Squash that look like smiling human faces. Eighty-pound pumpkins. Square tomatoes. They’ve been around forever in seed-company ads that run in the back of Sunday newspaper supplements and in “Gee Whiz” photos on the front pages of supermarket tabloids. Oddly formed and colored vegetables have long fascinated us as the freak shows of the garden.
Originally published in Your Garden, a nationally syndicated newspaper feature section, spring 2007. (pdf)