Just the Facts!

Please read on to learn some interesting facts about gardening we've picked up along the way. If you have any facts of your own to share with us we'd love to hear from you.


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- The first cultivated carrots had purple roots and are believed have come from Afghanistan before they began their migration, during the 14th century, into the Mediterranean.

- Gardening increases joint flexibility and strength and engages all the major muscle groups, it has been shown to burn as many calories as the average aerobic workout.

- Take a deep breath, calm your mind, use all of your senses in the garden. Smell the fragrance of the blooms and the earthy soil. Hear the insects, the birds and the breeze tussling the vines and plants. Feel the cool leaves and moist soil. See the colours, different shades of green, bees and butterflies. Taste the fruits of your labour grown by your own hands in your own gardening space. Connect to nature and the earth you walk on, dig in and grow. What a wonderful way to distress.

- A backyard garden produces healthy and flavourful food, and by eating more vegetables and fruit, your body is getting more nutrients. Healthy food – healthy people.

- Grow your creative edge: planning which seeds you will use, where you will plant them, and how you want your garden to look requires imagination and the inspiration to try new ideas. As these skills are practiced, your mind develops new neuroconnections and learns how to be more creative. Your newfound skill of creativity can then cross over into other parts of your life like your work, relationships and health. Gardening can enhance your life. Ashley McIntosh, getliving.ca

- Most toothpicks end up in trash cans, down sewers and many other places where they can become a hazard to wildlife. Wildlife may swallow the toothpicks and puncture themselves from the inside.

- Donald R. Davis is a former research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. Davis claims the average vegetable found in today's supermarket is anywhere from 5% to 40% lower in minerals (including magnesium, iron, calcium and zinc) than those harvested just 50 years ago.

- On the So-Called "Dilution Effect:" Today's store vegetables might be larger, but if you think that means they contain more nutrients, you'd be wrong. Davis writes that jumbo-sized produce contains more "dry matter" than anything else, which dilutes mineral concentrations. In other words, when it comes to growing food, less is more. Scientific papers have cited one of the first reports of this effect, a 1981 study by W.M. Jarrell and R.B. Beverly in Advances in Agronomy, more than 180 times since its publication, "suggesting that the effect is widely regarded as common knowledge."

- Milk from high-production dairy cows has lower concentrations of fat, a protein and other nutrition-enhancing components than the milk from dairy operations of 20 years ago or more.

- Sweet corn, potatoes and whole-wheat bread show double-digit declines in iron, zinc and calcium. The time span of the decline varies depending on the product studied but generally ranges from 20 to 100 years.

- Food grown using modern, intensive agricultural techniques contain fewer nutrients and minerals than they did 60 years ago.

- Washington State University professor Stephen Jones & researcher Kevin Murphy (involved in WSU’s century old wheat improvement program) “showed that today’s modern wheat has less nutritional value. You would have to eat twice as many slices of modern breads as you would of the older variety to get the same nutritional value. Researchers focused on “how good a cookie the wheat made, how nice a loaf of bread it produced or how the pizza dough acts. That’s all related to protein. It’s not related to iron and zinc and selenium and other essential vitamins and minerals.”

According to The Sustainable Seed Company:

- Heirloom tomatoes grown in your backyard are up to 8 times more nutritious than those you can buy at the store.

- One tbsp of your homemade salsa is equal to three heads of lettuce.

- Heirloom variety vegetables are nutrient dense and packed with vitamins and minerals.

From: Veggie Gardening Tips

Never met a GMO that I liked – GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organisms and that really doesn’t sound like something I want showing up on the dinner table. I simply don’t trust GMO’s or the motives behind them, and I’m curious to see the arguments that will be used to try and convince us that GMO’s are better for us.

Too thrifty to pay for seeds every year – It’s bad enough to get hit with debit card transaction fees and cable bills, but do you want to be suckered into paying each year for something else that we used to be able to get for free? Heirlooms provide the convenient and cost-free option of saving your own seeds if you’d like.  

I’m a gardener, not a farmer – Maybe I’d be more concerned with thick skins, uniformity, and the shipping capabilities if I was a farmer, but I’m a backyard gardener. I prefer varieties that ripen over a long season rather than all at once, and my tender produce doesn’t need to travel any further than from the garden to the kitchen counter. I’m much more interested in gourmet quality, vine ripened harvests, and freshness than I am with the important commercial qualities.