Fun at the Market

Category: Market Gardening | Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2005 5:58 pm

One thing about gardening is that you never know what strange things you will find in the garden. It might just be the neighbors cat , an unusual bird, or something like a porcupine. I'm not going to talk about animal type critters today, but about veggie type critters.

It's so fun coming across those gnarly and ugly (not really ugly if looked at in the right way) veggies & fruit. With a little imagination plus a few toothpicks and some careful pocketknife surgery I've ended up with really interesting critters keeping me company at the market.

Cylinder beets make good mice. The root is the tail, the stems (carefully trimmed) form the snout, four toothpicks for the legs, and cutting a couple of eye holes makes a neat little rodent to have for kids and adults to smile at while shopping.

Kohlrabi that have a horizontal growth split make wonderful monsters. A couple of stems poking up from below the split make tusks. The short stems with tiny leafs make great hair. A couple of eye holes, and voila! You have a monster's head. Then maybe putting it on a tomato or potato for a body you have a nearly complete creature.

Crookneck squash are simple to make into birds. Just position them with the stem end up for the neck and the big end down for the body, draw a couple of eyes with a marker and there is a duck, goose, or swan.

On occasion you find those veggies where you just don't need to do a thing. Like a potato that's a heart or the perfect heart beet. I just had to take a picture of the heart beet and make a shirt out of that.

Then there are the ones you only show to a few people. Carrots with two legs that are anatomically correct. Tomatoes with a butt crack. (Did I just say that ;) And a few where a couple of veggies have grown together. Oh my! There are some that make me grin thinking about them but don't dare describe. ;)

Oh we have fun at the market sometimes! Regular shoppers even ask where the funny veggies are. Alas... You don't always find the right shapes or have the inspiration to create a monster or animal.

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aloes wrote on Tue Jan 24, 2006 1:20 am:

I could just imagine how cute that would be to buy at a market with your vegie monsters on display. Bring a smile to a house wife who came wondering what on earth to cook "again".