Moringa

Moringa is a tropical plant native to India which we will be using in a lot of exciting ways. Nathan first discovered this plant through a website – treesforlife.org It has much more extensive info on the plant, including a downloadable powerpoint so check it out if you are curious, but we will give a crash course here using some of their info and hopefully they don’t sue us.

First of all, the health benefits are incredible:

Source: Treesforlife.org, Nutritive Value of Indian Foods, by C. Gopalan, et al.

Also, it grows best in the parts of the world that experience malnourishment the most:

source: Treesoflife.org

As of the writing of this page (August 3), our first few moringa sprouts are coming up in a few of our garden rows and we are excited to start experimenting with it, and we will be partnering with students from Lipscomb University’s Nutrition program to figure out more awesome ways to use this plant and incorporate it into different foods.

Here are a few of the ways in which we will be using Moringa:

- Food Supplementation (adding nutritional value to traditional meals such as rice and beans etc)
- Fertilizer (increases yield by 20-35%, produces more fruit, plants have longer lives, more resistant to pests)
- Livestock Fodder (increases weight gain, and milk production by 43-65%)

Again, if you want to know more about this awesome plant, head over to www.treesforlife.org and read more about it.