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This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. I have another exciting episode for you today
and today's going to be an interesting one at that. I was actually here actually harvesting
my bronze fennel seeds. So, what I do to harvest the seeds is just take a large bag and some
clippers and I go underneath the big stalk here and clip it and then go ahead and drop
that in the bag. Sometimes if I'm really good I can just go to like a big large stalk here
and just put the bag underneath it and clip it and have it drop right in the bag. So,
I grew this bronze fennel originally because I heard it was a perennial and it's something
that looks really pretty, but besides looking pretty, it's also edible. Now, this is not
the same bulb fennel or fenocio fennel that you'd find in your grocery store for the vegetable
department, you now, that nice large bulb that you eat. I mean, while you can eat the
bulb on this, there's not a whole lot of bulb to eat, but this is amazing to use for the
spice. You can grab the leaves and actually eat that as a salad, and this is very productive
in terms of seeds. I mean, you can see these little seed heads. Every year I get so many
freaking seeds, and some people might think, 'oh, John I'm growing this thing and it's
so invasive. It drops its seeds and it starts and sprouts everywhere up. I'm going to get
rid of it.' Well, to me, that's a really good problem to have because why? Because now you're
growing food without you lifting a finger. I mean, I got to plant my kales and chards
and everything, you know, different plants every year, my lettuces, they're not going
to come back like this. This thing grows year-round, you know, when it goes through it life cycle,
it finishes up, it dries out, but then at the base, which I'll show you n a second,
it actually starts resprouting and regrowing, plus al the seeds that I'm not collecting,
they're actually growing into little baby sprouts. So, for these seeds, you could actually
eat these seeds as, you know, an herb or a spice, and the other thing that I recommend
that you do, if you have a lot of seeds, like I'm not even done collecting the seeds yet
and I got a whole bag full, the best thing to do is what I'm going to share with you
in just a second. So, actually, let me show you guys the base of the bronze fennel and
show you how I got inspired to use the seeds. Now, were going to show you the base of this
plant. So, you can see the bug stalks that it just grew up and it's all dried out at
the top. So, every year what I do is I come down to this base and just literally hack
it back, but at the root bowl, the root bowl stays alive in this climate here, northern
California, and then there's all these new growths and new shoots. So, these new shoots
that we're looking at now are growing to grow into this big behemoth with a lot of seeds
for next year, and, you know, you can eat all these little greens and this is like a
nice little sprig, actually that looks like a little Christmas tree, and that's nice to
add to salads. It adds a nice hint of flavor and also gets more greens in you, if you know
what I mean. I just like to snack on it in the garden, especially this time of year.
When the plants are young baby, they're more tender and more delicious and more water-rich.
As they get more mature and older, they don't taste as good. So, always when harvesting
greens for your salad greens, don't pick the large leaves. You're a gardener; you have
the freedom to select which leaves you want, not like at the store when they dictate to
you which ones you need to buy. So, when you're a gardener out in your garden, picking to
eat a salad for dinner that night, pick all the baby small leaves, but, you know, don't
pick all of them off one plant, pick a few off each plant so you'll have nice tender
greens for eating. Even tender greens, like collard greens and kale and Swiss chard when
they're smaller, they're a lot better tasting than the larger leaves and, you know, spice
it up with some bronze fennel. Really good. So, besides just the baby leaves, what's better
than eating baby leaves? Well, I'm going to show you right now. So, besides eating the
baby leaves of the baby plants that are just sprouting and regrowing for this new season
are right below. We're sitting at the bed actually right next to where all the bronze
fennel seeds are dropping. They're dropping in this bed, and check it out, we just have
a whole bunch of bronze fennel sprouts. So, I like to pull these guys up, I mean, roots
and all and they're just nice and tiny and they're so good. They're even more tender
than the baby ones. So, you could literally just take some scissors, I like to pull them
up, you can just take some scissors and hack them all back, and there's the little sprout
right there and you can see the root and all, and guess what? You're going to be eating.
So delicious and so good. So, that gave me the idea of what I could do with all my seeds.
I'm going to grow microgreens, which is the baby greens which are little like sprouts,
in trays and just harvest them and clip them back and eat and enjoy them. Microgreens can
contain up to 4 times more nutrition than the full-sized plant, you know, but normally
to buy a lot of seeds, especially organic ones, may cost a clot of money, but when you're
blessed with a lot of seeds, hey, you know, grow some out to plant in your garden, grow
some to give to friends, but you can now grow and use them to make microgreens. You can
also just sprout them eat them much like you would eat the seeds. When you germinate the
seeds and sprout the seeds, the nutrition increases. So, even if you're eating things
like grains, I encourage you guys to actually sprout your grains and then use them to cook
so that they'll be more nutritious. Well, anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode
learning more about what I'm going to o with my bronze fennel seeds and how to get the
most nutrition out of some of the greens you grow in your garden. Once again, my name is
John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. We'll see you next time, and remember, keep on growing.