What do these 15 vegetables and herbs all have in mutual ?
They ’re the 15 highest - ranking plant life on a inclination of 41 powerhouse yield and vegetables ( also known as PFVs ) , base on astudyby the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
While the word “ powerhouse ” might make you call up it ’s nothing more than just another trendy health terminal figure ( kind of like “ superfood ” ) , it actuallydoeshave scientific merit . ball of fire foods are a legitimate classification for the super nutrient - obtuse fruit and vegetables that greatly reduce the risk of continuing diseases ( such as malignant neoplastic disease , diabetes , and heart disease ) . The PFVs that made this list have a gamy level of all-important nutrient proportional to the amount of calories they render .
But there ’s another vulgar yarn that gardeners , in particular , will find interesting … The top 15 on that list areall cold - tolerant vegetables . You might even be growing some of them right now , and in most hardiness zones , you may continue to grow them through the depth of winter without a greenhouse .
I ’ve mark that in my winter garden , these vegetables utterly expand compare to when I prove to grow them in the heat of summertime , which they often rebel against ( think : too soon bolting ( flowering)or tough and bitter leaves ) . And as we can see in the CDC study , the top one-half of the list ( with the most nutrient - dense vegetable ) is eclipse by cold weather - bed cruciferous crop ( watercress , Taiwanese cabbage , collards ) and leafy greens ( chard , beet greens , spinach plant ) .
What about the vegetables on that list that canonlybe grown in summer ? Surprisingly , none of them had a alimentary compactness score above 42 ! Hmm … We may extoll the wellness benefit of our antioxidant - rich tomatoes , but plainly they ca n’t hold a candle to the nutrients in beet greens and leaf kale .
And that ’s get me cogitate … Thesecold - resistant industrial plant are able to pull round winterby expressing special cold - margin proteins , roll up sugars in their cells , and modifying their cell membranes to resist freeze stress . mayhap — just mayhap — some of these chemic adaptations also chip in to the benefit these industrial plant have on human wellness ? What if we learned that winter horticulture is not only possible for most people , but healthier for us too ?
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Growing powerhouse vegetables
The top 15 flora on the PFV tilt are exceedingly cold - hardy , and you could push their limitation in winter ( in USDA hardiness zones 5 and above ) by develop them under a simple low burrow cross with midweight frost cloth .
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gardener in colder zone can develop them in spring or fall ( for good flavor and production ) . Most of thesevegetables also grow well indoorsin front of a sunny window .
Watercress , which exceed the lean with a nutrient compactness score of 100 , is actually a perennial in zones 6 and above ( perhaps zone 5 with wintertime protection ) . It makes anexcellent addition to your perennial veggie garden(and no , cresson does not need to be grown in or near water — it just ask consistently moist soil ) .
food - dense Allium schoenoprasum , which also made the listing , country must in every perennial herb garden . They ’re so prolific that the original six cluster I planted years ago have multiplied intodozensof gang that I ’ve transplanted around the garden and give off to friend . And because I love a multipurpose plant life , chive are one of thebest pollinator - friendly blossom .
If you want to try something unlike , you’re able to also amp up the nutrient compactness of powerhouse vegetable by growing them indoors as microgreens , which — troy ounce for ounce — have more nutrients than mature plants . ( Mustard and turnip microgreens are among my favorites for salads;I get my sprout seeds here . )
