The benefits of the eastern sverbigi as a melliferous plant

The sverbiga oriental honey plant is a perennial herb belonging to the cruciferous family. The Caucasus is considered the birthplace of the sverbig. Nowadays, the grass as a weed is distributed throughout the European part of the continent, it is found in the west of Siberia.

The content of the article

• 1 Significance for agriculture
  • 1.1 Description
• 2 Agrotechnics
• 3 Honey productivity
• 4 Useful Properties

Significance for agriculture

The culture was grown in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia as a food plant. Young grass stalks along with leaves were used to prepare various salads, added to soups, meat and fish dishes. Hence the popular name – wild radish.

Today, these culinary traditions are being revived by chefs. Sverbiga is salted, pickled or harvested for future use and dried. Crushed rhizomes lose their bitterness during storage – they are added to seasonings, sauces.

The green mass can be used as livestock feed. This herb has delicate stems and a pleasant taste without bitterness.

Description

The honey plant has a well-developed root and a fairly high stem with a height of 40 to 100-150 centimeters. In the upper part, the stem is strongly branched. The leaves are lanceolate with split edges. They are smaller at the top of the plant than at the bottom. Leaves, stem and lateral branches are covered with hairs and warty glands.

Flowers are collected in corymbose panicles-inflorescences. The petals are rich yellow; when blooming, they are located in the horizontal plane. The fruit resembles a small pod containing one to three seeds. For germination, they need to endure one or two wintering periods – the pericarp in the grass is dense, woody. Germination lasts 5-6 years.

In one place, the grass grows for an average of 8-10 years. It tolerates frosty winters well.

Agrotechnics

The culture is undemanding to its predecessors. The prepared area near the apiary must be treated with discs, and then plowed to a shallow depth of 20-25 centimeters.

Sowing is recommended after winter grain crops. The distance between the rows is 60-70 centimeters. The planting depth is up to 2 cm. After sowing, the area must be rolled in with water-filled rollers. If sowing is done in the spring, the culture requires a long period of seed stratification – from 90 to 120 days.

The consumption of seeds per hectare, depending on the purpose of planting, is 15-20 kg (for sowing on seeds) or 40-50 kg (for sowing for livestock feed and for obtaining honey).

In the first year, the honey plant gives only one or two shoots, but after the second wintering, a solid green carpet forms and the first inflorescences appear. When mowing for livestock feed, the yield of green mass is up to 60 tons per hectare.

It should be noted that sverbyga is an annoying weed that easily spreads in the wild and occupies self-seeding wastelands, wet meadows.

Honey productivity

The blooming of the sverbyga begins early – in the middle or third decade of May, which provides the apiary with a good spring bribe.

Honey production depends on the region and the weather in the current year. In warm and rather humid summers, from 500 to 600 kg of nectar can be obtained from a hectare of dense crops. There is information that in the meadows near the Oka, the honey plant brings only 150-250 kilograms of honey.

Sverbiga is an oriental honey plant with a pronounced smell. Bees always actively work on this crop during the flowering period (provided that there are no more attractive honey plants in the region).

The taste of honey is delicate and pleasant, but it crystallizes quickly. This variety, like any other honey obtained from cruciferous crops, is not suitable for wintering! However, the sverbig honey collected in May and early June, for obvious reasons, will not be stored in the hives until the onset of autumn. The risk of it getting into wintering nests is minimal.

Useful Properties

The plant is a rich source of trace elements and vitamins. Eating young leaves together with shoots contributes to the saturation of the body with vitamin C (100 grams of green mass contains 58 milligrams of ascorbic acid).

Honey obtained from sverbigi flowers is useful as a general tonic:

• with colds;
• with a lack of vitamins and minerals in the body;
• for the prevention of scurvy.

Honey is also used as a nutritional supplement for homemade cosmetic masks.

Important: Sverbig honey is contraindicated in case of individual intolerance to any bee products!