Greetings!

Welcome to another episode of Bounties of The Land. In this episode I focus on cilantro because it is one of our winter crops here in The Garden of Eden and because @gardenofeden has been doing a really important and extensive series on mercury poising and also how to detox and heal from this common yet extremely dangerous problem. 

Cilantro is known as both a culinary and medicinal herb. Used to flavor many dishes world wide, especially in the Mediterranean, and Mexican food, it also boast detoxing abilities for heavy metals like mercury.

Commonly known as "leaf coriander", you can use both the leaf and seed of this plant for eating or health benefits.

A few specific health benefits:

Both Its leaves and seeds contain many essential volatile oils such as borneol, linalool, cineole, cymene, terpineol, di-pentene, phellandrene, pinene, and terpinolene.

Cilantro has no cholesterol, but all the vitamins, antioxidants and minerals housed in the deep green leaves carry the ability to help reduce the "bad cholesterol".

Most people don't know that cilantro is a rich source of both Vitamin A and Vitamin K. It contains 6,748 IU of vitamin-A per 100 g, about 225% of recommended daily intake. And about 258% of the vitamin K DRL. In addition to all these others:

This backyard herb provides (% of RDA/100g):
15% of folates, 
11% of vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine), 
45% of vitamin C, 
225% of vitamin A, 
258% of vitamin K, 
22% of iron and 
18% of manganese. 

One of the best parts about this humble plant is its ability to pull heavy metals stored deep in the tissue and organs of the body for detoxification of this toxic waste.

You can find the recap post on mercury here and if you check @gardenofeden you can find the two most recent posts on the actual detox protocols. If you are not very well educated on these matters then it is a MUST read. Your and peoples health you care about are on the line and it is far more common than people know. 

So besides being very nutritious and well renowned for detox cilantro is also a culinary delight! It has many uses for both health and culinary purposes and is quite easy to grow. 

Here is the 5 minute video I recorded today on harvesting this cilantro from our beyond organic garden. Always remember that when you are harvesting greens or herbs to pick the stems at the bottom but to not pull up the roots. The plant will continue to put up more and more shoots and the picking actually stimulates new growth. If you pull the roots then the plant will not produce any more cilantro and you will have to plant it again.