Vitamin Spoon

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

Realizing that not all people will want to live in warm regions, the Almighty did not ignore the lands covered with snow for most of the year. He created a low-growing, modest plant for people, turning its leaves into a real storehouse of minerals and vitamin C. Having planted a spoon in a summer cottage, you can even have fresh leaves for a vitamin salad even in winter, you just have to penetrate through the thickness of white snow to spoon-shaped juicy leaves

Cabbage for northerners

In a short summer, there is little chance of growing white cabbage, which, in terms of the content of minerals and vitamins, will overshadow all thermophilic citrus fruits that lose their vitamins from a long journey. But the northerners do not despair and use a relative of cabbage, an inconspicuous plant from the Cabbage family, the leaves of which are in the form of spoons, as if inviting you to have a tasty and healthy meal.

Since the Middle Ages, Scandinavian seafarers have escaped from scurvy by preparing a couple of barrels of salted spoonfuls of spoonfuls, rich in vitamin C. Miniature graceful leaves on long stalks are still in demand for salads today, giving them a spicy pungent taste, reminiscent of horseradish or radish well-known to Russians.

Those who like to flavor cottage cheese not with sugar and sour cream, but with spicy seasonings will like the spicy and salty leaves of the Spoon. All kinds of sauces for meat and fish dishes in winter can be enriched with vitamins by extracting fresh spoon leaves from under the snow drifts.

Growing a spoon in a summer cottage

If you like this unpretentious, frost-resistant plant that successfully endures the hardships of winter, then now (until the end of September) is the best time for sowing seeds in the ground. Although you can sow seeds in early spring.

The seedlings that appear after a couple of weeks are allowed to grow a little and get stronger, and then they are transplanted to a bed with sandy moist soil, leaving 25 cm between individual specimens.

The spoon can grow in a well-lit place, but she prefers partial shade or shade.

This plant is biennial, forming in the first year of its life a rosette of long-petiolized basal leaves, for the peculiar shape of which it was named "Spoon" or "spoon grass". In the second year of life, leafy peduncles appear, the sessile leaves of which are oval or oblong in shape. The peduncles are crowned with clusters of inflorescences of flowers with white or purple petals in the amount of four pieces per flower. Triangular honey glands are located on both sides of the short stamens, attracting sweet-tooth insects for pollination.

The growing cycle ends with small seeds hiding in pods of various shapes. Five to seven millimeter pods can take the shape of a pear, ellipsoid, or ball, slightly compressed from the sides.

Healing abilities

The high content of vitamin C in the fresh herb of the plant has been appreciated since ancient times by northern peoples who use the spoon as a prophylactic antiscorbutic agent. For these purposes, not only fresh leaves are used, but also an aqueous herb infusion.

Together with honey, the herb acts on the human body as a diuretic.

Inflammatory processes that occur in the oral cavity, in the throat (inflammation of the tonsils), helps to relieve rinsing with an infusion of the herb of the Spoon.

An aqueous infusion or tincture of herbs on alcohol is used by traditional medicine for gynecological problems, including impotence.

For skin diseases accompanied by itching, purulent wounds, lotions are used from chopped fresh grass, or from alcohol tincture.

Summary

Having planted an unpretentious frost-resistant spoon on a summer cottage garden, you get a year-round fresh piquant seasoning for dishes and a home healer at the same time.