GROWING BRINJALS

For years I have had an interest in herbs which, I am sure, had rubbed off from my late mother.  She  knew something about roots and vines that were good for relieving aches and pains and 'wind'.  She would be off to the forest nearby to look for them especially when one of her children or daughters-in-law was about to deliver a child.  Now that she's gone, I wish that I had made more effort to learn from her about the specific plants she knew about.  Anyway, the good thing is that there are many sources available, whether local or foreign, about the uses of herbs.  Her house was also always surrounded by beautiful flowering flowers, and even at the age of over 70 years, she was still planting vegetables for her own consumption and even had extra for visitors!

So now in my retirement years, I find myself having more time to look closely into herbs, fruit and flowers as sources of food health and healing.  I think the list is endless, but it would be better for me to just stick to the ones that can be found locally.  I find the many books written by Professor Ong Hean Chooi of the Institute of Biological Science of the University of Malaya extremely informative. His health and healing series includes Fruit, Vegetables, Wild Plants and Spices & Condiments  among others. Every plant or fruit is researched scientifically and puts my mind at rest as to the fact that there is no guesswork involved.  For instance, the research on the brinjal plant  (of which my hubby has planted many) rather surprised me.   If you said it contained iron, calcium, vitamin B and C,  I would probably say 'yes of course', but who would have known that the brinjal contains 92% water (to me it's just spongy) 4% carbohydrate, 1.6% protein, 0.2 fat?  Not me anyway.  That's how  detailed the books are.  As an example, in the Vegetable book, the descriptiion of the brinjal goes like this:

Brinjal (Botanical name : Solanum Melongena L)

~ Why is it called Eggplant, again? ~

Can be eaten baked, barbecued, fried, boiled, steamed or curried.  

Fruit :  Eaten as an antidote for ingestion of poisonous mushrooms and used for the treatment of piles. 

Fresh or dried leaves : Boiled or made into tea to reduce high cholesterol.  May also work for the treatment of diabetes and bronchitis.

Dried roots, leaves or any part of the plant  :  To stop bleeding on any part of the body.

My husband's lush brinjal garden

We normally get our seeds from the local vendor and raise the next generation of plants from their offsprings.  It's so much easier of we prepare the place where the plants are to grow and then sow a few seeds directly.  If we have more than one in each bed, we remove them and plant them elsewhere.

They germinate within a week, and from then on, we just water them daily, depending on the weather. We do a lot of mulching, so fertilizers are sparingly used.  As for the insects that spoil the vegetables, we try to use a variety of methods to keep them away.  One is to use a 'lure', which is a concoction of sugar and honey,  which is boiled with water so that they become slightly thick.  We dip a piece of cotton wool into the mixture, and hang the piece of wool inside a drinking water bottle.  The bottle would have been pierced fist to make a small window for the insects to go in, and the bottle filled with enough water to cover the base (about 3cm).  This bottle is hung a short distance (not too close to the plants) away from  plants.  The insects are divertted from the plants and are lured to the sweet smell of the sugar and honey, enter the bottle and are trapped inside.

Apart from this, we make our own natural insecticide by using  tobacco water (tobacco soaked in water for a few hours) and spraying the vegetables and plants with them.  We are lucky enough to have locals who sell locally produced tobacco (meant for those who chew tobacco).

I have also tried soaking neem  leaves for a few weeks in a container until they break down and we have neem pesticide!



My first post ends here, more in the next. 

To your health! 

Vicky