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7. How Do Your Favourite Food Items Grow?

You probably didn’t know these facts about your favourite vegetables, fruits, or spices. P.S. Cranberries grow out of water.

Avocados come in three major types, wasabi is the toughest crop to grow, and blueberries actually grow green and much more you haven’t heard of before.

Here are some interesting facts about staple food items you probably didn’t’ know about, and won’t stop thinking about!

GARLIC

One of the most basic spices in households, garlic is generally an easy-to-grow crop planted in the winters and harvested in midsummer. It’s an ancient bulbous vegetable that breaks into several cloves from one whole bulb. Growth is expected in just 4-6 weeks! Usually three varieties of garlic are produced: hardneck, softneck, and great headed. Softneck garlic is your best bet out of all having the best storage capacity and often found in markets.

WASABI

Considered as the toughest plants to grow, this native Japanese item requires a humid environment, two years to mature, and is highly prone to diseases if grown in bunches. For this very reason you’ll find buying fresh wasabi pretty costly. They grow upto 12 to 18 inches but are extremely slow growing. Wasabi is also often named the Japanese horseradish!

BLUEBERRIES

Blue, sweet and ready to eat – the blueberries we love to eat come from bushes planted in acid soil and growing upto 12 feet tall. Each blueberry initially buds green in the spring, turns reddish-purple, and finally ripens into blue. While the plants produce berries only once a year, the harvested berries can be marketed as fresh as canned berries all throughout the year.

AVOCADO

The fruit that’s taken the world by storm, avocados are native to Mexico that thrives in plentiful of sunshine and warm temperatures. Avocados are fast-growing trees that may even grow upto 80 feet tall. Usually three types of avocados are found, named after their regions – Mexican type with the creamiest taste, West Indian type which grow to the largest size, and lastly the Guatemalan type that fall midway between good oil content and size.

QUINOA

A protein-rich item staple to today’s diet, quinoa comes from tall and green plants adhering to extremely cold weather and equally drought resistant. As a whole plant, the main part of quinoa we consume is the seed. Once the green leaves of these plants fall off, the plant stands as seeds alone. The dry seeds are then harvested and further rinsed and polished to remove the bitter saponin coating on the seeds – their naturally occurring protectant from birds and insects.

CRANBERRY

Considered a unique fruit, cranberries are highly nutritious and rich-red berries that can grow only under special conditions – acid peat soil, adequate fresh water supply, and a growing season from April to November. They grow on low-lying beds called bogs or marshes that naturally provide the perfect factors for the juiciest, ripest red berries. Cranberries are widely grown in the United States, most commonly in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington.

CASHEW

Cashew nuts come from cashew apples growing on a cashew tree! The tree develops cashew fruit (cashew apple) which is fleshy oval in shape, and to this fruit is attached cashew nut which is encased in a shell at the bottom. As edible cashew nuts are, so is the cashew apple which is used in the production of sweets, juice, alcoholic beverages, flour, milk, cheese, etc.

PINEAPPLE

Did you know that Pineapple grows on a plant called Pineapple? Yes, the tropical plant and the edible fruit are named the same. They grow on a small shrub where individual flowers form a multiple fruit. Then it develops in to narrow, fleshy, trough-shaped leaves with sharp spines, and after few months it gets spirally arranged and looks like a flower. Lastly, it grows and further develops in to the shape of Pineapple as we see it.

PISTACHIO

Pistachio, also known as Pista, has been a nut which can be used with almost everything due to taste and versatility. Interestingly, the trees where they are grown in are desert plant and can possibly live up to 300 years. The fruit is hard and in a cream-coloured exterior shell, and the seed is light green with a distinctive flavor. When the fruit ripens, the shell changes from green to an autumnal yellow/red and abruptly splits partly open. That is what we eat.