Procrastinating Gardener Plants Food with Healing Nutrients

Hello. I am Corinne. Welcome to MyLifePlantBased where I build a community supportive of my plant-based lifestyle that prevents, reverses and remedies cancer and other chronic diseases.

After I was diagnosed with cancer, I started a vegetable garden since it enabled me to eat food without pesticides. Last year, I did reasonably well because most of my plants were in the ground by the beginning of the summer - that’s the end of June in Canada.

This year, however, I cited a list of excuses not to plant early. It was a rainy spring. It was also cold for far too long even though I live in the southernmost part of the province of Ontario, which we ironically call Canada’s Banana Belt.

When the daylight hours are short, I am not energetic and tend to feel tired. So, those were other excuses. Sometimes my muscles felt stiff. By the time I was motivated to garden, I figured it was too late to plant seeds. So, I stopped at a garden center one afternoon. It so happened the garden center was closing that day. And they were giving away their remaining plants for FREE.

I was inclined to take all the plants, but I was limited by the size of my Toyota Matrix hatchback, which was half-full with my camping stuff. Nevertheless, I was able to cram a lot of plants in there. Filled the Matrix to the CEILING. I gave a few plants to a sister who I urged to take more. But her gardens were full and in bloom. She, as usual, was already ahead of the curve.

I offered plants to neighbours and friends, but they too already had full gardens.

So, I took home a lot of plants. A mixture of flowers was placed in the front yard. There was no great design plan for their presentation. They were free. I planted them.

A similar situation happened in the backyard where there are now way too many tomato plants.

“Why did you plant 12 tomato plants?” my housemate sister asked with irritation.

“They were FREE!” said I. Then quickly added, “I’m going to give vegetables to the food bank.”

My altruistic inclination was apparently the right response. She nodded approvingly and went to water the front garden.

I was left to repot 9 pepper plants, 2 zucchini plants and some other stuff I could not identify because their plant labels were missing.

Then I went into the back room. Two sweet potato tubers had been there for so long that they started to sprout roots. I’ll plant these, I thought. But I had no more soil and pots. A week past before I got around to buying more soil. During that time, I went to a Liquidation Centre where they sell goods returned to online companies. It was a $2 Day where there happened to be returned packages of grow bags. I could not pass up the opportunity to purchase 4-Pack 10-gallon Potato Grow Bags in a package for $2. I bought way too many. I planted sweet potatoes in five grow bags, and placed 7 other bags in the basement where hopefully I will find them if I remember to look for them when I need grow bags in

the future.

Since I planted my sweet potatoes at the end of July, I am not expecting their sweet potato tubers will be ready for picking until the beginning of October. In the meantime, I will satisfy myself with eating sweet potato leaves.

“Who eats sweet potato leaves?” That was my question last year when my YouTube feed suggested I watch Wendi Phan’s video entitled Harvesting and Cooking Sweet Potato Leaves. See link to video below.

I knew some of the benefits of eating sweet potato tubers. They are highly recommended by Dr. John McDougall as well as Chef AJ. The latter included several recipes with sweet potatoes in the 10th Anniversary edition of her recipe book, Unprocessed: Revitalize Your Health with Whole Foods.

Dr. Gregor says, “Sweet potatoes provide the most nutrients/per dollar.” See Gregor’s full discussion about sweet potatoes in the Nutrition.org video below. Although plant-based advocates love sweet potatoes, I have not heard them mention eating sweet potato leaves. So, I went down the research rabbit hole of that concept, and this is what I found.

HEALING NUTRIENTS IN SWEET POTATO PLANTS

Sweet Potato Leaves	Sweet Potato Tuber	Skin of Sweet Potato
	Antioxidants	Antioxidants/Anthocyanins
Fiber	Fiber	Fiber
Protein	Protein	Protein
Vitamin A	Vitamin A	Vitamin A
Vitamin B6	Vitamin B6
Vitamin C	Vitamin C	Vitamin C
		Vitamin E
Vitamin K
		Beta Carotene
Calcium
		Chlorogenic Acid
	Copper
Folate
Iron
Manganese	Manganese
Magnesium
	Niacin
	Potassium	Potassium
Riboflavin
Thiamine

Wendi Phan’s video - “Harvesting and Cooking Sweet Potato Leaves”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fs7m32vVLI

NutritionFacts.org - “Anti-Cancer Potential of Sweet Potato Proteins”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbAM_F9exM4