By Christopher Nyerges
[Nyerges is the author of “Guide to Wild Foods,” “Urban Survival Guide,” Self-Sufficient Home” and other books. He leads regular wild plant and survival skills walks. He can be reached at School of Self-reliance, Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com]
Vitamins. Everyone needs them. We should take some every day. And they come in bottles, right?
Well, yes and no.
The original sources of many common vitamins and minerals are plants, and several of these are quite easy to cultivate in our own yards. That means we are getting our vitamins and minerals fresh, pure, and in a balanced form. Grow your own vitamins in your yard, and eat them in your food. This is not a particularly unusual idea. For millennia, people obtained their needed nutrition from the food they ate. In fact, the only reason we’ve all become so dependent on bottled vitamins is that our normal supermarket foods have steadily become poorer sources of our needed vitamins and minerals. 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.
Roses are great to grow in any garden because they provide beauty and fragrance. Also, if you let the fruits mature (referred to as the “hips”), you’ll have a rich source of vitamin C. The only known source of vitamin C that is richer is the acerola. Rosehips contain about 7,000 mg. of vitamin C per pound, a remarkable amount. By contrast, a pound of oranges (depending on the type of oranges) contains anywhere between 100 to 250 mg. of vitamin C.
To use rose hips, you snip off the orange-red mature fruit. Once you cut it in half and remove the fibrous seeds, you could just eat it raw. However, most people find it more enjoyable to simmer it into tea, or to make it into jams, jellies, or blended nutritional drinks.
In your garden, seriously consider raising carrots. They require loamy soil, but otherwise they are somewhat easy to raise. A pound of carrots (depending how they are analyzed) contains anywhere from 29,000 to 40,000 I.U. of vitamin A. Hey, even on the low end, that’s a lot! Carrots also provide at least 1,000 mg. of potassium per pound, and they contain significant amounts of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium.
Another good food group for your garden is the tomato and pepper group. A pound of whole tomatoes, for example, contains large amounts of potassium (1,107 mg.) and vitamin A (4,080 I.U.). That’s a lot! Tomatoes also are good sources of vitamin C, phosphorus, calcium, and lycopene (which may prevent certain cancers). Fortunately, tomatoes are easy to grow, and we’re all accustomed to using them in everything from juice to salad, soups, pasta sauce, and pizza. If you grow more tomatoes than you can use, dry or can them for later.
Garden lettuce, unfortunately, is not a good source of vitamins and minerals. Loose-leaf varieties test higher in vitamin A, but generally, store-bought, farm-grown lettuce is a poor source of nutrients. Consider, instead, the humble lamb’s quarter. It will probably grow in your garden even if you don’t plant it. Seeds can be purchased from some seed catalogs, but this is usually not necessary. Used raw in salad, 100 grams of lamb’s 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. These figures are slightly lower when you cook the lamb’s quarter as a spinach-replacement, or in soups, egg dishes, or vegetable dishes.
Since we’re talking about the garden “volunteers,” don’t overlook the dandelions, normally scorned and poisoned out of existence in most gardens, they are probably better for you than most of what you’re intentionally growing in the garden. 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. Dandelion greens are also the richest source of beta-carotene, with 8.4 mg. per cup. By contrast, carrots — considered an excellent source of beta-carotene — contain 6.6 mg. per cup. Only young dandelion greens are good in salads, and the older, bitter leaves can be cooked like spinach or added to mixed-vegetable dishes.
Citrus trees can be called “vitamin trees,” 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.
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. 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. That makes carob one of the very richest non-meat calcium sources. Even when that same volume is compared to milk — generally considered a good calcium source — carob is nearly three times richer in calcium. Carob is also a good source of B vitamins. 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’s bread). You can simply eat the pods and spit out the seeds. 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.
These are just a few examples of how we can obtain many of our needed vitamins from plants growing all around us. One good source for nutritional information is Composition of Foods, published by the United States Department of Agriculture.
