Hello my dear people. I hope we are all having great times.
Today I am going to be exposing us to the benefits of the bitter leaf plant,how to properly grow it and what it can be used for. What I'm simply saying is that we are going to go into the deepest part of studying about the bitter leaf plant.
The bitter leaf plant is a very strong plant that can thrive in bad soil and harsh climatic conditions. The leaves of the plant have several uses.
First the medicinal purpose.
The leaves of bitter leaf plants can be squeezed to get the water out. The water is very powerful. I can calm stomach ache by cleansing the stomach. The wonderful thing here is that one can also eat the leaves if there is no strength to squeeze them.
The medicinal purpose of the bitter leaf plant is not only to humans. The leaves can be fed to goats or other grazing animals and it will still work the same way as in humans. Sometimes I noticed that our poultry birds peck on the leaves. Careful observations had led me to a conclusion that it was mostly the sick or weak birds that locate this bitter leaf plant themselves, cut out some leaves and swallow. This simply means that it is not only humans that knows how important this bitter leaf is to the body.
Although It is bitter as the name implies,one does not need to be scared away by the taste because the health benefits afterwards are worth it.
I learned that taking bitter leaves regularly or drinking the extracted juice helps make one prone to malaria. Taking bitter things in general helps one to be an enemy of mosquito and far away from malaria. When you take a lot of bitter things like this bitter leaf, your blood sugar goes low and the blood becomes bitter for the feeders,the mosquitoes. Therefore, whenever a mosquito perches on the skin and tastes the blood, it tastes bitter and the mosquito flies off. But this is not a hundred percent measure to avoiding malaria. One should still keep his or her environment clean.
The bitter leaf plant is a very big standing money. Where I live,one of our local soups is the bitterleaf soup. We call it "Ofe Onugbu". People explore this opportunity and make money by taking their time to squeeze out a little of the bitter taste of the leaves and sell them at the market. This simply means that bitter leaf plants could serve as food for us farmers and also for our animals. To be specific about the farm animal, goats find so much pleasure eating up a whole bitter leaf plant. Sometimes I would let the goats eat up any of the bitter leaf plants that are thriving as I have a lot of others that are fresh for use.
I remember reading one of @mattsanthonyit posts, where he talked about trimming, which means cutting off the upper shoot or lower leaves of a plant to help it grow better. And I said I would apply the technique and see my end product. I am here to testify that the end product is the best one can ever expect. My bitter leaf was only growing taller and taller without fulfilling its purpose,to have enough leaves. I didn't need a long stem, I needed large, plenty of greenish leaves. So I applied the trimming practice and I saw a great result. I noticed that when trimming,as a farmer you have to cut off the young shoots when they no longer need stem elongation.
I did that and it walked out perfectly for me. The good thing about the bitter leaf plant is that it can easily be propagated by stem. I can't tell you what I don't know here, though I see seed-like materials above the leaves. I don't know if the bitter leaf plant could be propagated by those things.
Having the bitter leaf plant at home could solve several problems for you as a farmer and your farm animals too. You can sell the leaves too. I remember when my parents used to sell a stand of our bitter leaf plant to people. This doesn't mean the person will uproot the plant,the person who paid for the plant has the right to pluck off every leaf in that plant to sell.
So I will advise my fellow farmers here to try acquiring at least one stand of the bitter leaf plant.
Thanks for visiting my post today. Have a good day and I hope you have learned a lot.