Write a letter to your friend in which tell him/ her what interesting things you’ve learnt from one of these texts (see Appendix 3 on p.109)

Strawberries are small and delicate looking but are as tough as old boots. The truth of this little sunshine capturing factory is that it produces flowers and fruit in the teeth of the harshest weather. With good management you can have fruit from the early summer right through to autumn, they respond to all sorts of soil conditions and there are so many hundreds of varieties that everyone should do well with at least one of them.

Strawberries get their name from the fact they were traditionally grown with straw under the leaves so that the fruit would not rest on the soil and become spoiled by the mud. The straw also makes for an excellent deterrent against slugsand snails. They're also grown in pots for the same reason, with the fruit dangling over the side or resting on pebbles. You can also use strawberry mats, which are a bit like plastic beer mats, only bigger. A strawberry mat is a brilliant way of controlling molluscs. Strawberries are best grown in a sunny position with good drainage. Being veryhardy plants they willeasily live through the winter with few problems, but new growth in the spring seems to be more susceptible to frost. They don't particularly like wet soil, so you should mix in a lot of grit to keep the water at bay.

(Chris Southall“Home Farmer”, May 2010)

“Local Blossoms”*

A graceful bouquet of flowers makes the perfect accompaniment to a meal of local foods, but it is worth considering where the beauty that graces our vases comes from and how they are grown. You have probably heard that the average supermarket food has traveled 1500 miles, but did you know that the average flowers you buy at the florist shop have traveled 2500 miles?

About three-fourths of the flowers sold in the United States are imported, the majority arriving from greenhouses in South American countries like Peru and Ecuador. After a stopover in Miami, most flowers continue their trip either by plane or refrigerated truck to a wholesaler and then on to a florist shop. Sounds like a lot of oil for roses to drink just to reach your sweetheart. As with food, chemicals are also a concern. Fungicide and insecticide usage tends to be high to ensure that no blemishes or bugs accompany the flowers to the United States, but this is often at the expense of workers' health and the environment.

(Simon Spencer “Farmer”, July 2010)

“Rhubarb”*

It was impressed upon me that rhubarb leaves are poisonous when a kindly, but misguided, neighbour threw all his off-cut leaves into my chicken pen. What a mess! What those leaves did to my birds' insides doesn't bear thinking about and it took weeks to get them right again. Like many plants the concentration of oxalic acid in rhubarb increases as the summer continues and by its height in August, the plant is downright poisonous. Never eat or take the leaves in any way - you will end up with the quickest 'runs' imaginable and have stomach cramps worse than- being kicked by a horse. To top it all, your liver will have had the equivalent of a few dozen pints of beer. But that's the leaves, not the stalks, although in the height of the summer it is best leaving the whole thing alone.

In the early summer though, when there is little else sweet in the garden, rhubarb is a taste of promise; of summer time and heady days. If you can get rhubarb and ice cream on a sunny Sunday afternoon in May you have a rare treat indeed.

(Janice Houghton - Wallace “Home Farmer”, April 2010)

II. Vocabulary Section

VOCABULARY STUDY

Reclamationмелиорация

Encompassv окружать, заключать (в себе)

Applicationупотребление, применение

soil scienceпочвоведение

earth scienceземлепользование

croprotationсевооборот

plant breedingразведение

soil fertilityплодородие

weedcontrolборьба с сорняками