Unusually Shaped Vegetable - Causes

Causes

Vegetables usually grow into an unusual shape due to environmental conditions. Damage to one part of the vegetable can cause the growth to slow in that area while the rest grows at the normal rate. When a root vegetable is growing and the tip is damaged, it can sometimes split, forming multiple roots attached at one point. If a plant is in the primordium (embryonic development) stage, damage to the growing vegetable can cause more extreme mutations.

The unusual shape can also be forced upon the vegetable. In Japan, farmers of the Zentsuji region found a way to grow cubic watermelons by growing the fruits in glass boxes and letting them naturally assume the shape of the receptacle. The square shape supposedly makes the melons easier to stack and store, but the cubic watermelons are often more than double the price of normal ones. Using similar techniques, growers have also created more complex shapes of watermelon, including dice, pyramids, and faces.

Some giant vegetables have been purposely cultivated to be of an enormous size, with artificial selection being used to create large hybrids. Serious growers (those who enter competitions and aim for world records) trade seeds through clubs or over the Internet.

If carrots are grown in soil which has been manured that year, some of the carrots are strange shapes because the young carrot plant's roots go off in odd directions, drawn by irregular pockets of manured soil.