Pages

Friday, December 2, 2011

How to build a garden on a roof made of galvanized iron


The Garden I built on our Galvanized Roof 
My special bonding with plants started when I was in grade 6. The unpaved roads of my hometown were lined with evergreens laced with colorful flowers. On my way home, I would get a cutting of each variety per day. Planting those cuttings in  tin milk cans filled with soil readily lined on top of 4 old logs, formed into a square, was such a solemn ritual for me. My days were filled with expectations, eagerly looking forward to my rendezvous with my cuttings as they sprout into robust plantlets. Witnessing flower buds bloom into full glory amazed me no end: such phenomena of life made my supposed to be growing up pains pass unnoticed.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Propagating Gynura Procumbens


For the first Gynura Procumbens I bought from Mahogany Market in Tagaytay we shelled out 100 pesos. When Dannie came back he was able to buy 8 seedlings for 80 pesos each. Several weeks later when I told the seller that Gynura which they called ashitaba could be procured at 35 pesos in Cavite, we went home with 20 seedlings at 40 pesos each. We shared 7 seedlings to friends and relatives thus leaving us with 22 seedlings. With my husband and my mother taking 3 leaves a day, these seedlings would not last long.

How Gynura Procumbens helped regulate my husband's persistently high blood sugar



Various studies on methanol extracts of  the leaves of Gynura Procumbens demonstrated its anti-hyperglycemic, anti-hyperlipidemic, anti-inflammatory, anti-ulceronegenic properties. Containing abundant proteins, it also exhibited free radical scavenging and iron chelating properties thus pointing to its high nutritional value and anti-oxidant effect. Based on animal experiments, no attributable toxicity had been attributed to it. Relative to these positive results of the said studies, I am sharing my personal account on Gynura Procumbens.