MAX FACTS
growing tips, news and trivia
Preserving Plants
Easy-to-grow
Edamame
An herbarium is a collection
of preserved plant
specimens. To preserve
their form and color, plants
collected in the field are
spread flat on sheets of
newsprint and dried, usually
in a plant press, between
blotters or absorbent paper.
The specimens are then
mounted on sheets of stiff white
paper, labeled with essential data,
and placed in a protective case. As
a precaution against insect attack, the
pressed plant is frozen or poisoned, and the
case disinfected. Certain groups of plants
are soft, bulky or otherwise not amenable to
drying and mounting on sheets. For these
plants, other methods of preparation
and storage are used. For example,
conifer cones and palm fronds
may be stored in labeled boxes,
and flowers and fruits may be
pickled in formaldehyde to preserve
their three-dimensional structure.
(Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/botany)
Due to high nutritional value
and health benefits, soy foods
are gaining considerable interest
in the marketplace. Much of this
interest has focused on soybean
products such as tofu, soy milk, soyprotein fortified flour, or meat analogs
constructed from extracted soy protein.
Interestingly, soybeans are also an
excellent vegetable and may be eaten
directly from the pods similar to other beans
or peas. When presented in this fashion,
the soybean is called vegetable soybean or
edamame. Edamame is planted the same way as
bush beans, and a mature plant is about 2-ft. tall. After
the soil has warmed to 65°F, sow seeds 1-in. deep, 2-in.
apart and in rows about 1-ft. apart. Don’t rush planting. If the
soil isn’t warm enough, the seeds will not germinate. Stagger the
planting times to provide a continuous harvest that will not become
a burden when it comes time to picking and storing the beans.
(Source: nsrl.uiuc.edu)
Cafeteria Vegetables Barely Eaten
Offering young children a healthy school lunch doesn’t
mean they’ll eat it. While nearly seven out of 10 school
kids put a vegetable on their lunch trays, only about
half of them took even one bite of it, according to
a new study of 274 students from Kindergarten
to Grade 2 at 10 New York City public schools.
However, reducing noise and making other
changes to the menu and cafeteria environment
can make a big difference, suggests a study
from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg
School of Public Health. During the study,
young students were much more likely to
finish their veggies when the cafeteria was
quieter. They were also more likely to
consume more of their food if a teacher
ate with them in the cafeteria, the
lunch period was longer and their
food was cut up.
(Source: today.com)
30
Maximum Yield USA | January 2015