Capers

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Capers (lat. Capparis) - a vegetable crop belonging to the Capers family. True, sometimes they try to attribute this culture to the Cabbage family. Southern Europe and North Africa are considered the birthplace of this extraordinary plant.

Description

Capers are rather thorny creeping shrubs with a height of one to two meters.

Unblown flower buds and capers are eaten. Most often they are canned or marinated in salt and vinegar. Capers have a spicy and rather spicy taste, as well as slightly mustard and slightly tart. And their strong aroma is due to the presence of mustard oil in them, obtained by grinding juicy stems. Most often, capers are used as a side dish or seasoning.

It is noteworthy that ripe fruits from caper bushes can be eaten raw. Outwardly, they are pod-shaped berries endowed with reddish pulp, vaguely resembling miniature striped cucumbers. But unblown buds are not suitable for consumption raw.

The larger the caper buds are, the tastier, more expensive and more convenient to use they will be.

Compound

Capers are a real storehouse of minerals and vitamins: they contain fiber, fats, proteins, vitamins (A, B, C, D, E, K), as well as calcium, phosphorus and iron.

Beneficial features

Capers are not devoid of useful properties. The bark of this plant helps to get rid of rheumatism (in addition, it is useful to chew it in case of toothache), and a decoction from its roots will become an indispensable assistant for liver diseases (in particular, hepatitis) and spleen.

If you chew on the seeds of the capers, the headache will go away pretty quickly. And the fancy fruits, rich in iodine, are widely used to treat goiter (for this, the juice of freshly picked fruits is diluted with water and consumed several times a day).

Decoctions and infusions of young leaves and sprigs of capers will ease the condition of diabetes mellitus, and the juice of the plant is useful for treating non-healing wounds.

Rutin in the composition of capers allows them to be consumed even with increased pressure, and the essential oil extracted from the seeds of the plant is used as a massage oil.

And capers also help protect the body from cancer. They are especially useful for women.

Growing and caring

To grow this crop, you should choose open sunny areas, characterized by a complete absence of groundwater.

Capers have no special requirements for soil fertility - they grow equally well on heavy soils, and even in crevices of walls. And the incredibly strong rhizomes of the plant are able to withstand almost any frost. In addition, capers do not need constant transplants - they can easily grow in the same place even for fifteen years.

Capers can be propagated by seeds, layering or shrub particles. Seeds begin to be sown in March or early April. And in order for capers to grow better, it is recommended to plant them on sandy lands (deepening by about 30 centimeters) or in greenhouses. In this case, it is important to try to ensure that the row spacing is about half a meter or even a meter.

The most important thing when growing capers is to get seedlings, since even with very good care, these plants sprout extremely poorly and take root rather poorly. So spectacular flowering shrubs can be seen on the site only after a couple of years.

As for leaving, capers are very unpretentious in leaving - watering and weeding is enough for them. True, occasionally it is possible to supplement care measures and loosening the soil. And, of course, you need to systematically get rid of weeds.