Field of Science

Champion vegetables

Do your vegetables measure up?  How about the UK's annual vegetable championships?  It's not just the size, or shape, or color, but also the presentation.  Check out the photo essay at the link.  Of course it's not just vegetables, but fruit that most people think of as vegetables, like the pumpkin of the other day.  Did you see how long and how straight those parsnip were?  Wow!  TPP didn't have anything near magnificent enough this year to compete even at our local farmer's market. Years ago a family friend was an expert judge of cole vegetables (cabbage et al.) for 4-H fairs and the like.  My Father used to say he had a great head for heads.  What fun!

2 comments:

Eric said...

Do you happen to know whether the giant pumpkins are still diploid like their smaller kin? Not that gigantism is all about chromosome counts, but I wonder if that's a contributing factor here.

The Phytophactor said...

As far as TPP knows the squashes are all diploids. Some of the big watermelons are tetraploids.