Today I planted a large ‘cutting’ of a moringa tree. In Hawaii we call it kalamungay or marunggay and it’s an essential tree for Filipino cuisine. Just Google ‘marunggay recipes’ and you’ll find hundreds of results. In the Philippines the tree is considered their national flag.
The whole tree is edible. The young pods and seeds are eaten like vegetables. The roots taste like horse radish. The leaves can be eaten raw but mostly used for cooking and contains 7 times more vitamin C than oranges, 10 times more vitamin A than carrots, 17 times more calcium than milk, 9 times more protein than yoghurt, 15 times more potassium than bananas and 25 times more iron than spinach. And that’s just part of the health benefits.
We like to dehydrate the leaves and blend it into a powder to use as a topping for anything. Moringa powder is definitely gaining popularity and is being marketed as a super food.
You just need to get a thick old branch and just stick it in the ground and wait for it to grow.
Originally posted on 2021-05-12, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.