Water Chestnut Red Ling: Price per Jin, Market Season and Harvest Time, and How It Differs from Water Chestnut
Red ling, also known as Suzhou red, is one of the most common aquatic plants found in lotus ponds and pools. It is rich in vitamins and various minerals, making it quite popular. When young and tender, it can be eaten raw as a fruit, while the mature fruit can be cooked or processed into water chestnut flour. Air-dried, it becomes wind-dried ling, which can be stored to extend the supply period. The leaves can be used as green fodder or green manure. So how much is red ling per jin? When is it on the market? When is it harvested? How does it differ from water chestnut?
Latest price:
Red ling should be eaten fresh. Freshly lifted from the water, red ling is tender, crisp and sweet, but after being left to sit it turns slightly black, and after a night passes the flavor drops off considerably. So freshly picked red ling is especially in demand. Some customers who come specially for it buy ten or twenty jin at a time. The price is not much different from last year, basically holding at around six or seven yuan. Soon, a whole mesh bag of red ling was sold out.
Market season:
In early autumn, water chestnuts come on the market. Red ling, also called water red ling or Suzhou red, is an annual floating-leaved aquatic herbaceous plant. It is planted in March and harvested in September.
As one of the water eight immortals, red ling is a food that Suzhou people very much enjoy. Its shell is soft and thin with plenty of moisture, and its flesh is fine and tender with a sweet taste, suitable for eating raw. It is mainly produced in the eastern suburbs of Suzhou and is often intercropped with lotus root.
Harvest time:
Red ling takes about 5 months from sowing to harvest, and the fruiting period lasts 1 to 2 months. Therefore, a region needs a frost-free period of more than 6 months to achieve a high yield. During the flowering and fruiting period, daytime temperatures of 20 to 30°C and nighttime temperatures of 15°C are required. For early-maturing varieties, sow at Qingming, begin harvesting tender ling at Liqiu, and harvest mature ling at Chushu and Shuangjiang.
Differences from water chestnut:
Red ling is one type of what we commonly call water chestnut. In other words, red ling and water chestnut are the same aquatic plant, differing only in name and variety.
Nutritional value of red ling:
1. It is rich in vitamins. Vitamins are the most abundant type of nutrient in the human body. People lacking vitamins will contract many illnesses, become weak, and develop many minor complaints. As an element essential to the human body, vitamins can maintain our normal physiological activities and keep us energetic in work and life.
2. It contains various mineral elements. Minerals can inject more vitality into our bodies. Eating more red ling can promote digestion and make our diet more balanced. Red ling is also high in protein, with fairly comprehensive nutrition and great benefits for the human body.
3. Red ling contains many elements such as calcium, iron and phosphorus. Our daily diet takes in nutrients in a very unbalanced way, so many people show symptoms of calcium or phosphorus deficiency. Eating more red ling can supplement these nutrients substantially, and can also relieve the pressure on our stomach and make our digestion smoother.