnants at the sites of the earliest Native American settlements all along the east coast of North America.

A wise move, because pawpaws are incredibly nutritious. 

At least two U.S. presidents favored pawpaws: reportedly, they were George Washington’s favorite dessert. Thomas Jefferson grew pawpaws at Monticello and had the seeds shipped to friends in Paris when he was the American ambassador to France.

Journal entries document that pawpaws fed the Lewis & Clark expedition on their return trip in the fall of 1810.  In fact, pawpaw fruits and nuts saved the expedition from starvation and death when in western Missouri their rations ran low and no game was to be found. 

Our party entirely out of provisions. Subsisting on poppaws. We divide the buiskit [sic] (biscuits) which amount to nearly one buisket [sic] per man, this in addition to the poppaws is to last us down to the Settlement’s which is 150 miles.

William Clark (Lewis & CLark Expedition)

For a time, many European settlers viewed the pawpaw as a marker of racial difference, according to food historian Rebecca Earle. As ideas about racial and societal divides developed and codified, white settlers often dismissed pawpaws. Rejecting “different” foods, including pawpaws, as fit only for “different” races, became part of the colonial identity.

Their hardiness and tendency to grow wild made pawpaws a common food source along several areas of the Underground Railroad.

During the Great Depression, people often ate pawpaws as a substitute for other fruits, hence their nickname “poor man’s bananas.” Though the pawpaw continued to be an important fruit in the North American diet, interest waned after World War II with the introduction of other fruits. Racist views of the pawpaw’s place in the American diet contributed to its marginalization. As Dr. Devon Mihesuah, a scholar of Indigenous foodways, says, pawpaws haven’t been forgotten so much as “ignored, disliked, and unavailable.”

Pawpaw cultivars in Michigan
Pawpaw orchard in Michigan
Joe Grant Pawpaw
by Cbarlow

Nowadays, most pawpaws are very difficult to find outside of a few local farm markets, though some breeders are working to change that. The Cattawba Nation has started a food sovereignty program, including planting a pawpaw orchard. Every year, the Ohio Pawpaw Festival celebrates all the possibilities of this uniquely American fruit.

Although not a place name in Virginia, many states have named towns and villages after pawpaws, including Paw Paw, WV; Paw Paw, KY; Paw Paw, OK; and numerous others towns in Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. In Michigan, the Paw Paw River drains into the Paw Paw Lake and Little Pawpaw Lake, skirting by the town of Paw Paw. Natchitoches, LA, translates to “pawpaw eaters,” a name given by the Caddo.

Folklore 

In the fall, Buck Run bananas [pawpaws] are ripe – in the frost fall, a wise man takes a wife.

Tennessee wisdom
Pawpaw cluster

Rural populations relied heavily on pawpaw fruit as a food source, so naturally other parts of the tree figured heavily in medicine and folklore traditions. In some communities, people wore pawpaw seeds as an amulet to prevent disease. Shawnee and Catawba artisans used pawpaw bark fiber to make fishing nets and lines, weaving designs for luck and good fish catches into the nets.

Pawpaws offered powerful protection against Ozark Witches. Ozarkers used many means to thwart witches, especially to protect the home. One method was driving several tiny pegs of pawpaw wood into the doorsill.

The (supposedly) powerful Pawpaw Conjure used wood from the pawpaw tree:

This charm could be employed if the witch master could obtain the witch’s nail parings, a lock of hair, a tooth, or a cloth with her blood on it. The hair, nail parings, or other personal effects were stuck to the end of a wooden peg with beeswax. The witch master took this peg out into the woods at midnight, bored a hole in the fork of a pawpaw tree, and drove the peg into the hole. The witch, and her powers, were expected to dwindle.

owennativefoods.com

BOTTOM LINE: Get thee to the pawpaw patch. I recently learned that Richmond has a pawpaw walk along the river, free for the taking!

Pawpaw Patch song

Plants: A Topic That Could Take Over the World

you are one third daffodil
[Source: Amazon]
During my nature writing class, I started looking more closely at plants and animals—mostly animals, at least in the beginning. It’s only to be expected, I guess, given that animals are animate. They do things, and seem to have personalities. They often communicate vocally. But the factoid above eventually led me to explore plants a bit more. In the lists below, I’ve italicized those facts that might be of particular interest to mystery and other writers.

 

earth
[Creative Commons]

The Big Picture: A few facts to put plants in perspective

  • Over 300,000 plant species have been identified so far
  • Plants are the only organisms that make their own food in a process called photosynthesis. They turn carbon dioxide into food while cleaning the air.
  • More than 20% of the world’s oxygen supply is produced by the Amazon Rainforest.
  • Bad news: 80% of the earth’s original forests have been cleared or destroyed.
  • Only 10% of the world’s plant-rich areas are protected.
  • Of the plant species that have been studied, 68% are in danger of going extinct.
  • More than half of all plant species are native to just one country.
  • Although the earth has more than 80,000 species of edible plants, humans use only around 2000 different plants as food. Indeed, 90% of the foods humans eat come from just 30 plants
  • Nutrition doesn’t factor into the choice of plants chosen for mass production.
  • Some 70,000 plant species are used for medicine, both traditional medicine and modern pharmaceuticals. Only 1% of rainforest plants have been studied for medicinal potential.
  • Plant species are going extinct about 5,000X faster than they would without human intervention.
  • More than 85% of plant life is found in the ocean.
ginkgo trees
Ginkgo trees [Source: South Carolina LIving Magazine]

Trees

  • Trees are the longest-living organisms on earth.
  • Ginkgo biloba is one of the oldest living tree species, dating back to 250 million ears ago. The Dawn redwood dates back 150 million years.
  • The world’s oldest-growing tree is a bristlecone pine.
  • Dendrochronology is the science of dating a tree’s age b its rings.
  • The world’s tallest-growing tree is the coastal redwood, which is mostly along the Pacific Coast of California.
  • A notch in a tree will remain the same distance from the ground as the tree grows.
  • Tree resin, when fossilized, becomes amber—sometimes containing bits of plant or animal
  • Quinine—one of the most important drugs out there—is obtained from the dried bark of an evergreen tree native to South America.
  • Oak trees don’t produce acorns till they are 50 years old.
  • Lightning strikes oak trees more than any other variety.
  • The African Baobab tree can store 1,000 to 120,000 liters of water in its trunk.
  • Evaporation from a large oak or beech tree is from 10 to 25 gallons in 24 hours.
  • Brazil is named after a tree.
  • The average-sized tree can provide enough wood to make 170,000 pencils.
  • The first type of aspirin, painkiller and fever reducer, came from the bark of a willow tree.
  • Baseball bats are made from hickory while cricket bats are from willow.
Viceroy tulips
[Source: Fluwel]

Flowers

  • During the 1600s, tulips in Holland were worth more than gold.
  • In 1634, a collector paid 1,000 pounds of cheese, four oxen, eight pigs, 12 sheep, a bed, and a suit of clothes for  single bulb of the Viceroy tulip.
  • Tulips can continue to grow as much as an inch a day after being cut.
  • Some 600 species of plants are carnivorous. For example, the Venus Flytrap ingests various small insects.
  • One carnivorous plant in the Philippines can devour a full-grown rat alive.
  • Torenia, a shade-loving annual, is called a wishbone flower because they have tiny wishbone-shaped stamens.
  • Poinsettias were brought to the U.S. from Mexico in 1825 by the first U.S. minister to Mexico, Joel Poinsett.
  • The largest unbranched flower in the world is the titan arum, which can reach 15 feet tall. It’s common name is corpse flower because in bloom, it smells like rotting meat. The smell atracts flies for pollination.
  • All parts of the flowering shrub oleander are poisonous. Eating leaves can cause gastrointestinal, cardiac, and central nervous system problems and possibly death.
  • Iris means “rainbow” in Greek, and Iris is the goddess of the rainbow in mythology. Wormwood (artemesia) was named for the goddess Artemis. Milkweed (Asclepias) was named for the god Asclepius, and Hebe after the Greek goddess Hebe.
  • May l is the festival of the lily-of-the-valley. People give bouquets of them to each other, wishing them health and happiness.
  • Snapdragon flowers resemble dragons, and if you squeeze the sides, the dragon’s mouth will appear to open and close.
  • Each head of a sunflower is composed of hundreds of tiny flowers which ripen to become the seeds. Ditto for daisies, yarrow, goldenrod, asters, coreopsis, and bachelor’s buttons.
  • No species of wild plant produces a flower or blossom that is absolutely black, and so far, none has been developed artificially
  • Peaches, pears, apricots, quinces, strawberries, cherries, almonds, and apples are members of the rose family.
  • Asparagus is a member of the lily family, which also includes onions, leeks, and garlic.
tomatoes
 

Vegetables and Fruits

  • Tomato juice is the official state drink of Ohio.
  • The tomato family includes tobacco, peppers, eggplant, and deadly nightshade
  • From a botanical standpoint, avocados, pumpkins, cucumbers, and tomatoes are fruits rather than vegetables. Avocados have more calories than any other fruit, 167 per hundred grams.
  • Rhubarb, on the other hand, is a vegetable.
  • Strawberries have about 200 seeds. It’s the only fruit that carries its seeds on the outside.
  • Archaeological evidence indicates that grapes were grown to make win about 8,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (Iraq, today) but the first records of how to make wine were set down by Egyptians about 5,000 years ago.
  • Pineapples were so named by explorers because they look like pine cones with flesh like an apple.
  • Pineapples are the only edible member of the bromeliad family of flowering plants. Technically, a pineapple is a berry.
potatoes
[Source: Etsy]
  • Potatoes were first cultivated in Peru about 7,000 years ago. Today residents of Peru eat one of more than 4,000 varieties of potatoes with almost every meal.
  • Tomatoes and potatoes share 92% of their DNA.
  • Cranberries, Concord grapes, and blueberries are native to North America.
  • Small pockets of air in cranberries, when fresh, cause them to bounce and float in water. Apples, being 25% air, also float. (I’m not sure how this is reconciled with being 84% water, but that is a mystery to solve later.)
  • Water makes up 84% of a raw apple, 96% of a raw cucumber and 91% of cabbage..
  • The difference between nectarines and peaches is the fuzzy skin.
  • Cutting onions releases sulfuric gasses, bringing tears to the eyes. According to the National Onion Association, chilling the onion and cutting the root end last reduces this problem.
  • Onions contain a mild antibiotic that fights infections, soothes burns, tames bee stings, and relieves the itch of athletes foot.
  • Eating lots of onions can make you sleepy because it can act as a sedative.
stalk of bananas on a tree
  • Banana is the Arabic word for fingers.
  • A cluster of bananas is known of as a hand and consists of 10-20 bananas which are known as fingers.
  • Bananas contain a natural chemical that makes people feel happy.
  • Peanuts are not nuts. They are legumes, related to beans and lentils. They have more protein niacin, folate, and phytosterols than any nut.
  • Peanuts are used as an ingredient in dynamite.
  • Arrowroot powder (also known as cassava flour) is a thickening agent valued for being tasteless, colorless, and gluten-free.
  • Arrowroot is also an antidote for poisoned arrows—so if you are going to be shot with a poisoned arrow, be sure it’s in the kitchen.
  • One bushel of corn will sweeten more than 400 cans of pop.
  • Apples, onions, and potatoes actually have the same effect on taste buds. They are differentiated by smell.
rosemary plant
[Source: Bonnie Plants]

Herbs and Spices

  • Rosemary repels mosquitos.
  • Saffron is harvested from the stigmas of a type of fall-blooming crocus.
  • Garlic mustard is a member of the mustard family, not garlic. It is highly invasive herb.
  • Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
  • Vanilla flavoring comes from the pod of an orchid.
  • Turmeric, rosemary, thyme all can be used to treat dandruff.
  • Thyme, rosemary, sage, lavender, and marjoram all help relieve cold symptoms and congestion.
  • Several herbs are traditionally used as abortifacients.
  • Any good herbal will give guidance on using herbs for home remedies.
marijuana

Miscellaneous

  • Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew marijuana (cannabis sativa) on their plantations.
  • Bamboo—the largest of the grasses—is highly invasive. Some types grow as much as 3 feet a day.
  • Plants at the bottom of watery areas, such as swamps, can eventually turn into coal.
  • Caffeine acts as a pesticide in a coffee plant.
  • There are more than 1000 chemicals in coffee and at least 19 of them are carcinogenic.
  • Chemicals released by freshly-cut grass is highly effective to relieve stress
  • England’s Alnwick Garden has The Poison Garden, filled with plants that can kill you.
  • All teas (black, green, and white) come from the same plant, only the processing makes them different.
  • The first product to have a barcode was Wrigley’s gum.
plants topic take over world
So, how closely are we related to plants? Are we really 1/3 daffodil?
 
  • No. In actuality, humans and daffodils share 35% of our DNA.
  • Humans and mustard grass share 15% of their DNA.
  • Humans and bananas share 50% of DNA.
  • Humans have 3 billion DNA pairs; the Norway Spruce has nearly 20 billion.
  • Even onions have more DNA than humans.
  • Tomatoes have 7000 more genes than humans.
All of the bits and pieces gathered together above are just the tip of the iceberg. Writers, choose a plant—any plant—and work it into your plot, setting, or character traits. You’ll love it!
 
plants topic take over world