Expert Advice On Edible Garden Treats (Part 1/3)

Garden of Refreshment
Quench your thirst with delicious beverages and desserts taken right off your little plot of green

By Wilson Wong | Photos by Koh Boon Wei | reprinted with permission from Home Concepts magazine
Thanks to Hortpark for the venue

BESIDES beautifying our surroundings and purifying the air that we breathe, the plants that we have at home can also provide us with food and medicine. Here’s a selection of four edible plants that are easy to grow in the garden for their rich source of phytonutrients and health-enhancing properties:

The Passion Fruit
Passion fruits are popular dessert fruits where the pulp is eaten fresh, together with the seeds, or blended to yield a refreshing beverage.

Passion fruits are rich in vitamins A and C, potassium and dietary fibre. The purple passion fruit, botanically known as Passiflora edulis, is the species that is commonly grown here.

The vine bears round to egg-shaped fruits which turn purple when ripe. It also produces very attractive, large, white flowers with purple centres.

The passion fruit vine, which needs to climb on an outdoor trellis, loves direct sunshine and soil that is moist, well-drained and fertile. Harvest the fruits when they turn purple and wrinkles have appeared on the rind. New plants can easily be propagated from stem-cuttings.

Apartment gardeners who wish to have them at home can also try growing a small vine in a large container under a sunny spot.
The Dragon Fruit
Dragon fruits are borne by cactus species that belong to the Hylocereus genus. Hylocereus undatus produces red-skinned fruits with white flesh while those of H. costaricensis have red-skins and red flesh. Hylocereus megalanthus is rarely encountered locally and has white flesh with a yellow skin.

In general, ripe dragon fruits are sweet and low in calories. It is said that the fruits of H. costaricensis are particularly rich in vitamin C and other antioxidants, as well as fibre, phosphorus and calcium.

Look out for the large, showy and fragrant flowers of the dragon fruit plant as they open for only one night.

The dragon fruit plant loves the sun. It is large and adopts a sprawling habit and must be given a strong support outdoors to grow on.

New plants are most easily propagated from stemcuttings and prefer to be grown using well-drained and fertile soil that is enriched with organic matter.

In general, ripe dragon fruits are sweet and low in calories

Click here to read about the Aloe Vera

Source: Expert Advice On Edible Garden Treats (Part 1/3)