Digging the weirdness of vegetable matter

Ah, a new year has begun and it’s time, once again, for the annual gardening expose of the weird.

Considering how flaky many of us gardeners are, you really have to dig deep into the pile for these nuggets. Apparently, weirdness in gardening is something to be covered up like a bad seed in the family plot.

On a recent hunt, as I was Goggling around on the Internet the other day, I unearthed a bounty of weirdness under “vegetables bizarre news” and “weird news vegetables.”

Weirdly shaped vegetables have given rise to serious art, gourmet foods, and a lot of silliness. Where we used to let nature take its course and surprise us, now there are people out there deliberately redesigning root vegetables on a do-it-yourself basis.

Japanese farmers have been growing square melons in glass cubes for the gourmet market for years. Now the corporations have caught on and are actually encouraging this sort of deviance in the garden.

Lee Valley (Leevalley.com) has Vegiforms, plastic forms that will allow you to grow zucchini into gnomes for your eating pleasure. That’s one way to deal with those ugly garden gnomes, but, why would you want to? The website claims these molds “might even encourage children to eat their vegetables.” Isn’t there enough violence in the world already?

For those meat-eaters who are already turning the page, check out the Vegetable Rights Militant Movement (Vegetablecruelty.com) (VRMM).

Dedicated to vegetable liberation everywhere, the VRMM “differs from other vegetable activist organizations in that it really does all that it can to stop people from torturing, killing, humiliating, and ultimately eating vegetables and fruits.” Here you can witness the actual skinning of a live watermelon and the violent smashing of an innocent gathering of potatoes.

This is not for the squeamish among you.

It seems that root vegetables have all the glory these days. Some even have their own museums, such as the Carrot Museum (Carrotmuseum.co.uk). A British tour through this museum is a wonderful way to blow off work.

Did you know you could make lasers from carrots? Musical instruments? Need some literary quotations about carrots for your term paper? Want to access other carrot aficionados and collectors? This is the site. And they even have a page for cats. Carrots and cats? I never would have thought of that combination.

For more carrot fun, visit Flickr.com/groups/carrotfun, a photo-site for carrot freaks everywhere.

Share the love, people!

There are several musicians who enjoy torturing root vegetables into instruments that make beautiful music as well as eccentric sound experiments. Australians Alain Thirion and Kerry Fletcher’s site (Flutenveg.com) has some wonderful mp3 clips you can listen to.

It’s hard to tell the difference between a real pan pipe and one made from carrots. These instruments are beautifully crafted and the musicians deck themselves out with some hilarious vegetable and fruit costumes as well. Maybe we should get them to headline the entertainment at the Fair next year? What can they make with a giant cabbage? Perhaps a bass ocarina?

For the experimental musicians in your garden go to The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra’s site (Gemueseorchester.org).

Cucumber phones, leek violins, celery bongos, and other unique instruments gurgle and wheeze through some mp3 clips that are sure to inspire your computer geek dub genius.

Photographer and artist Uli Westphal has a thing for weird fruits, roots, and vegetables. His Project Mutatoes is a beautifully photographed look at “the extent to which we control and shape the appearance of nature through” commercial grading and standards of perfection.

Somehow Westphal wants us to make a connection between a perfect apple and a plastic surgeon’s ability to transform us into the apple of society’s eye.

I told you these people are weird.

Take a gander at Uliwestphal.110mb.com/mutatocollection.

As you can see, this goes way beyond finding those heart shaped potatoes and religious icons found on the skin of a rutabaga. These are the imaginings and visions of people who fortunately aren’t running our local produce sections at the grocery store.

You might want to watch your gardening friends carefully and note whether they exhibit any new ticks and jerks while perusing the seed catalogs.

Of course, it’s obvious that we need our own Museum of Cabbages or potatoes. After months of light deprivation and cold storage we ought to be able to turn out some world-class weirdness in gardening.

Bring on the seed flats!

Brooke Heppinstall, artist and gardener, is the owner of Wool Wood Studio & Gardens, an art studio and nursery specializing in Alaska-grown perennials and shrubs. Visit online at Woolwood.blogspot.com.