Vitamin Information Center

A garden may mean different things to different people. To some, it’s a way to trim back the grocery budget. If laid out properly and maintained, a 50-by-50-foot garden could produce all the vegetables a family of five would need for a year. Even a 20-by-20-foot plot could produce enough food to greatly impact that weekly trudge to the grocery store.Some find it relaxing, some, a source of exercise. Light gardening will burn 170 to 240 calories an hour, while vigorous work such as spading and hoeing will burn 250 to 350.
Most have found how much better homegrown harvest tastes than the store bought stuff and how much better it is for you. Tomatoes that are picked green will ripen with 1/3 less vitamin C than vine ripened ones, and broccoli will lose 2/3 of its vitamin C six days after harvest. But even when stored for a period of time, good amounts of disease fighting beta-carotene are found in winter squash, carrots and sweet potatoes.

Why should it surprise us that fresh, just-picked veggies are the best for us? You wouldn’t need to take another store bought vitamin if all your vegetables came from your garden.

Going down the list we find that asparagus is high in vitamins A, C, B1, and Calcium. Because they root deep they become a good source of minerals too. Beets are high in A and C, while turnips are packed with B2 and E.

Besides the beta carotene found in carrots, significant amounts of B1, calcium, and phosphorus make the carrot one of the best snacks you could give your little munchkin. They would consider it a tasty treat if it came from your garden; the store stuff can taste pretty bad sometimes, thus leaving a bad taste in their mouth for veggies.

Parsnips, when harvested in the winter under 12 inches of leaves, will give you a whole new appreciation for this B6, C and potassium packed, cream-colored, carrot-looking thing. Other vegetables whose flavor sweetens with each passing frost include broccoli, which has more body-ready calcium than a glass of milk could ever hope for. Brussels sprouts are just plain stuffed with everything. And just one serving of Cauliflower will give you all the vitamin C your body will need for that day. Cabbage goes beyond that, adding good amounts of vitamins B1, B2, A and calcium as well.

Onion and leeks rate high in vitamins A, C and E, with corn adding vitamins A, B and some minerals, though not in very big amounts. My wife says there is not much nutrition in sweet corn; and I guess after it’s been smothered in butter and sprinkled with salt, any good has probably been canceled out. But I tell her, “It’s got to be better than a Twinkie.”

There are many more, including spinach. We around 50 years old know what gigantic muscles can be had by downing a can of this stuff, and these are necessary when protecting our Olive Oyls from the Blutos in our lives (I still don’t know what he saw in her, what a bean pole).

If gardening is your thing, whatever your reason, be it saving money or good health, your tastes buds and, more importantly, your children’s buds will say, “I didn’t know veggies could taste this good.”

If you have any questions about your landscaping, lawn, or garden, enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope and write to Niemeyer Landscaping, 3368 Perry St., Hudsonville, 49426, or e-mail NiemeyerLandscaping@Juno.com.

There are people who will tell you that asparagus is so good it’s a shame to call it a vegetable.

Such are the powers of the green stalk just now coming into its prime growing and eating season. Long a staple on many tables on Easter Sunday, the good news is that asparagus is as good for the body as it is for the soul.

Shannon Justice is a nutritionist with St. John’s Regional Medical Center and an affirmed asparagus lover. Justice, who lives on a farm where asparagus grows wild, said she has already started looking for signs of the plant.

The health value with asparagus, Justice said, is that it has a high vitamin C content. According to Justice, a 3-ounce serving (equal to about eight stalks) provides as much vitamin C as an orange. That 3-ounce serving equals 55 percent of the recommended daily allowance.

Like all vegetables, there are good and not-so-good ways to prepare asparagus that take advantage of its health benefits. Justice said you want to avoid boiling asparagus for an extended amount of time.

“If you boil it you can lose 50 percent of its vitamin C content,” she said.

If you’re in a hurry, Justice suggests wrapping the asparagus in a wet paper towel and putting it into the microwave to give it a quick steam. You can also blanch it quickly in hot water or bake or grill it. The main thing you want to avoid is having asparagus sit in water for any extended period of time, she said.

Gayl Navarro, owner of Ozark Nursery, 5361 N. Main St., said it’s possible for patient asparagus lovers to set themselves up with a almost unlimited supply of fresh asparagus. As it turns out, the plant — once given a few years to truly take root — is a prodigious grower and will continue to sprout pretty much year after year and in greater and greater numbers.

“Once you plant them, it takes a couple of years before you can harvest them. The first year you don’t harvest at all and then in the second year you can harvest about half,” Navarro said.

According to plant guides, it’s not until the fourth year that you will be able to fully harvest your asparagus crop. But after that fourth year, she said, you will have an ample supply of fresh asparagus. And since asparagus is a perennial, you shouldn’t ever have to replant it.

“You plant it once and it just goes and goes,” she said.

Navarro said she sells asparagus roots at her nursery. Currently asparagus roots are selling for about $1.35 a root. One root, she said, will produce several asparagus spears. The suggested planting dates for asparagus runs from approximately March 14 through April 5. Harvesting dates run from early to mid-April and runs into late May.

The following asparagus recipes are among those available at www.whatscookingamerica.net.