How Plants Work: Getting Higher Yields & Better Flavours
Discover How Plants Work; Deep Dive into Plant Parts To Understand What Makes Fruit & Vegetables Tick. From Roots To Stems, Flower & Seeds.
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In this series of articles I’m going to explain plant basics. I’ll keep it simple, but dig a bit into the bits that make us better gardeners. From basic botany to a bit of science that any gardener can understand and easily put in to practice in their own garden. My background is as a commercial grower, but, when I sold my business I then had a garden at home and an allotment. The same principles apply to farms, market gardens, allotments or gardens. The plant doesn’t know where it is growing!
Understanding What Makes Fruit & Vegetables Tick!
Have you ever stopped to marvel at the intricate details of your flourishing garden? Beyond the vibrant blooms and verdant leaves lies a hidden world. I can wax lyrical here and say it’s a symphony of specialised structures working in perfect harmony. It really is enough to make me do this!
Anyway, in this series of articles I’ll take you on the captivating journey i enjoy so much, one that explores the major plant parts – their structure, function, fascinating oddities, and the science that makes gardening so rewarding.
It’s a journey that led me to start a market gardening business where I grew salads and veg. It started with toms. cues, celery, lettuce and a few other wonderful veg; continued with leeks, Brussel Sprouts, even more lettuce, parsley, Asian veg for ethnic communities, then became more and more focused on lettuce.
I’m not talking about a few veg here. We started with 10,000 tomatoes plants a year, grew 90-100,000 leeks each winter, grew half an acre of Brussels (a crop I came to dislike intensely for the hard manual slog of manual harvesting), a few flowers and half a million lettuce every year.
The focus was on quality and flavour. Don’t believe the stories that commercial growers all grow tasteless crap! Some do, but many want tasty food as much as you. And in some cases get paid a premium based on that flavour and quality. I certainly did, the flavour premium I was paid was the difference between profit and poverty.
To do that meant really understanding how plants work. Not just the edible bit. To succeed I had to understand each part of the plant. From the seed and seedlings to the growing and maturing plant. That meant understanding each part in depth and in this series I’m looking at ……
