How to Identify Fruit or Vegetables in a Garden

Novice gardeners or people with no gardening knowledge at all mostly suffer from the problem of not being able to identify fruits or vegetables in a garden. However it is almost impossible to not to identify a vegetable or fruit in your own garden, However this can be problematic when visiting gardens of other people. Today I will discuss a couple of ways about how to identify fruits or vegetables in a Garden.

Things Required:

A little presence of mind
Common Sense

There are no specific tools required to identify vegetables and fruits. Just a little knowledge does all the tricks.

How To:

The habit of reading is always useful for us. Reading about plants and their types will aid you a lot in identifying vegetables and fruits in any garden.

When talking about local gardens, you can easily identify fruits and vegetables if you read the gardening section regularly in any newspaper.

A couple of visits to a nursery and a chat with the nursery guy will also add a lot to your information.

Plants usually smell like their fruit. If you know how a fruit or vegetable smells, you can actually smell the leaves of the plant in order to identify it.

Speaking botanically, only fruits exist. Fruit is a ripened ovary of a plant. Whereas a vegetable is a grocery item only.

What we call vegetables are actually parts of plants mostly. Carrot is called a vegetable because it is the root, spinach is the leave and peas are the seeds.

Actual fruits like mangoes, apples and oranges are grown on trees. These fruits results in the fertilization of the ovary in the flower. Only a glance is sufficient to identify these as a fruit.

These fruits are visible only in one season every year. Mangoes are found in the summer where as oranges can be seen in the winters.

All culinary herbs are the leaves of a plant. These can be easily identified by the strong fragrance they depict.

Some botanists believe that the distinction between fruits and vegetables is actually because of the vitamin C. Tomato, even though grouped under vegetable; is actually a fruit, because it contains vitamin C.

If you ever come across an unfamiliar fruit or vegetable, it is always advised to enquire about it before tasting it. The appearance of the fruit will tell you what part of plant it belongs to.

However, you need to make sure that there is no harm in eating that particular vegetable/plant.

Happy Gardening! Make the World Green

Tips:

It is very useful to take a picture of every new plant or fruit you see. You can show them on the internet and ask about the related information.
You can even collect the pictures and turn them into an interesting scrap book.


Warning:

If you are a novice, don’t try to go touching every plant or fruit. Some types are poisonous and can cause extreme allergies.