20 Little known garden facts

(1) black walnuts put off a neurotoxin known as juglone which inhibits growth for surrounding plants.

(2) tomatoes are perennials, however they are short lived perennials. Most farmers/gardeners cultivate tomatoes as an annual.

(3) bananas which contain potassium act as a nutrient & fertilizer when mixed with mulch around plants/trees.

(4) Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant in the world; it can grow 35 inches in a single day--which makes bamboo a great resource for garden projects such as trellises. also commercial use of bamboo would ease the destruction of the old and living trees.

(5) During the 1600s, tulips were so valuable in Holland that their bulbs were worth more than gold. The craze was called tulip mania, or tulipomania, and caused the crash of the Dutch economy. Tulips can continue to grow as much as an inch per day after being cut.

(6) Small pockets of air inside cranberries cause them to bounce and float in water.

(7) Peaches, Pears, apricots, quinces, strawberries, and apples are members of the rose family. So are ornamental species such as spirea, mountain ash, goatsbeard, and ninebark.

(8) Peanuts are not nuts, but legumes related to beans and lentils. They have more protein, niacin, folate, and phytosterols than any nut, according to the National Peanut Board.

(9) Nectarines are actually peaches that have a recessive gene that makes them grow without the fuzzy skin. They are not actually a different kind of fruit.

(10) There are more microorganisms in one teaspoon of soil than there are people on earth.

(11)  Plants respond to sound and in fact react by growing better when listening to soothing music and other sounds, but reacts and grows slowly or stunted when plants "listen" to hard, loud, and chaotic music.

(12) A sunflower consists of 1,000-2,000 individual flowers where the fuzzy brown center and the classic yellow petals are the individual flowers held together on a single stalk.

(13) Baking soda sprinkled regularly around tomatoes in the garden can reduce the acidity and make the tomatoes much sweeter in taste.

(14) Hydrangea flowers color can be altered by the pH level of the soil. For example, a more alkaline soil will result in pinker blooms, while a acidic soil will produce blue blooms. To facilitate a blue color, add more organic matter to your soil, like coffee grounds (though the acidity in used coffee grounds can vary greatly, so you might try a high-acid fertilizer, too). The change won't happen overnight, but eventually you should succeed in manipulating your soil's pH level.

(15) Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that grapes were grown to make wine about 8,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (today's Iraq), although the ancient Egyptians were the first to record the process of making wine about 5,000 years ago.

(16) The first potatoes were cultivated in Peru about 7,000 years ago.

(17) The average strawberry has 200 seeds. It's the only fruit that bears its seeds on the outside.

(18) Trees are perhaps the longest living organism on Earth. Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is one of the oldest living tree species; it dates back to about 250 million years ago. Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is another ancient species; it dates back about 150 million years. Both were known in the fossil record before they were found alive. The world's tallest-growing tree is the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), which grows along the Pacific Coast of the United States, mainly in California. Interestingly enough, it's not the world's oldest-growing tree; that award goes to a bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata).

(19) Figs were the first domesticated crop in the Near East about 11,400 years ago!
Archaeologists found carbonized figs in a village north of ancient Jericho, and compared the fruits to modern specimens. Through this comparison, they determined that the fruits had been intentionally propagated.

(20) Earth worms have the power to move stones that weigh 50 times their own weight. They love coffee grounds. They ingest soil and organic matter equal to the amount of their body weight each day. They also help with your compost pile; when you turn your compost pile and find a lot of earth worms, you know that your compost pile is working and that you will have great top soil for plants.

"10 Incredible Plant Facts you didn't know" by Kevin Mathews

From EcoWatch: Transforming Green, Kevin Mathews writes on the "10 Incredible Plant Facts you didn't know":

"1. The earth has more than 80,000 species of edible plants.
If you’re ever in the mood to try something new, the good news is that there is certainly food you haven’t tasted yet still growing somewhere in the world. You’ll probably have some trouble finding it, however, because …

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

2. 90 percent of the foods humans eat come from just 30 plants.
Out of tens of thousands of plants we could eat, mankind chooses to consume only about 30 of them. It’s crazy to contemplate how limited our diets are compared to all of the different foods we could be eating. If you think the selection of which plants we eat has anything to do with their nutritional benefits, however, you’d be wrong …
3. Nutrition doesn’t factor into the crops we do mass produce.
The world’s largest farmers have pursued certain crops because they can grow a lot of them more quickly, easily and inexpensively to turn a better profit. As a result, most of the most healthful plants stay off of our dinner plates because they aren’t available at grocery stores. Still, sustenance isn’t the only thing humans rely on plants for …
4. 70,000 plant species are utilized for medicine.
As it turns out, humans are more diversified in the plants we use for medicine. Although a large portion of that figure applies to traditional medicine, modern medicine is not excepted from plant help. Half of the drugs prescribed in the U.S. have plant origins, many coming out of the rainforest, yet …
5. Only one percent of rainforest plants have been studied for medicinal potential.
Given how valuable plants can be medicinally, the rainforest houses a host of possible cures for ailments new and old. This untapped resource could still hold the key to medical breakthroughs. Of course, a lot of this potential could be lost considering …

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

6. 80 percent of the Earth’s original forests have been cleared or destroyed.
The same forests that dominated the land 8,000 years ago are all but gone. Approximately four-fifths of the forests are gone thanks to human intervention—just think of how many plant species may have been lost in that process. If you thought protections were in place, actually …
7. Just 10 percent of the world’s plant-rich areas are protected.
Of the most biodiverse areas on the planet, only 10 percent are officially “protected” to ensure the survival of a multitude of species—plant and animal alike. Worse still, many of the supposedly protected areas are done so nominally only, leaving plants threatened by external factors they should be safeguarded from. This is especially problematic because …
8. More than half of plant species are native to just one country.
Chances are, a plant you find in one part of the world is not currently growing anywhere else. As plant habitat is ruined, there’s little point in hoping that the killed plants could be found and harvested somewhere else in the future. For this reason …
9. 68 percent of plants are in danger of going extinct.
While scientists have only examined a fraction of the existing known plant species, of those that have been studied, 68 percent face extinction in the not too distant future. Since plants can’t just up and move as their habitat is being destroyed, they are even more vulnerable than endangered animals. It’s happening quickly, too, since …
10. Plant species are going extinct—about 5,000 times faster than they should.
Some will argue that species would go extinct even without human interference. While that’s certainly true, it’s the rate that plants are dying off that raises alarm. Thanks to climate change, deforestation and other human-influence factors, experts believe that species are going extinct somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times faster than they would naturally".