While visiting Disney World in Orlando, I got to take their “Behind the Seeds” tour of EPCOT’s The Land pavilion’s Tropics, Temporate and Production Greenhouses as well as their Creative House. In future posts I’ll talk about the ”Living with the Land” boat tour as opposed to the “Behind the Seeds” tour. In the meantime, thought I would share these forced-shaped pumpkins and cucumbers.

They’re the kind of thing that makes you shake your head and smile and say, “What will they think of next?”
It also reminded me of a recent post by Gardenhistorygirl, lamenting the loss of symbology in modern gardening. It’s not that all symbology is lost, it’s just that, in this case anyway, it’s become a corporate marketing tool reinforcing a brand. Forcing shapes seems to be a harmless, clever vanity exercise. It’s not as though they’re genetically engineering the vegetables.

Genetically engineering other stuff.
On the tour, we were told that Disney botanists, at the behest of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are working on coming up with a genetically-engineered, disease-resistant dwarf citrus tree with normal tree yields. Apparently some citrus trees are ripe for a particular disease when they reach a certain height. Any successful results with the experiments could ensure we’ll always have readily-available limes, collected without the use of ladders, for our rum & cokes.

Would you buy heart-shaped cukes for your Valentines Day salad?
It just seems extravagant...excessive...and downright American! With the TV-cultivated cooking culture and restaurants yearning for the next new thing, I can see forced-shaped fruits and vegetables becoming available in a mass market way and some enterprising greenhouse/hothouse making a killing. I can see gasping at premium prices for vegetables - a $15 cucumber, a $60 pumpkin. I can also see people shelling out for them. Disney’s not dumb. They just epitomize everything that is American.

This summer, I’ll be experimenting with cucumber-shaped cucumbers.