{"id":278,"date":"2024-10-08T19:43:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T19:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=278"},"modified":"2024-10-08T19:43:08","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T19:43:08","slug":"growing-your-own-vitamins-epictactical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=278","title":{"rendered":"GROWING YOUR OWN VITAMINS \u2013 EpicTactical"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Christopher Nyerges<\/p>\n

[Nyerges is the author of \u201cGuide to Wild Foods,\u201d \u201cUrban Survival Guide,\u201d Self-Sufficient Home\u201d and other books. He leads regular wild plant and survival skills walks.\u00a0 He can be reached at School of Self-reliance, Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Vitamins.\u00a0 Everyone needs them.\u00a0 We should take some every day.\u00a0 And they come in bottles, right?<\/p>\n

Well, yes and no.<\/p>\n

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The original sources of many common vitamins and minerals are plants, and several of these are quite easy to cultivate in our own yards.\u00a0 That means we are getting our vitamins and minerals fresh, pure, and in a balanced form.\u00a0 Grow your own vitamins in your yard, and eat them in your food.\u00a0 This is not a particularly unusual idea.\u00a0 For millennia, people obtained their needed nutrition from the food they ate.\u00a0 In fact, the only reason we\u2019ve all become so dependent on bottled vitamins is that our normal supermarket foods have steadily become poorer sources of our needed vitamins and minerals.\u00a0 The reasons for this are complex, but can be summarized by the fact that too many commercial food producers focus more on profit when it comes to our food, and less on the nutritional aspects.<\/p>\n

Roses are great to grow in any garden because they provide beauty and fragrance.\u00a0 Also, if you let the fruits mature (referred to as the \u201chips\u201d), you\u2019ll have a rich source of vitamin C. The only known source of vitamin C that is richer is the acerola.\u00a0\u00a0 Rosehips contain about 7,000 mg. of vitamin C per pound, a remarkable amount.\u00a0 By contrast, a pound of oranges (depending on the type of oranges) contains anywhere between 100 to 250 mg. of vitamin C.<\/p>\n

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To use rose hips, you snip off the orange-red mature fruit.\u00a0 Once you cut it in half and remove the fibrous seeds, you could just eat it raw.\u00a0 However, most people find it more enjoyable to simmer it into tea, or to make it into jams, jellies, or blended nutritional drinks.<\/p>\n

In your garden, seriously consider raising carrots.\u00a0 They require loamy soil, but otherwise they are somewhat easy to raise.\u00a0 A pound of carrots (depending how they are analyzed) contains anywhere from 29,000 to 40,000 I.U. of vitamin A.\u00a0 Hey, even on the low end, that\u2019s a lot!\u00a0 Carrots also provide at least 1,000 mg. of potassium per pound, and they contain significant amounts of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Another good food group for your garden is the tomato and pepper group.\u00a0 A pound of whole tomatoes, for example, contains large amounts of potassium (1,107 mg.) and vitamin A (4,080 I.U.).\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot!\u00a0 Tomatoes also are good sources of vitamin C, phosphorus, calcium, and lycopene (which may prevent certain cancers).\u00a0 Fortunately, tomatoes are easy to grow, and we\u2019re all accustomed to using them in everything from juice to salad, soups, pasta sauce, and pizza.\u00a0 If you grow more tomatoes than you can use, dry or can them for later.<\/p>\n

Garden lettuce, unfortunately, is not a good source of vitamins and minerals.\u00a0 Loose-leaf varieties test higher in vitamin A, but generally, store-bought, farm-grown lettuce is a poor source of nutrients.\u00a0 Consider, instead, the humble lamb\u2019s quarter.\u00a0 It will probably grow in your garden even if you don\u2019t plant it.\u00a0 Seeds can be purchased from some seed catalogs, but this is usually not necessary.\u00a0 Used raw in salad, 100 grams of\u00a0 lamb\u2019s quarter (about a cup) contains about 80 mg. of vitamin C, 11,600 I.U. of vitamin A, 72 mg. of phosphorus, 309 mg. of calcium, small amounts of thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and iron.\u00a0 These figures are slightly lower when you cook the lamb\u2019s quarter as a spinach-replacement, or in soups, egg dishes, or vegetable dishes.<\/p>\n

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Since we\u2019re talking about the garden \u201cvolunteers,\u201d don\u2019t overlook the dandelions, normally scorned and poisoned out of existence in most gardens, they are probably better for you than most of what you\u2019re intentionally growing in the garden.\u00a0 An analysis of 100 grams of dandelion greens by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows 14,000 I.U. of vitamin A, 35 mg. of vitamin C, 397 mg. of potassium, 66 mg. of phosphorus, 187 mg. of calcium, and 36 mg. of magnesium.\u00a0 Dandelion greens are also the richest source of beta-carotene, with 8.4 mg. per cup.\u00a0 By contrast, carrots \u2014 considered an excellent source of beta-carotene \u2014 contain 6.6 mg. per cup.\u00a0 Only young dandelion greens are good in salads, and the older, bitter leaves can be cooked like spinach or added to mixed-vegetable dishes.<\/p>\n

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Citrus trees can be called \u201cvitamin trees,\u201d since the fruits are not only a source of vitamin C, but a good source of most other vitamins and minerals, as well as the albuminoids and bioflavinoids.<\/p>\n

If you have the space to grow a carob tree, or if one grows near you, be sure to take advantage of the long, brown leathery pods.\u00a0 One hundred grams of the edible portion of the carob pod (which is about a cup of the entire pod, minus the seeds) contains 352 mg. of calcium.\u00a0 That makes carob one of the very richest non-meat calcium sources. Even when that same volume is compared to milk \u2014 generally considered a good calcium source \u2014 carob is nearly three times richer in calcium.\u00a0 Carob is also a good source of B vitamins.\u00a0 Though not a complete protein, it is said that this is the food that sustained John the Baptist in the desert for 40 days (hence the name, Saint John\u2019s bread).\u00a0 You can simply eat the pods and spit out the seeds.\u00a0 Also, you can crack the pods, remove the seeds, and grind the pods into a flour which you add to bread and pasty products, or blend into liquids like rice or soy milk.<\/p>\n

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These are just a few examples of how we can obtain many of our needed vitamins from plants growing all around us.\u00a0 One good source for nutritional information is Composition of Foods<\/u>, published by the United States Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Christopher Nyerges [Nyerges is the author of \u201cGuide to Wild Foods,\u201d \u201cUrban Survival Guide,\u201d Self-Sufficient Home\u201d and other books. He leads regular wild plant and survival skills walks.\u00a0 He can be reached at School of Self-reliance, Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com] Vitamins.\u00a0 Everyone needs them.\u00a0 We should take some every day.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}