The other day I was checking out my pole beans and noticed something that sparked my curiosity: all the vines grew around the poles in a clockwise direction, save one, which twisted counterclockwise. So I walked over to my cucumbers to inspect their vines. They were growing counterclockwise, although one changed directions midway up the trellis.

So why would bean vines twist predominantly clockwise and cucumbers counterclockwise? Good question, but before I answer it let me share a few other cool plant curiosites.

Seedless watermelons didn’t even exist until the 1990s, yet today they’re hugely popular. But where do seedless watermelons come from if they don’t produce seeds? Science!

In fact, they do produce tiny seeds that are nearly transparent (and edible). Occasionally you'll also find what looks like a regular seed. But don’t bother planting either because the seeds are sterile. Think of seedless watermelons as the mules of melons. A mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey, but a mule is sterile. And so are seedless watermelons. 

Now let me get technical for a moment. A typical watermelon has 22 chromosomes, which makes it a diploid melon. Seedless watermelons are triploids with 33 chromosomes. But producing a seedless watermelon first requires a chemical process that doubles the diploid melon chromosome count from 22 to 44, resulting in a tetraploid melon. (The chemical used is colchinine, which is derived from a plant in the genus Colchicum, namely the Autumn Crocus.) The pollen of the diploid melon is then crossed with the tetraploid to produce a triploid, seedless watermelon. The process is repeated each year to produce seed for seedless watermelons.

Keep in mind that the flowers of seedless watermelons are not self-fertile, so you’ll need to plant a regular (as in seeded) watermelon nearby to insure successful fruit development. That’s a good thing actually, because you’ll have both seeded and seedless crops, which means you’ll have plenty of seeds to spit.

White asparagus is prized for its delicate flavor, and it looks cool. But how does it differ from its green counterpart? Basically, white asparagus is the same as green asparagus, but it’s grown without sunlight so that it doesn’t produce chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants green. It’s a laborious process in which soil or sometimes dark plastic is used to cover the plants as they grow. The same technique is used to grow endive. And the price of both reflects the labor involved.

Growing peanuts is fun, and the way they grow -- in the ground or in containers -- is cool, because although they flower aboveground, once the flower is fertilized it forms a peg (technically a peduncle) that burrows into the ground where the peanuts then develop. 

All you do is plant raw peanuts (not roasted or salted!) about two-inches deep and six-inches apart in loose, well-drained soil in a spot that gets full sun when soil temps are in the mid-60s (typically May to early June). Flowers will appear in about a month, and the pegs will then begin to form. Keep the plants well watered throughout the long (130 days or more) growing season. When the foliage begins to yellow, carefully pull up the plants, shake off the excess soil, and let the peanuts dry in a cool, dry place for two to three weeks. 

You can expect to harvest 30 to 40 peanuts from each plant.

For me, life without potatoes would be nearly meaningless, which is why I grow a lot of them. We know that potatoes have been cultivated for over 10,000 years, and that they originated in the Andes. But what we didn’t know until recently was how they actually came into existence.

And it turns out that the potato evolved from a fling between a tuberless potato precursor and a wild tomato some nine million years ago! To learn more, click this link:

When a caterpillar chews on a leaf, a pressure change occurs within the vascular system of the plant, which triggers the release of an acid that’s toxic to caterpillars. The plant may also send chemical substances to nearby relatives to warn them of the danger.

Plants also “know” if nearby plants are related to them or total strangers. If related, they tend to share the soil space around them so they all can produce a healthy root system. But if a nearby plant is a total stranger, they get aggressive, growing more and longer roots to fill up the soil space and drive the stranger out.

It’s estimated that plants can send as many as 100,000 different chemical signals to communicate with other plants. Pretty cool, huh?

In the remote highlands of Utah there’s an aspen forest made up of 47,000 trees encompassing 106 acres. It’s called Pando -- Latin for “I Spread” -- and it’s actually one massive organism connected by a single root system, making it the largest living being on earth by mass. 

An Armillaria fungus in Oregon is the largest organism by area -- covering 2,400 acres -- but since a fungus is not a plant, I really shouldn’t even mention it here.

Now back to my question about the directionality of vines. Turns out, it’s simply a matter of genetics, and interestingly, 90% of all vines twine counterclockwise, although they may also change direction now and then. And in case you're wondering, the effects are the same in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Fall planting is just around the corner, which means now is a great time to begin planning a pollinator garden full of perennials. I’ll share a list of my (and their) favorites.