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Alright! this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for
you. In this episode, I'm going to share with you guys my food forest in suburbia. We're
here in suburbia, as you can see, with all the different tract homes and all their lawns
and stuff and I just think lawns are a waste of space and I encourage you guys, if it's
legal in your area, to grow some food instead of your lawn. You know, lawns takes a lot
of resources: you've got to mow it or you gotta pay somebody to mow it, you've got to
water it regularly, you've got to fertilize it, and hopefully you're not putting Round-up,
or other, you know, uh, chemicals or, uh, pesticides in your lawn to, you know, prevent
the weeds from coming up, because that stuff's no good in my opinion. So I wanna give you
guys an alternative and show you what you can do instead. As you guys can see, like,
all my neighbors in the whole area have a lawn except me, and as you guys can see, I
have a jungle behind me. This is my, literally my food forest in my front yard. Provides
a lot of food for me, like 90-95% of my vegetable consumption. So, uh, we're just going to go
ahead and give you guys a quick tour, show you guys what's growing on right now in the
summer season. So next, we're going to go ahead and show
you guys my food forest. This is the side walk, my raised beds are waist height at the
sidewalk, and my, uh, property is sloped, so at the sidewalk it's about waist height
and as it goes back, all the raised beds are level. So as you get to the back, because
the property is sloped, it's, you know, taller in the front and it gets down about twelve
inches high in the back. And in the front bed I like to have things that look pretty,
so I just have some flowers. Many people might think, uh, these are just ornamental, but
marigolds are actually edible. They also help with some pest control. Behind here I have,
uh, some celery. Uh, for the root planted, and then I have a whole bunch of squash climbing
up this monster trellis that I built. And I want to show you guys, like, I trellised
these guys up so I could maximize the use of my space. This is literally an 8,000 square
foot lot, approximately, and I want to grow as much food as possible. And because I don't
have a lot of land to put rows, I tend to plant things very intensely, very closely,
using the square foot gardening method, and, uh, grow things vertically up trellises, in
cages, and all this kind of stuff. So as you guys can see, it's working pretty good here.
Just in this little area, I got a super huge banana squash, the three sisters - one, two,
and three . These guys gonna be good, uh, winter squashes for me to eat during the wintertime
when, uh, my garden is not readily producing. Also, I got some, uh, other squash up here.
I think this is the kuri squashes as well. I've not wasted any space and in here I have
all the marigolds and then I have, uh, celery, celerac, the roots, and you can also eat the
greens on there as well. So if you head into my garden through the
main, uh, walkway, we have this main entryway here. It's like a big arbor with the trellises
built-in, custom built. And, uh, we're growing the runner beans, the Native American runner
beans on both sides, and as you guys can see, they're getting ripe this time of year. When
they dry up like this, they're ready to be harvested and, uh, I've been growing these
for seed. You can eat them also, you can actually cook them, but check this out: look at these
brilliant colors on there. These guys are absolutely amazing and I may have some of
these available in my seed store, that I'll but a link below to.
Now, the reason why I like the Native American runner beans because they have been a perennial
crop for me. What is a perennial crop? Well, a perennial crop is a crop that you're going
to plant once, and it's going to continue to grow, whether it grows above the ground
all year long, or, like the runner beans, it'll grow during the warm season. When it
gets too cold, I'll cut it back to the base, I'll mulch it really good, and then it will
come back next spring. So, it's done that reliably for, I don't know, two or three years
now, so I'm happy that I have them, and I have a constant source of the beans. I also
like to eat the pods when they're baby and when they're young, they're kind of like sugar
snap beans. I give these to my friend sometimes and she'll cook those up. But generally, when
they're at this stage, I'll just save them for the beans themselves because I'm a seed
collector and I want to encourage you guys also to collect, save, and distribute the
seeds of the heirloom crops like the Native American runner beans that I'm growing here.
For more information about the runner beans, be sure to check my other videos. I have other
videos specifically on the runner beans. Let's continue on into my food forest here.
As you can see, this place is filled up. How I got this laid out is I got a four foot by
fifteen foot raised bed, and I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of 'em
all the way back, so that's a lot of real estate. Over on this side, because I have
the pre-existing fig tree, and, uh, let's see, this guy is pretty ripe here. Let's see
here, we'll find it -- whoa! Dropped it! Don't drop the figs, it's a party foul! Alright,
check out this big one. This is a brown turkey fig. They get a little bit bigger, could be
a little bit riper, but check it out on the inside, I want to show you guys the color
on that. Look at that, man. That's a nice, juicy fig. Man, that's the best fig I've tasted
all year! Growing rocked us and this place is loaded up. The only caveat with this tree
is that I planted this tree before I planted the whole garden, and I didn't really know
about selecting the proper tree, so when you do buy a fig tree to buy and to plant in your
yard, make sure it's one that's going to produce in your area and do well. This area is a little
bit cooler for the fig trees, so there's certain varieties that are going to do better in the
cool weather. This one would do better, you know, just twenty miles north of here, it
would do a lot better because it's a lot more, you know, uh, hot, than we get here in the
city. But, nonetheless, I get a good couple dozen figs every year off this, and probably
next year I'll probably start grafting on other varieties that, you know, will produce
reliably for me. Next, we got my tomato bed here, and, uh,
this year I grew a lot of large heirloom tomatoes. Check this out -- a big cluster of, uh, huge
tomatoes waiting to ripen up. I think these guys are actually the white heirloom tomatoes.
There's just tons of these guys. It's loaded. Generally, especially if you're new into gardening,
I like to grow the cherry tomatoes because always the cherry tomatoes, you're always
going to have some ready. With these guys, you might get one, then you might get another
one, and then hopefully your season's long enough -- they'll all ripen up before we run
out of time. So I generally like the smaller, fruited varieties instead of the larger ones.
As I'm yet relearning again. But I got these plants from a friend because I didn't start
my tomatoes on time this year. As you guys can see, it opens up now, and
now I've got all my beautiful pepper plants. I have a video on these guys. When I got 'em,
they were basically giveaways, or throwaways, from a nursery. They're like yellow, not doing
well. I brought 'em back to life, we planted over a hundred pepper plants, all different
and unique varieties. A lot of gypsys this year, and some hot and some not. And you can
see here they're all doing well. Um, I plant them in a square foot gardening method, so
I use approximately twelve inches between 'em. Because of the way my beds are designed,
I think I might have fudged that and did it like eleven and a half or eleven inches in
between every pepper plant and they seem to produce really well this way for me. I like
planting them fairly close because then, uh, you know the ground is shaded out, so we're
not going to get the evaporation. I tend not to like to use a lot of mulches, you know,
on the ground because that's where bugs, snails, and slugs and pillbugs and sow bugs could
collect and start really hurting your crops. And actually I think there's a bug now on
the lens. Alright, so next we're going to take a look
at a couple of the front beds, and before I go, I want to show that I have a half a
bed of strawberries. And yes it does produce strawberries. See if I can find a nice ripe
one today. Here's a nice little ripe strawberry. Now I've learned that, you know, this whole
bed used to be strawberries, but slowly I've been, uh, you know, squashing the strawberries
down because I just learned that it's not effective to grow strawberries. You know,
the bugs always get the strawberries, they just don't seem to yield a lot for the space
I've invested. If I had acreage, I'd totally have a patch of strawberries, but in a small
location like I'm growing here, I'd rather grow crops that were much more valuable to
me, like the peppers, for instance. I'd rather grow the peppers because they sell for a lot
more per pound, and actually today at the farmers market, you know, peppers were like,
organic peppers were like six bucks a pound, man. And the strawberries, they're, you know,
generally, like I got some last week for a dollar a pound, like good organic ones. So
I'm going to let the experts do that, and I can focus on the things that are going to
cost me more money and that I can do a better job at, that the bugs won't eat as well. And
I wanna encourage you guys to take the easy way out like that too when growing.
So here in the front, uh, bed, we've got all these guys like right here, and these guys
are called achocha or Bolivian cucumbers. Uh, they vine out and take over. They're really
a peculiar fruit. They're kind of related to the standard cucumber, but they're totally
different because, if you look inside, they're hollow inside and they have these little black
seeds. Now when the seeds are black, they're, uh, probably mostly mature, especially if
the outside is turning white, and I'm going to dry and save these seeds because it's very
important, once again, to preserve the genetic diversity. Plus, when these get kind of white
on the outside and start to kind of, like, get a little bit moldy, I wouldn't want to
eat it anyways. But this is perfect for saving the seeds. The best time to eat the achochas
are actually when they're really small, so check this out. Here's one right here that's
nice and small, little baby one, so we're just gonna go ahead a harvest this guy. And
now this is the perfect time to eat them. Tastes like a little cucumber, but not like
a cucumber -- something totally different that you guys have never probably tasted before.
When they get larger, you would pull out the seeds and use them for stuffing, kind of like
you would a pepper, or I use them for juicing. They're nice water-rich flavor, with quite
a unique flavor. You know I tend to grow a lot of different, unique and different kind
of foods in my garden, because, once again, if I'm choosing to grow foods, I'm going to
grow things money can't buy, and grow higher quality foods than money can buy either, and
I want to encourage you guys to do that also. Grow something a little bit different, because
number one, it'll amaze your friends, number two, it's just cool being different.
So on the achocha, you know, it doesn't produce like really soon, like your cucumbers might
produce sooner, these will take a while to grow and once they get bushed out, then they'll
start flowering and setting fruit. So it will be the later half of the season, so you might
want to have a fairly longer season for those guys. They're actually from South America.
So next here, we got a, uh, smorgasbord of stuff. We got a whole bunch of celery that
I planted, and then we got a whole bunch of, uh, tomatillos planted in the, in the cages
here. We got some basil hanging out over in there. Let's see. These are the agretti, and
it's gone to seed, so we need to harvest the seeds on these guys. Saving the seeds on the
agretti are definitely a delicious plant. They self-seeded on their own as with the
achochas, when you plant them once, you can't get all the fruit -- they drop, and then they
come up on their own, so it's almost like a weed. The same thing with the agretti, to
a much lesser extent. They drop seeds, but then they didn't have a whole lot come back,
and I wish that actually more came back because I really love that one. It's a nice delicious
leafy green, uh, it's known in Italy and that's what they use in there.
Next, let's see, we got this one called the huacatays. Many of you might notice the leaf,
it looks like an herb that you may be familiar with. This is another, uh, plant from South
America because the climates in here are fairly similar to South America. I grew a lot of
things that are similar climates. That's definitely a good, a good one there. And, uh, this is
kind of used like cilantro in South America and it has a nice, unique flavor. It's like
nothing else. I mean that's why I really like growing my garden. I mean, I get all my, experience
all these new taste sensations that I know you guys probably never tasted. Unless you're
from South America too. Wow. It's kind of hot a spicy in a way. It kind of, like, lights
up your mouth, but then has like the flavor...it's not like cilantro, but it's, man, it's pretty
powerful and strong. But I love it nonetheless. You probably wouldn't want to make a salad
out of it, but just a few bits of that in a dressing would just give it a unique flavor
that people have never tasted before. Now the next plant I'm going to share with
you guys is the one that I'm most excited about this year. It's the first year, or actually
second year that I grew it. The first time I grew it, it didn't do so well because I
had it in the greenhouse and it kind of got neglected. This year, I planted it in the
raised bed, and then I neglected it, and it's doing a lot better. Check it out. Mixed in
with all the stuff here...it's right here. And this one is actually called ice lettuce,
and if you do a close up on the camera, you guys can see. Look at that, it looks like
little water drops on the plant, man. But those aren't water drops, that's just part
of the plant, man. It's so crazy. And it makes these little leaves and I'll pull a leaf for
you here. Guys, look at that. That's the top of the leaf, and here's the bottom of the
leaf. It almost looks like there's little water drops. But this is totally edible. It's
a succulent leaf; it has a nice, mildly salty flavor. Man, this stuff is totally amazing.
So currently, it's actually going into flower, so this is how it sets the flowers, like that,
before they open. And now these are the flowers actually opening up right here, and with the
little pollen things. I've never eaten one of these before, so we're going to go ahead
and try one, and I'll let you know how it is...get the bug off there. Wow, nice and
crunchy. Kind of sweet. It tastes like something -- tastes like, tastes like some, a lightly
fermented sauerkraut. Man, that's so good. And, uh, once again, here's more of the plant.
I really like that it almost looks kind of wet, but when you touch it, it's not wet.
It's almost like little dabs of, like, dried silicone or something on there. Totally crazy.
I'll have one more leaf to go. Man that, whoa, that one's kind of lemony salty at the same
time. Delicious. So besides the tomatillos that I have back
here in the big, uh, wooden cage, which are still fruiting and ripening -- I like to only
use my tomatillos when they're completely ripe, and they'll probably turn a nice yellowish
color. I do have another plant that's very similar to tomatillo -- actually, several
of them. This is actually called, uh, Aunt Molly's ground cherry, and this one's kind
of growing along the ground, or, you know, more on the bottom here. And these are also
little husked tomato-type thing that plant, and for these to be ripe, what you wanna look
for is not the ones that are in the little lanterns. You want to look for the ones that
are on the ground, like right below. You guys can see, these are on the ground, these are
drops, and the papery husks have turned kind of tan colored. So what we're going to do
is we're just going to open the papery husk, and inside it should totally be like this
color. Like a nice, uh, yellow-tan color...and then you would eat it. Mmm, there's no tartness
in there, like a tomatillo, mild sweetness. To me, these taste like some kind of little
candies I used to have when I was a kid, but not quite that sweet. Now, if you try to pick
them when they're not ripe, they're going to look like this. They're going to be green,
and this one had fallen off. And then you're going to open it, and it's going to be green
inside. Now you can eat these, they're unripe, and I don't recommend it, and they're going
to probably be tart. I'm not going to eat it today because it's going to ruin the nice,
sweet taste I have in my mouth. So, over in this raised bed, which is the
boundary to my neighbor's, I have a couple trees. These are called feijoas, or pineapple
guavas. As you guys can see here, this tree is just loaded up with these nice, delicious,
uh, guava-like fruits. I love these a lot. These are subtropical. Uh, this, uh, tree
keeps its leaves all year long, and I love 'em so much. Uh, I do have videos on this
already, as with many of the other plants that I'm sharing with you guys today. But,
these are ripe when they actually drop off the tree onto the ground, and you pick them
up off the ground. When they're a tad bit soft, they're good and they're ready to go.
Nice tropical flavor, and they'll be ready probably like, uh, late November, December,
right when all the summer fruits are out of season. So I'm really looking forward to it.
Next, we're going to pivot around and show you guys what's in my second raised bed here.
And this bed is my, my most prized bed this year. What we're looking at are some ashitaba
plants, so this is a special variety of angelica and angelica keiskai , I believe. And it's
from Hashijo island in southern Japan, and here's the larger ones that I planted. And
they're looking quite good. Here's some smaller ones. And I want to just share with you guys
real quick about this plant -- let me see if I can find a good example here. Oh, here
we go. So normally I just harvest the leaves, you can just harvest the baby leaves an eat
them. Uh, the other thing I like to do is just harvest the whole stem and stalk. And
why this is so beneficial is because it has what's called chalcones. Uh, to my knowledge,
there's no other plants that have the chalcones in there. And the chalcones are simply this
-- we're going to break this open, and I'm going to hold that in front of the camera.
So, yeah, you guys see that stuff? It's yellow stuff oozing out -- those are known as the
chalcones. And, uh, you know, like, if you cut me, I'd bleed red? Well this plant bleeds
yellow, but the yellow is actually a very important nutrient for me in this plant. They've
done a lot of research in Japan about it, and actually they'll sell like dried ashitaba
in the health foods store like powder, for like a ton of money, like, I don't know, a
hundred dollars a pound dried stuff. But you can simply grow it yourself and eat it. My
favorite way to eat it is, uh, if you just take it...a couple ways,,, you could just
take it and chew it, but then it's really fibrous, and if you're chewing the outside
green part, it's a little bit bitter too. So I don't like that. But what I like to do
instead is I like to take, take the stalk and peel it away, kind of like you would peel
your celery so it doesn't get stuck in your teeth, right? And it'd be better if I had
a knife doing it, but I'm too impatient to go inside and get a knife. And I just peel
the, the outer stuff away, and I'm literally getting the ashitaba marrow -- kind of like
the bone marrow, like the middle of the, of the plant. This is where it transports like
all the liquid and nutrients. And then I'm just going to simple bite this middle part
off. Mmm, now you're not getting that bitterness on the outside. Kind of tastes just like celery,
a tad bit sweet, but a tad bit medicinal at the same time. Mmm, I love all these weird
things that I'm growing. So besides my ashitaba that I'm growing, and
this is a perennial, it's hardy down to actually twenty degrees, I'm growing a tropical next
to it. And this is actually known as sugarcane. They're getting kind of tall nowadays, maybe
that's probably about, I don't know, eight feet tall, and you can see the base here.
Sugarcane is a grass and, uh, these are the cane stalks here. Hopefully they're going
to grow and mature and I'll actually, uh, be able to harvest some of this stuff and
chew it with my teeth, and, uh, get some nice sugar out of it.
So let's talk about a few more cool, interesting things that I've got growing. These are actually
called litchi tomatoes, the solanance family. Here's the little beautiful flowers of the
solanance, or the litchi tomato. And, uh, here are the little fruits here. Uh, you'll
know when the fruits are ready when there's like, uh, little, uh, covering, like a helmet,
that actually opens up and allows you to pick the fruit. So, uh, they look like little berries
right here. And this thing is all full of thorns. And there's a little litchi tomato
fruit right there. Mmm, tad bit sour, but I was just eating the ashitaba, that was like
more medicinal. Tad bit sweet, lots of seeds, you can just crunch 'em up. Looks good, unique,
and actually, it blooms first in the, uh, in the springtime. This is a perennial in
my climate -- it, uh, depending on where it's planted it might, the leaves might stay alive
or it might, uh, lose the leaves, but it will come back pretty well next season and start
fruiting for you once again. But you've got to watch out because these thorns will get
you. They're probably worse than rose prickers, man. These are some hardcore thorns. If you're
trying to keep animals out of your garden, just plant this all the way around, man. They're
not going to come in, or if you don't want any peeping toms at your window, plant one
of these guys, man. Nobody's going to come around.
Next in this raised bed, once again, which is my bordering raised bed, we got a pomegranate,
uh, tree here -- or more like a bush now because I haven't been training it. Uh, going down
here further, we've got another fig tree. And this is a unique fig tree actually. This
one's actually called the Janice Seedless Fig. Let's see if I can find a ripe one. And
look at how this guy's just loaded up with all kinds of different figs on there. When
a fig gets ripe, they're kind of hanging. The color will turn -- so you can see, this
one's, like, turning color, but this one's even more a brilliant color. And if you look,
instead of hanging out like this, they kind of start to droop. So this one, it could be
a little bit riper, but I'm going to harvest it for you guys right now. Janice Seedless
Fig. So this is a seedless fig. It's kind cool because it's not, they don't have all
those little crunchy bits. You know when you see fig newtons when you're a kid and they'd
be like crunch, crunch, crunch, - the little fig seeds? This one has very little, if any,
and they're very small. So check it out. Janice Seedless Fig. I like this one. I tend to like
the green figs more than the brown or the black ones. Mmm, this one's a tad bit sweeter
than the brown turkey I had, but because I have the ashitaba in my mouth still, it's
not as sweet as it could be. Kind of tastes like a medicinal fig today.
So the next tree I've got right next door to the fig, and they're kind of crossing over.
You know, these guys right here, these are persimmons, actually. And, uh, once again,
these are going to ripen up later in the season, probably around December time. And I like
to leave them on the tree as long as possible so that they'll ripen up properly and get
a nice, deep color and the sugars will, uh, you know, get pretty high. See back over here
we got the, uh, tree that produced earlier in the season. I think it's actually putting
on maybe flowers or something now, too. It's pretty cool. This one's actually called the
Sweet Gomie Tree and these make some little , small little berry like fruits that are
a little bit, if you let them ripen all the way, they're a little bit sweet, but also
tart at the same time. I did a monomial off those guys one time and they were quite good.
Getting back here further, we've got, um, my little swiss chard orchard. So I've got
a lot of swiss chard just growing here. They reseed themselves and keep coming back. Over
here, we've got another really cool one. This is, uh, in the sunflower family. Here's the
flower that you rarely see. And these flowers are like, I wish they'd make a perfume out
of this. I'd love to smell everyone's neck like this. Wow man, it smells like so sweet,
but the sad thing is, when you try to eat it, it's not that good. But anyways, these
have some of the nicest smelling flowers, aside from ylang ylang, that I've ever smelled.
But, uh, yeah, this is a jerusalem artichoke. It's in the same family as sunflowers, but
they make the edible tuber that I like so much. And the flowers are quite rare. I could
just sit here all day and smell it. Ahh, it's intoxicating.
So next in this bed, we've got a few cool things happening. Uh, this is kind of an experimental
be to see what would happen. We planted down here, that we just cut back, actually, this,
uh, chicory style green called puntarelle. Now besides just making the leaves, it also
actually makes this nice little head that looks like, I don't know, man, like a cross
between cauliflower and celery or something. It's totally a tip and it tastes so delicious.
It's like a mild, like, vegetable. And, I can't even really describe it, like the texture.
It's kind of like the texture of celery, but it tastes like, more like lettuce. And, uh,
I planted a little bit late. It was like, uh, root bound, stressed out, so they immediately
went to seed, and then they actually grew super tall and got all crazy, so we had to
clip them back. We're going to see if they come back, or we're going to see what happens
because we cut them back. Uh, let's see, in this row here, we planted some onions that
were getting shaded out because the puntarelle grew so big. And then up this trellis here,
you guys can see, I've got a lot of the, uh, achochoa. So the achochoa, unlike in the first
be that I planted earlier, uh, these were planted later and these ones still have a
lot of foliage but not any flowers or fruit yet. So, just to let you guys know that, you
know, basically these guys take a little bit of time before they start flowering or producing.
A little bit longer season, because that's what they're used to in the tropics.
So this next bed is, uh, where I have all these trellises built in, and I grew a few
things this year. I gre some, uh, cucumbers, some squash, and, uh, some beans. So as you
guys can see here, I got, uh, beans galore. Like *** Galore from James Bond. Beans galore.
Look at all these green beans here. Just so many. This is only like a dozen plants and
I have green beans forever. So many different green beans, it's insane. Now, my favorite
way to eat the green beans are to find some little baby green beans. I don't even really
like to eat the big ones, I just eat the babies. Uh, the big ones go to my friends, or I'll
actually save the seeds from 'em. Let me see if I can find some baby green beans here for
you guys. Yep, here were go. Here's a nice little baby, nice and small. And I like to
eat the baby ones right of the plant. Mmm, nothing better than a home picked green bean.
It's like you're in the garden of eden. Now besides just the green beans over in this
bed here, I also have some other things I trellised up. alongside the green beans, as
you guys can see here. I've got my favorite cucumbers. They're right here, you guys can
see them. There's a little lemon cucumber. Go ahead and pop that guy off for you guys.
And this plant is loaded up with all different kinds of lemon cucumbers. They have these
little spines that I like to, like, rub off real quick before I eat it. And, uh, these
cucumbers, unlike the standard green cucumbers that have that funny taste in the skin. No
bitter skin, nice and clean, and my lemon cucumbers, because I'm growing them in rock
dust, are a tad bit sweet. I've never tasted any other lemon cucumber that's tasted as
good as mine, but I might be prejudiced. Alright, so in the bed closest to the house,
where I'm also storing my rock dust and other things, we've got a small bed that's pretty
shaded out, so we plant some things that will do fairly good in the shade. And what this
is, this is actually a type of nuts sedge that's actually grown from the little underground
seeds that it makes, that are kind of like, uh, more starchy than fatty, but they actually
taste kind of a little bit fatty. And actually this is the same seed they used to make horchata
out of in the olden days, before they made it with rice. So it's originally from Spain.
Definitely like it a lot. Now, aside from the nuts edge that comes back every year,
and once you plant the nuts edge, you're probably not going to be able to get rid of it. It's
kind of like that. We got another one that's actually hard to get rid of, that's actually
called the New Zealand spinach. As you guys can see here, I have a bounty of New Zealand
spinach, all that I could ever want to eat. All the leafy greens. As they're related to
spinach, but not like spinach too much. They're in the chenipodium family, I believe, and,
uh, we're gonna go ahead and eat that for you guys. Not bad, kind of tastes like spinach,
little bit oxaylic-y, has a weird flavor. I don't particularly care for it too much,
but some people really like it. But the thing is that it grows really easily year round
without me having to do anything, so I think that's definitely a good food to grow, because
in times of famine, I'll always have the New Zealand spinach to eat.
So in this last raised bed here, I've got some borage growing. I love to grow the borage
for the little edible flowers here. I'll just take the flowers and I'll pop it off, just
like this, and I'll be able to eat the flowers. Mmm, definitely delicious, kind of tastes
like, uh, kind of like lettuce a little bit. You can actually also consume the leaves of
the borage plant. They do have some little spiny things, they don't really, uh, they
just kind of poke you, but they don't sting you. And they are edible. I generally like
to eat the leaves of the borage when they're younger, and just, uh, coming out the ground.
Behind here we have what's called fishmint, or, uh, I think it's Houttuynia cordata. Now
these guys look really cool. This guy's another thing that will take over. The goal for this
was to have this as an understory, and, uh, fishmint right here. Nice unique flavor, little
bit drying in the mouth. Probably be good to season up so stuff but not have a salad
out of it. Now after eating that fishmint, I need something
refreshing, so right below here, have a couple earth boxes actually, with some straight up
mint planted. And I plant the mint in the earth boxes for a very specific reason, because
mint are spreaders. If you plant them in a raised bed, they're going to take over your
raised bed, and pretty soon in that raised bed, all you're going to have is mint. I don't
necessarily want that to happen, but I do want to have mint available. So I plant them
in little containers, and man, ooh it smells really nice here. There's several different
kinds of mint in this container here. This is my favorite kind. This is actually called
the chocolate mint and, uh, this is definitely good to have outside your door to grab a little
bit before your hot date. Freshen your breath, mmm. So good.
Phew! I got a minty fresh breath now. I can totally feel it, and it's kinda like nice
and warm. Since I got a fresh breath, anybody wanna go on a date? Nice women out there?
Had to try. Anyways, over in this area we got here are some seedlings coming up, and
this is, these are just volunteers of the, uh, bronze fennel, which I like a lot. I have
videos on this, we're going to let these guys grow up. And then next door, another one of
my favorite perennial leafy green plants. This is actually called bloody dock, or red
vein sorrel. So, uh, when I'm going to eat it, uh, I like to go in and pick the little
small baby leaves right there. It's actually very decorative and almost ornamental. But
yes, these are totally edible. They taste like sorrel, sort of that lemony flavor, you
know. You might want to add a few to a salad, not make a salad out of it. One of the things
I've found to do with this stuff is actually I like to juice it. Just a few leaves in a
juicer, and then I'll pick the larger leaves. Or actually the best thing is to make, uh,
red vein sorrel chips out of it. So much like you'd make kale chips, I use the red vein
sorrel as the leaf to put a batter on, dehydrate it, and actually it will taste a little bit
salty without salt too, because that's what happens when you dehydrate the sorrel. So
delicious. So by my front doorway, we have a wine barrel
growing, because, one again, I try to make the use of every possible space in my house,
my property. I've got this guy right here, and this is actually called pineapple sage.
So if you kind of like smudge the leaves and smell it, it smells kind of pineapply. And
you can use the sage leaves as a sage, as a culinary. But why I'm growing these specifically
are for the little flowers here. So, I always encourage you guys to eat your foods of color,
as you saw, many things in my garden are green that I'm eating. So I really like to grow
things of different colors. When there's different colors in foods, that means there's different
pigments in there. When there's different pigments in the, in the plant, then that means
there's probably different phytochemical and phytonutrients and antioxidants in there.
I'm really into eating a nutrient dense diet, and, you know, I'll just go ahead and pick
these little flowers here. And right on the tip there, this little white cap. You guys
see that? I like to just bite that little cap off. Mmm, it's ever so sweet because there's
like the little flower nectar in there. Another reason to plant these guys is that the hummingbirds
love this. With the hummingbird's beak, sticks it all the way in there, and they get some
of that nectar out. But I like to get the nectar out, and then just eat the delicious
flowers. Mmm, that's good. So I hope you guys enjoyed that front yard
garden tour. Literally this is a food forest. I won't over a good 85% of the things I am
growing right now, but I mean, I'm even seeing things right behind the camera person -- other
things that I'm growing that I didn't even get to share with you guys. I have a limited
amount of time, and the sun's going down. I still got to do a bunch more work in the
garden today, um, but before I go, I wanted to share this last plant with you. I'm always
on the search for new and exotic and rare crops to grow in my garden, and I was really
excited when I found this at the third annual national heirloom expo. Check it out. It's
a little plant with little fruits on it. A lot of them are unripe, and there's one that's
ripe, and uh, I asked the lady there that was selling these, and she said these are
perennial in this climate, they'll keep the leaves and keep fruiting all year long, even
outside in the freezing temperatures. So, uh, I don't know if that's going to happen
yet. I'm going to plant some outside, some in the greenhouse unheated to see how they
do. But I thought I'd share with you guys because I'd never heard of this plant before
and I'm quite intrigued. It's actually called the Jerusalem cherry. There's the tag. It's
actually a solanance plant. Its solanum psuedocapscium. And it's from roostafruits. It says perennial
up to twelve inches tall, full sun, hardy to twenty degrees Fahrenheit. So I'm quite
excited to see how this does, because if it does fruit year round, that's going to definitely
be cool. Last thing I'm gonna share with you guys today is that there's a fruit that actually
is dropped off it, so it's totally ripe, so I'm going to get to share with you guys what
this new fruit that I've never tasted before in my life, and I've never seen before in
my life either. So I'm glad to, uh, roostafruits that makes these guys available. And now I'm
gonna tell you what it tastes like. Uh, she said it tastes like a ground cherry, so we'll
see how this tastes. There's the little berry right there. Let's pop her up. And be careful,
not all solanance family plants are edible, so hopefully she's told me right, and this
one actually is. This thing doesn't taste like a ground cherry, man. This is completely
ripe. I mean I've had luther Burbank wonderberries taste better than this. To me, I taste some
kind of like alklanoid-y type stuff. A little bit astringent. Not the best tasting thing
in the world, man. I'd much rather have some of the Aunt Molly's ground cherries, even
the standard cape gooseberries, also known as incanberries or poha berries than these
guys. But nonetheless, they're pretty cool, and if they're frost hardy to twenty, maybe
I'll grow them in some rock dust and maybe they'll sweeten up a little bit.
Anyways, hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode of my front yard garden tour for the summer
time. Once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. We'll see you next
time, and remember: keep on growing.