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This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today I have another exciting episode for
you today and today's topic is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. Actually
it's one of the main reasons why I got into, you know, being crazy and converting my whole
front yard into a raised bed garden and converting the backyard to grow all raised bed edible
vegetable garden and why I'm growing my own food and this video will sum it up and let
you guys know the 2 ways, the 2 best ways, you can grow more nutritious crops, higher
nutrients, in your crops, because, let me tell you, big agribusiness and most conventional
and even organic farmers are not doing some of these things that I'm going to share with
you guys today. So, first I want to talk about why we need to do this. 'John, I could buy
apples and oranges, pears, bananas, and celery and lettuce at the store.' I mean, 'they're
good, right?' yea, I mean, I advocate eating as much fruits and vegetables as possible
because most people just don't eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables, number one. Number
2, the reason why there's fruits and vegetables in the store is not because they're trying
to make the world a better place, it's because of the all mighty dollar. The farmers are
in it, and the big agro businesses that own most of the farms these days, the conventional
farms, are in it just to make money. I mean, that's what makes the world go round right?
I hope not, but anyways, you know, so, they're doing it and they're cutting corners and maybe
spraying pesticides on conventional products, and they might be doing things, even organic
agriculture that I might not necessarily agree with that I had to learn to do myself. Why?
Because, you know, it's proven that since the 1950's nutrition in the same standard
cabbage, cauliflower, celery, turnips, overall has gone down. Actually here is a printout
here of cauliflower nutrient change, 1950-1999. So, on here it shows that there's 2.6 more
calcium. So, wow, that's gong up, man. There's more calcium in the cauliflower today than
yesteryear, but here's 31% less Vitamin C, there's 37% less riboflavin, there's 37.3%
less phosphorus, and there's 58.9% less iron. Man, maybe you could become iron deficient
by eating vegetables that are conventionally grown because in the 1950's they had more
nutrition in there. That's totally crazy. So, why is this nutrient deficient food being
sold to us? Well, you know, one of the main reasons, in my opinion, is the farmers are
putting NPK back in the soil that makes it grow stuff, but is it giving it all the nutrients?
Is it replacing all the iron that was previously pulled out on former crops? Is vitamin C content
going to be high when the plant is not getting everything it needs? You know, maybe not.
So, one of the reasons for change, in my opinion, is the soil is not being managed properly,
were not giving back and putting that in the soil what we've taken out over years and year
s and years of conventional even organic farming. Number 1, second reason why maybe lower is
because the way they've calculated these variables. So, that may play a factor in why it's a little
bit lower but I don't know about 58% 37%. That seems like quite a but. Another reason
why it may be lower is because the seed stock they're using. Back in the 1950's they probably
had more heirloom type, you know, seeds that weren't crossbred for certain traits, you
know, like being shipped far, like dropping a tomato may not break, you know. They were
not selecting necessarily, you know, for more profit but they were selected for because
they tasted good, because they looked red, because, you know, whatever else characteristics.
So, you know, to go on further about this stuff, let's take a look at the nutritional
analysis of cornmeal, and all this is simply comparing is heirloom (unclear) red flint
cornmeal to convention cornmeal from USDA values (unclear) cornmeal, and as you guys
can see in this chart, like on most of the things on heirloom crops, or on this particular
heirloom red cornmeal, the some of the nutrition, you know, is double. You know, fiber's 4 grams,
on the heirloom one it's 11 grams. (Unclear) is 2.2 on the conventional, it's 1.0, you
know. On the riboflavin it's .5, on the heirloom it's .17. I mean, everything's like that.
So, you know, it's really important to me are 2 things. Number 1, we want to grow the
most nutrient dense crops we can by adding things in the soil that conventional farmers
are not putting in. So, some of those things, in my opinion, probably the most important
things is the compost. You guys know that I religiously talk about adding compost to
your garden, whether you're adding the bacterial compost or the thermal compost that you make
in your own composter, and hopefully it's getting to high temperatures and it's cooking
down pretty good, or you're adding the fungal compost, or the low or no heat compost that's
basically made by composting woodchips or the carbon with the fungus and the mushrooms
and whatnot into a nice fungal dominated compost. So, those composts are very important. In
addition the worm castings are critically important in my opinion. Worm castings are
very important to produce healthy crops in my opinion, more so than just the composts
is something else that can be more challenging to add because think about it, can the compost
you're adding is from the food scraps or form the things you're putting into it and if those
food scraps are based on organic or even conventional crops, they may not have the nutrition there
in the first place, so how are they going to all of a sudden magically appear from your
compost if they weren't in the starting base material in the beginning? So, that's why,
you know, next to the compost, you got to add these guys. These are called rock dust,
granulated rock dust, actually this granulated natural rock dust. I prefer the micronized
version. The finer the size the more available it is for the plants and the microbes in the
soil, and, you know, the rock dust you see here adds like 70 plus trace minerals in the
soil to give the plant what it needs because as you saw, what the farmers are currently
doing, adding NPK and you could be doing the same thing by adding many of the different
big orange colored, you know, conventional fertilizers out of the box or, you know, standard
fertilizers you buy at a fertilizer shop, you're just adding NPK and that's not going
to get you the highest quality foods, you know. You got add compost, variety foods,
you got to add, you know, the soil microorganisms, the beneficial fungi, the beneficial, you
know, bacteria, you know, the beneficial nematodes, the earthworms. WE want a living soil. We
want to duplicate what's found in nature. Be sure to check out some of my other videos
for that, but, yea, rock dust, super important. Stay tuned for an upcoming episode where I
specifically talk about more details in the rock dust. We'll just leave it at that. So,
that's the first ay you want to definitely include the rock dust. What you're going to
find after including the rock dust is, number one, you're food's going to taste better.
When it tastes better that's because it has more flavonoids in it, and guess what? Flavonoids,
the base of flavonoids is flavor, it's got more flavor in it, that means it's going to
be more nutritious, number one, more flavonoids, going to taste better, more nutritious. Number
2, you're going to have higher yields. The crops you're growing are going to grow higher,
they're going to grow bigger, you're going to get more yield for the same amount of plants
you're growing. Definitely a good thing. Number three, the plants are going to be healthier.
So, when the plants are going to be healthier, they're going to be more bug and disease resistant.
So, that's definitely really important, plus you're going to be putting back into the soil
in the ground what we've been taking out and what, you know, erosion ahs been taking away
over all these years. We're going to give back to the earth instead of just being greedy
and keep taking from it. So, I always encourage you guys to, you know, if you stay at a friends
house, leave it a little bit nicer than you left it, and leave your land in a little bit
nicer conditions than when you started farming it, because most farming practices, unfortunately,
in my opinion, leave it a little bit worse. So, that's number one. You definitely want
to do that. Number 2, this way's even easier than trying to find some rock dust, because
it can be hard to find. Be sure to check my other videos for my source of rock dust and
actually where you can find it online for fairly inexpensive. The number 2 way is super
simple. It's actually by just getting different seeds. So, instead of getting hybridized seeds,
which I also grow hybridized seeds, hybridized seeds and maybe modern seeds of today are
maybe breed for certain characteristics, whether it's disease resistance, whether it's, you
know, for, you know, better shipability and it's it travels better, long lasting, you
know, doesn't go bad, whether it's for, you know, the texture, you know. Some of these
things that are being bred out of it are things lie the nutrition aspect of the food, and
those are some of the things that are most important to me. So, you want to get heirloom
seeds. I have some examples of heirloom seeds right here. We got some melon calavon espangol.
We got some okra Perkins long pod. WE got some squash pome Dior. I mean, a place like
baker creek heirloom seeds, I mean, it's called baker creek heirloom seed company, and it's
rareseeds.com is their website, so you want to always try to get heirloom seeds whenever
possible, plus the heirlooms seeds are open pollinated, which means you can save your
seeds and replant them the following year. You'll get the exact same thing and guess
what? If you're growing heirloom seeds in the rock dust, you're starting seed stock
for next year will be even stronger and healthier than the year before, and keep saving your
multiple generations of seed stock, with nutritious soil, you're going to have better seed stock
than anybody, and we all know that the seed stock that you start with, you know, has to
do partly with how your plants turned out. You know, it's the genetics of the plant plus
the nutrition of the soil. So, by combining both genetics with the heirlooms seeds and
the soil and getting the rock dust and compost in there, you're definitely going to be firing
on all 8 cylinders. Now, the last thing I want to tell you guys is actually kind of
sad but, you know, I just want to let you guys know anyways. Here's the nutritional
analysis between GMO corn versus non-GMO corn, right? So, check it out. Non-GMO corn, and
this is just conventional corn not even organic corn, is much higher in nutrition than the
GMO corn. So, it's like, you know, GMO corn's like the worst, then like, you know, conventional
crops and non heirloom seeds, some hybrids, certain varieties of course. There are certain
varieties of hybrids that are grown for specific nutrients nowadays, and then we got the heirloom
seeds. So think, good, better, best, right? I don't want you guys growing the GMO corn
because the nutrition is much less than just non GMO corn, but you can get better by doing
heirloom seeds, and the reason why I bring this up is because GMO corn and other crops
are a big threat to standard heirloom crops. For those of you guys that don't know, you
know, I almost lost my life when I was younger and this basically made me start thinking
of it differently and maybe start really realizing and valuing my health and me wanting to do
whatever I could do to increase my heath instead of decrease it. I mean, we all know that cigarettes
have a warning thing on it that says, you know, 'may cause cancer.' When you smoke,
you're probably decreasing your health. When you're eating foods out of your garden growing
in rock dust and heirloom, you're increasing your health, in my opinion, and that's what
I want each and every one of you guys to do. So, by all means, stop buying GMO foods because,
besides just the growing GMO that I don't want you guys to do, GMO foods are appearing
in grocery stores with, you know, anything that has corn syrup, corn floor, corn meal,
corn oil, you know, soybeans and, you know, soy oil, cotton seed oil, so many different
processed foods products have these GMO, you know, organisms in it and if you don't support
them, the companies will no longer grow them. So, I want you guys to minimize the consumption
of processed foods and eat more heirloom, open pollinated, rock dust mineralized, composted
plants out of your garden. So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. Once again, grow
mineral rich foods, add the rock dust, compost back into your garden and to bring fertility
back in the soil, leave it better than you found it and then grow the heirloom crops
and eat mostly out of your garden instead of the grocery store. I just wanted to end
this video with the fact that actually I'm currently at the airport on my way to the
3rd annual national heirloom expo taking place in santé rose California. It's September
10th, 11th, and 12th, and yes it is during the week Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
If you do live in the bay area anywhere I definitely encourage you highly to take a
day off work. I mean, I said this last year and there's people that actually took a day
off work and they thanked me for it afterwards like, 'John, this is one of the best days
I ever took off work,' you know, 'to be at the heirloom expo.' You definitely want to
be at if you still can make it out to the 3rd annual heirloom expo I defiantly would.
Strongly encourage you to do it. It's definitely one of the best gardening events that I attend
all year. There's going to be information about heirlooms and growing plants with fertile
soil. You got to meet actually some of the very people I interview on my show like Ian
from biologic systems, Josh from boogie brew and whole bunch of other people. So, there'll
be a good source of rock dust in santé rose California if you haven't already picked some
up that's actually really cheap. Cheapest place I've seen to get it. Yea, all in all
it's going to be a great time. Be sure and stop by to say hi to me. I'll be giving a
lecture there and I'll also have a booth there probably. So, you can learn more at heirloomexpo.com.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. Once again, 2 things, build your soil to build
better plants for rock dust, the compost, worm casting, definitely top of my list and
finally grow heirlooms and hope to see you at the 3rd annual national heirloom expo.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with growingoyurgreens.com. We'll see you next time and remember, keep
on growing.