Grow Your Own Plant-based "Viagra"! Growing Onion Leaves

In hunting for a plant-based "Viagra," a patented drug product, we began with the actual name of the drug, which is sildenafil. What is sildenafil? It turns out that its mode of action is that of a (big word), phosphodiesterase inhibitor (PDE). The next question is—what plant substances act as PDEs? In searching the medical and scientific literature, we found that a combination of three plant substances act as a PDE inhibitor—a sexual enhancer. They are quercetin, myricetin and kaempferol, know as flavenols, a group of nutritious ingredients found in some plants. And, the plant containing the most of these substances turns out to be—ONION LEAVES. This info by the way, came from the Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry.

Traipsing around vegetable, supermarket and healthfood stores in our Sherlock Holmes-type venture, we came up with—a blank!

Next we called the Bronx Botanical Gardens (officially the New York Botanical Gardens,) whose experts explained what onion leaves are. They are long, thin, sturdy, stem-like things that eventually yield flowers. They don't look like leaves at all.

We set out to grow onions and learned how, by trial and error, to grow our own onion leaves, since we couldn't buy any.

It turned out to be remarkably easy. Here's the method—obtain a flower pot at least six inches in diameter. Use an onion that has a small green part showing at the top. The larger the onion the better. Fill the pot two-thirds with soil. Place the onion—green part topside—so that at least half the onion is covered with soil.

Place it in a sunny spot and water every other day, one pint at a time. THAT'S IT! In about three weeks you will have the leaves growing out of the onion, and in another week, when the leaves are about six inches long, simply cut them with a pair of scissors down to one inch in height. Keep watering. Here's where the miracle starts.

In a few weeks, you'll have another growth of leaves to eat! Cut them when ready—and some weeks later, cut again. So, you have a steady supply of sex-enhancer with each onion. Eventually the onion will give up, and you will have to use a new onion.

The secret? The onion wants to flower. But first it must grow the leaves. Cutting the leaves before it flowers causes the onion to try again. And again.

Does it bother you to take advantage of the hapless onion?

THIS MAY HELP WOMEN TOO!

Grow Your Own Plant-based "Viagra"! Bibliography

Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry