Still harvesting our trees weekly but weather is beginning to change. We have our vegetarian capsules on sale for $18.95 in our secure online store at www.qi-journal.com.
A diagram/photo of short Moringa stem with labels for the individual parts. Photo is from underside to show the ribs and veins clearly.
We know that Moringa is drought resistant and we hear warnings about overwatering them. Overwatering usually happens when you plant in low areas with insufficient drainage or in areas with clay soils. I've noticed that when the Moringa plants are young, they like to have a consistent level of moisture. Once established, they tolerate dry spells much better.
An old farmer's trick (and I'm an old farmer), to test your soil is to dig a small hole about a foot deep near your Moringa root zone and grab a handful of soil from the bottom. Squeeze it hard. If the soil sticks together it is moist enough. If the soil crumbles or remains loose in your hand, the soil could use more water. If water drips out when you are squeezing it, it is too wet.
Liebig's "Law of the Minimum" is most often used in agriculture. It states that plants can only grow as much as the limiting factor will permit. Every factor must be balanced with one another to foster maximum growth. If a resource is limited, growth will be limited by that deficit. Of course this can be applied to growing Moringa trees.
Liebig's Barrel
But it can also be explain why Moringa is such an amazing plant for one's health. Like a plant, a human's health is affected by the nutrition one consumes. If one nutritional element necessary for health is missing or depleted from a diet, optimum health is limited by that deficit. I consider Moringa to be nature's multivitamin that can supplement even the healthiest diet because it contains so many nutrients. No one food can supply every thing a person needs, but Moringa comes close.
In human nutrition, the law of the minimum was used by William Cumming Rose to determine the essential amino acids. In 1931 he published his study "Feeding experiments with mixtures of highly refined amino acids". Knowledge of the essential amino acids has enabled vegetarians to enhance their protein nutrition by protein combining from various vegetable sources. One practitioner was Nevin S. Scrimshaw fighting protein deficiency in India and Guatemala. Francis Moore Lappe published Diet for a Small Planet in 1971 which popularized protein combining using grains, legumes, and dairy products.
Liebig's law is from 1840s and is something like the saying "a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link". Making all the other links stronger doesn't affect it's overall strength. But strengthening the weakest link can make a huge difference. Moringa's vast nutritional profile can often supplement a diet and make huge differences in one's health by strengenthing this "weakest link".
Short video of wife feeding our Koi with cooked rice and moringa powder mixed together. They love it as you can see. The mixture was a bit wet today, but the koi didn't mind cleaning up her hands afterwards. :)
A short video on how we remove the small stems and leaf veins before we grind dried leaves into powder.
A brief video on how we grind our dried leaves into powder.