Oluyinka Alawode is founder and CEO Farm Café, Nigeria. She studied agriculture at the University of Ilorin and she is an expert in home gardening (urban farming). Yinka runs https://farmcafeng.blogspot.com.
In continuation of our series on food security/urban farming, we bring her in today to serve you with sweet stuffs on backyard farming:
A KIDNEY HEALTH SOLUTION PLANT IN MY MINI-GARDEN
I don’t know whether I should shout Eureka! yet but I think it’s very close to it.
There’s this plant I noticed in my mini-garden. It has sprouted in my urban cemented, mostly sack-cultivated mini-garden. Weed! I initially thought but as I am also a scientist, I was curious to first find out about it
So I searched and searched online, discovered its name: Phyllanthus niruri- stone-breaker plant that helps solve some if not all liver/kidney health problems.
Lo and behold, going through Social media posts, a fellow herbalist on IG had put it up for people to discuss on what they knew about it.
Quite a number of people had used it for liver/kidney health issue. You may say, ‘I don’t have liver or kidney problems so I am not interested.’
Eeehhh! You must be interested o. Why? Do you eat food grown or processed or preserved by others? Are some if not all the food and drinks you take bought in the market? Do you take drugs even medicinal drugs? Let’s not mention about alcohol and substance abuse or your inhaling some harmful substances in the atmosphere through no fault of yours.
If you are in any of these categories, there will certainly be inorganic substances that get into your body system.
Inorganic substances in the human body are like plastics that are not bio-degradable such that they pollute the seas, rivers and other water bodies and negatively affect aquatic life,
these inorganic substances that get into our human bodies also do not fully degrade or digest. So they have difficulty passing through the liver. If they eventually do, they harm the liver and would also likely harm the kidneys or other organs such as the ones for defecation.
If such harm keep happening over time, the person may have difficulties urinating or passing faeces and need serious medical intervention. If these inorganic substances stay for so long in the body due to not passing through the liver, they build up over time and may become cancerous.
DRUM- GROWING ALMOND TREE
…seeds brought into my garden by flying birds grow faster, vigorously
On one morning recently, while working in the garden I noticed that my almond tree growing in a drum appears set for fruiting.
I am not so sure but I just hopped onto the store roof to check. The sun was beating hard on my face but I was still able to take selfies while on the rooftop😀 – that’s part of the fun-catching I recommend people to have while doing any tasking work particularly farming.
So will this Almond tree initially planted in a sack by a bird start fruiting in its third year? It is now growing in a drum with other plants also growing in the drum yet the almond tree growth has been so vigorous.
Recently I discovered that birds bring very potent seeds. If you create a friendly environment for them to perch in, the birds will likely bring you seeds from plants in the forests that are still very vigorous because humans have not altered them.
If you are fortunate to get such seeds to plant, those plants would survive under almost any condition. I have cut the leaves of this almond tree so many times to boil as tea, to use in wrapping food and to manure other plants in the garden yet it continues to grow so vigorously.
Likewise the fig tree also growing in a sack in the mini-garden – the seed or planting part was sown by a bird.
Also the seed of the Neem (Dongoyaro) tree was also brought by a bird. I have attempted about four times to get rid of that Neem tree because it is planted directly in the ground and pose threat to built structure.
But even when cut to the base and engine oil applied to kill its roots, once seasonal rains start, the Neem tree would sprout again and start growing vigorously. I am always decapitating it by cutting off it’s vital parts aggressively so it wouldn’t grow too big but the tree has stubbornly stayed alive and it’s vigour undiminished.
For some plants though, got or bought in human circles, the story is not same. When the seeds are planted…
EXPLORING HEALTHY CHICKEN PRODUCTION IN MINI-GARDEN
Do you know our indigenous – local chickens can grow very big, fleshy and luscious?
I have seen this quite a number of times – these chickens either scavenge for food or get fed with leftovers from the keeper’s household or both.
When they scavenge for food, among other things they eat worms, insects, vegetation and whatever they can pick up.
If kept, they can be fed with many plant-based foods you have to spare such as rice, maize, yam, sweet potato, Cocoyam etc.
For animal-based foods – give them cooked such as boiling the intestines of fish and other animal products even chicken intestines and add organic grown turmeric or ginger to aid digestion
Also give them out of the organic-grown vegetables you buy or grow especially greens.
I will be adopting the second option- feeding them and sharing my findings, If the chickens are kept in a cage which is more likely option for urban dwellers with limited space,, ensure there’s space in the cage for them to take some steps.
There’s still a whole lot of discovery to be made – no matter how much you have read or heard about any endeavour especially different aspects of farming, until you have actually practised it, you cannot get the experience needed to go into very large scale production.
I have chosen local chickens because I want to avoid the use of antibiotics and other drugs for survival and growth boosting
usually given to the breeds reared by modern commercial poultry farmers .
I hope to prove what I said at the beginning that local chickens can also grow big, fleshy and luscious enough to grace the plates of food at home or at social functions.
Such chickens would of course be much healthier. Their eggs also would be free of toxic elements that may be introduced through drugs which can affect the health of human consumers.
One of the goals of Farm Cafe Information Service is to ensure people eat what will nourish their bodies, not damage it.
GROWING PLANTS – FOOD THAT HEAL THE BODY
While all healthy foods have healing effects on the body, certain foods are super-healthy.
These super foods have curative effects on even a sick body and help the healthy body maintain good health.
You don’t even need much quantity at each meal or in drinks. I am focusing today on two spices- ginger and turmeric. Why is it important to grow these even in any little space you have if you can?
Apart from cutting the costs on buying them, you can also control the quality i.e. ensure they are truly healthy.
You may already know that these spices especially ginger is so very highly commercialised because of its high demand. That is a major reason chemicals such as pesticides are used in growing and preserving them. That introduces health hazards into what is supposed to heal the body. In fact these spices are not just healing foods, in addition they are widely used in body and hair care products and as medicine.
I’ve been doing a lot of studying on the liver and other body organs and functions – while the liver helps to remove toxins from the body, continuous high intake of toxins through food, drugs, drinks especially alcohol, perfumes, sprays etc can be damaging to the liver.
Since food and normal drinks are what people always take, you can understand how wrong it is for any food and regular drinks to have toxins – it is feeding people slow poisons and this is unnecessary stress on the liver, kidneys and other body organs. These predispose even people who are just innocently eating what they consider good food to diseases like cancer. Food that messes with the gut can also predispose people to depression or poor mental health.
Except everyone can produce their own food, we continue to be at the mercy of most commercial food growers and food handlers who prioritize profit over consumers’ health and wellbeing.
But there are still some measures we can take to strengthen the liver and other body organs by regularly taking healing super foods like ginger and turmeric. They are spicy and give food and drinks.