Vegetable Plant Families

Vegetable plants can be sorted into families using scientific grouping due to shared characteristics. A gardener can find this helpful, to know the optimal conditions for growth, nutrients required and care needed for each plant that belongs to the same family.

Knowing the family your plants belong to can help with crop rotation, cover crops and with choosing the best companion plants in your vegetable garden. It can also help you understand common pests and diseases that affect each family.

The following list, although not all inclusive as there are many plants that are eaten that don’t belong to these common families, will help guide you to identify what category your plants fall into.

 

Cucurbits (Squash or gourd family)

These vegetables sit on the boundary of what we call fruit or vegetables. It commonly includes pumpkins, zucchini and squash, which most people would class as a vegetable. However, the family also includes melons, which are fruits and cucumbers which sits somewhere in between the two.  

The commonality between them all is their low tolerance to frost and their love of heat. Usually, they form vines but often they will be in bush form too, with yellow flowers in male and female forms- the female ones proceed to grow into the fruit. Because they grow profusely, they need plenty of space to spread and regular watering to help plump up the fruit. Seeds are flat, large and pointed on one end and can be black through to pale yellow.

 

This family includes plants such as tomato, chilli, eggplants and even potato, loathe the cold and adore the heat. The exception to this weather tolerance is potatoes, which do very well in our Tasmanian climate.

If fed with plenty of nutrients, watered well and kept warm, they are a fast growing and productive crop. Flowers are five petalled followed by fruits with round flat seeds.

Many other plants withing the nightshade family are highly toxic. Some of the same toxins are found in the foliage of the edible plants and as such only the fruits should be consumed.

 

Containing garlic, onion, leeks and shallots for example, this family of plants is rarely affected by pests due to their strong scent and flavour. They are generally frost hardy.

The main identifiers of this family are bulbs or underground stems with long vertical leaves and a ball of flowers that have 3 or 6 petals in clusters. Seeds are generally small, round and black in colour. Some can be grown from bulbs instead of seeds such as garlic.

 

Combining two different families, they require similar growing conditions and often get grouped together during crop rotation.

Umbels include carrot, celery, parsley and fennel, and are so called due to the flower clusters or umbels which contain small long, thin and light seeds that grow well scattered over the soils surface or only a few millimetres below. Although usually harvested before they flower, they are magnet for bees and butterflies.

Beets include beetroot, silverbeet and spinach. It varies whether the root or the leafy tops are eaten, often it is both. The leafy foliage indicates that they are heavy feeders particularly of nitrogen.

 

Many sharing a common ancestor, these vegetables started as a wild cabbage and were bred for their different well-known forms that we commonly know now. Brussel sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radish and plenty more all fall into this family. They love cooler weather and vary in their frost tolerance, but will bolt to seed in heat.

The seeds are small and spherical, growing in pods. Generally, the plants will be harvested before going to seed however.

 

Legume (Pea family)

The most common are beans and peas in this family but also includes lentils. Several seeds are grown in pods which are large and rounded.

Many plants form climbing vines but some produce compact bushes, with beans liking heat and peas loving the cool. They benefit the soil by fixing nitrogen as they grow, benefitting companion plants and the ones to be planted next in the same position, we recommend following on with brassicas.

 

Includes the major cereals and minor grains such as corn, barley, oats rice and millet. Some varieties such as corn have been bred to bear larger fruits, but they are still technically grasses.

 

Asteraceae (Daisy family)

Lettuce, chicory and artichokes fall into this family and are characterised by the daisy like flowers. Commonly the leaves are eaten but in some cases such as Jerusalem Artichokes it is the roots, or Globe Artichoke it is the flowers.