Fennel is a plant from the umbrella family, we have already seen how to grow fennel in the garden, now we will dispel a myth: there is no male or female among these plants.
The vegetable that is harvested and consumed is the motte , formed by the leaves joining together just below ground level. This bulge can take a more or less rounded shape, so that we traditionally distinguish the “female” fennel which is the one with the flat, vertically elongated bulge and the “male” fennel which is the one with the large, well-developed bulge.
This division is purely a peasant convention in reality the plant has no sex and it is simply the variety that determines the round or elongated shape.
Male or female what to sow
From the producer’s point of view, it is better have fennel considered male, for the better Cut Yes quality , while female fennel is only good when cooked and yields less even in terms of weight. To determine the presumed sex of fennel, the seeds are selected to be of the bellied variety.
There are useful cultivation operations to develop the vegetable in the best way, such as tamping and weeding but if the fennel is of the “female” variety, it will not swell anyway, no matter how carefully you cultivate it.