How to Grow + Juice Tropical Sugar Cane in the Non-Tropical Desert

Alright! This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for you. In this episode, we're here in the fall time and we're here in Las Vegas, Nevada at the backyard of Derek Martinez from Ava Gardens here on YouTube, link down below to his YouTube channel. I made three videos here in the past. One several years ago, one a few more years after that, and then one actually seriously just about a month ago where I was here in his garden giving you guys a full tour. So if you guys want a full tour, link down below to that last video. I made where we're actually harvesting and eating fresh pawpaws, which people think you can't grow in Las Vegas because it's too hot, because normally it grows in like Pennsylvania and in like Maryland and cooler climates, right? I mean, Derek makes the impossible possible here in Vegas. He grows so many different kinds of tropical fruit trees and other tropical plants here that you wouldn't think would grow here in Vegas. Of course, he also has regular vegetables and annuals as well. He's one amazing gardener, and the cool thing about Derek is if you guys see and want to have some sugar cane, which is what we're going to be processing today, we're going to show you guys that he is growing sugar cane here in Las Vegas. It's growing beautifully, and we're going to get to taste it because I brought my expensive sugar cane juicer over today. That's what we're going to do. Anyways, if you guys want to grow tropical fruit trees, sugar cane, give Derek a call. He's here to help you out, man. He's got his old school knowledge growing up on the land in Belize, where he's like, you know, lived in the jungle and learned how to farm naturally. He uses those very techniques to grow all these amazing tropical fruits and plants here in Las Vegas. So, I want to go ahead and give you guys a quick tour around and just some of the things that are fruiting right now to show you guys. He is legit. He actually says what he's doing. You know, he's not blowing smoke up your you-know-what like a lot of people are allowed to talk these days. You know, Derek puts his money where his mouth is. He just does it, and then he's enjoying fruit out of his garden pretty much every month of the year for the most part here in Vegas, and he always has like one of these or two of these to eat. So, this time, I'm going to show you guys some of the fruits that I'm going to be eating that he said I could eat fresh from his backyard food forest here in Vegas. So, I just want to go ahead and walk you guys in real quick, just show you guys what I'm surrounded with because it's kind of hard to get all this in one shot. I mean, we walk in, there's like a sugar cane, there's a fig, here's a citrus right here. We keep going. You know, there's an Asian pear. He's got more citrus. He's got papayas. This is like a lemon tree here. He's got some pineapple guavas over there, some regular guavas, more apples. He's got, oh, look at these fruits over here. He's got persimmons. He's got cantaloupes. I don't know if you guys can see the cantaloupes hanging in the tree, which is kind of crazy. We walk through here, man, he's got like other things like Pakistani mulberries. He's got different kinds of avocados. He's actually growing some date palms from the pits. He's got, here's all his different avocados here. He's got a big one back there, and there's a hummingbird visiting his garden. All right, so check it out, guys. This is his apple tree that he's got covered right now, and you can see, like, it's not only covered so the birds can't get in here, but it is covered in fruit. Look at the thickness of those fruits, guys. I mean, Derek grows naturally. He's not using any kind of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers to grow this food. You know, when you grow in the right practices, building the soil up like he does, right, you guys could have lots of fruit growing in your backyard. This tree ain't even big. I mean, this tree's like a stick coming out the ground, but it's still got loaded with all kinds of fruits. Of course, he's got, you know, just the standard figs here. He's got jujubes in the back, which I love. Of course, he's got a nice big vegetable garden right here, lots of kale, and I think it's like some collard greens. He's got the jujubes that are getting eaten by the birds right there. Of course, he's got some super giant pomegranates, another one that does really good in the desert. But what we want to go to today is like his little greenhouse, you know, so while many of his plants are not undercover, he has an area that basically he covers in the summer because the summer weather can be too hot for some of these tropicals that like it more mild as well as, you know, he covers this with plastic in the winter to keep these babies alive. So we're going to go here and pick a fruit that he saved for me, and I'm going to show you guys how it tastes. Alright, so now this is actually Derek's Surinam cherry tree that's just flourishing here under the shade, and you can see here we've got some ripe Surinam cherries, right, and he's got the dark ones. Like this is insane, guys. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen Surinam cherries, but this is probably the blackest Surinam cherry that I've ever seen. It's like totally black. He's been saving it for me. It's been a while since I've had one of these, and I've never had one grown in Las Vegas. So we're going to go ahead and try it. Wow! Oh my gosh! I'm not only going to say this is the first Surinam cherry in Vegas I've ever had, this is actually one of the sweetest, ripest, and best Surinam cherries. Like sometimes you eat a Surinam cherry, it has like a bite. Like this is just pure sweetness in my mouth right now, guys. I will say there's a lot of seeds and they're big, but the one flavor explosion I had in my mouth was worth it. I mean, and this is the joy that Derek feels every single day, because every day he'll walk around his garden, he'll harvest like this fruit, that fruit. He never knows what's going to ripen, everything. He's got so many different kinds of things. Something's ripening every day pretty much. And he's eating something. Let's see if we can harvest this guy. Not quite as ripe. We're going to save it on there. I like to eat the ripest fruit, and that's what I got today. Actually Derek saved me another fruit that I want to try for you guys on camera as well. All right, so next up I get to try a Las Vegas grown guava. It's so ripe it's still on the tree here. Look at this. You guys see that? A ripe guava. Now this is a special Hawaiian guava. This is a Hawaiian guava tree that was literally brought back from Hawaii. And so we're just going to go ahead and pop that off. And the amazing thing about the guava, Ray, is you want to smell it? Oh my gosh, man. It smells like I'm in the tropics, but yet I'm in a backyard in Las Vegas. I remember hiking in Hawaii like down like steep hills, and there's like, it's just littered with guava trees. And the fruits are actually all got fruit flies in there. And I always encourage you guys to open up your guavas to make sure there's no fruit flies. Oh my gosh, look at this, guys. Insanity. Pink insanity. So I love the pink ones versus the white ones. Oh, I love the smell. It smells like the tropics, and I'm here in Vegas, and this is the fall time, which is insane. It's currently October. Guys, seriously? I mean, I've had like wild guavas in Hawaii. This tastes more flavorful, maybe because the tree's more stressed out in Vegas. This is one of the best guavas I've ever had, though, seriously, guys. I mean, homegrown, nurtured and cared for by the man himself, Derek Martinez, grows in natural methods, and also picks his fruit when it's ripe. Very important. Not like stores when you go buy guavas in Vegas, right? They're imported from Mexico, they're picked purely, and they're rated. So if you want the best, grow yourself. All right, so I wanted to give you guys a long shot and show you guys actually what we'll be harvesting today is actually a sugar cane. You know, he has several clumps of sugar cane planted all around his yard here, and we're going to be harvesting that one main one that's kind of leaning to the side because it kind of gets in his walking path, and he's like, John, come over, man, we've got to harvest the sugar cane. I've been waiting for you to come over with your juicer so we can juice it on up. But the amazing thing about sugar cane is, you know, people are like, I'll use all this white sugar, it's highly processed, right? They take out all the nutrition except give you just the sugar itself. Sugar cane, on the other hand, is a whole food, right? We're going to remove some of the fiber by juicing it, but now we get the essence of the plant, including all the structured water, all the vitamins, all the minerals, all the phytonutrients, including the nutrients in the sugar cane wax that the sugar cane plant makes itself to put in the plant, and there's studies on the benefits of the sugar cane wax as well as the different polyphenols and, of course, the natural sugar that is not concentrated because you're drinking it in pure water. I've tried to grow sugar cane before on my properties, and when I grew it and harvested it and I tasted it, it like really wasn't that sweet. So we're going to test out today to see if Derek grows good sugar cane like he grows all his other amazing fruits that I got to try today. So up next, I'm just going to go ahead and harvest the sugar cane, and we're going to show you guys the process of juicing it. So now we're going to go ahead and harvest a sugar cane from Derek's backyard patch here, and you guys can see he's got sugar cane here, here. He actually uses it very intelligently, right? So he actually uses it and plants it around tender, younger fruit trees to actually act as like a block for the sun and a block for the wind. So he's using it literally as a windbreak as well as a sunbreak. So this is an excellent use of sugar cane because now he has an edible windbreak. I mean, you could use like a structure with bamboo and like fabric on it, but he's using an edible protection from his plants that then later when they get large, he could cut down and juice or eat. So there's more food. So anyways, as you can see here, the sugar cane is just getting unruly. It's kind of like bumping in and dropping into his pistachio tree here. So we're just going to harvest it. So the trick with harvesting, guys, is I want you guys to always look for the fattest sugar cane. The fatter the sugar cane, the more mature it is, right? Here's a young sugar cane. We wouldn't want to harvest this. This doesn't have a lot of juice in it. It hasn't been growing enough. You want to let this get a lot bigger. So that's the first step. You want to find a nice fat one. Now the next step is once you've got a fat one, you want to try to harvest it at the very bottom, as low as you could possibly go, even right down in the ground if you could get down there, because the lower on the sugar cane, it's fatter, it's the most mature and it's also going to be the sweetest. So we're going to see if we can get like super deep down in here. This one kind of falls over. Let's see how we can get in here. Wow, it's a curvy one. We're not going to get in here and just chop it on the bottom here. All right, let's see. One, two, three. All right, so we got the sugar cane. Check it out. All right, check it out, guys. This thing is super long. Look how long this is. Totally insane. All right, guys, so I want to show you guys this, how much we're going to juice actually. you don't see this too often in the fields, because normally in the fields they'll harvest well before this point, but he's just kind of been letting them grow for years, but you guys can see his sugar cane is so healthy that at some point the sugar cane is like a tree. So it actually has one main shoot and then it just has a lot of offshoots. So these are all the offshoots on the top. Look at that. It's insane. There's like at least a half dozen or more offshoots. So all these offshoots are quite valuable. We don't want to juice these because they're kind of young, but if I want to show you guys a close up on these offshoots here. So if you guys look at the offshoot here, this is one of the offshoots off the main cane and this offshoot literally has roots coming out of it. So this is ready for the sugar cane to get so tall that it actually knocks over, drops on the ground, and then these would actually hit the soil and then create new roots and then create new sugar cane plants. So what we're going to do in this case is just, we're just going to go ahead and break it off. And look at that. This is a whole new sugar cane not quite ready to go in the ground because what you want to do is if you guys want to plant this, you guys want to knock off some of the top. And right now you've got all the roots coming out. Now you've got the cane coming out. It's going to have all the sugar to support the roots to feed it. You're just going to put this in dirt, bury it, and they're going to root up for you and you're going to have new sugar cane plants growing. Now the cool thing about Derek is that Derek's going to take all the ones that we're basically making today, he's going to pot them up for you guys. So if you guys are looking to grow sugar cane in Las Vegas, Derek is the man. Don't order sugar cane from somewhere else, from Florida to grow in Vegas. This sugar cane has been grown in Vegas. It's acclimated to the climate. It grows well in Vegas. I could vouch for that. I mean, look at this big sugar cane, man, that we're going to juice to make sure it's sweet. Derek's got the starts. If you even want to buy them, plant them yourself, or if you want him to grow them for you, if you're from Hawaii and you moved to Vegas and you never planted anything in your life, that's all right. Derek's got your back. He will come over and build a garden in your backyard, a food forest, with all the amazing guavas and sugar cane and everything, just like he has here. And if you're nice to him, maybe he'll let you come over so you can see how amazing his backyard is so that you can maybe envision how your backyard could look also here in Vegas. Anyways, once we cut off that, we're just going to leave the top for him so he can propagate all these later. So we're just going to go ahead and cut it right here. And now look at this. This is one heavy piece of sugar cane, guys. I'm not joking. It's so fat. We're going to go ahead and show you guys how we're going to juice this and turn this into juice, and we're going to find out if this really ripens up and tastes sweet here in Las Vegas. All right. So we got a nice piece of sugar cane that we just cut off. The next thing is we're going to go ahead and wash it. We're just going to take a wet towel and just basically wash off all the debris, any kind of dust or dirt that may be on there. And I want to show you guys this, right. Like if you go to sugar cane shops, a lot of sugar cane shops may take steel wool and like brush this, and they're removing this basically white wax. But if I take my finger, I could scrape off the white wax. Gets underneath my fingernail, right. I want to encourage you guys to leave the wax on, right. Wax on. Keep the wax on. There's nutrients actually in the wax that there are published scientific studies on. So when you juice sugar cane with the wax, some of that wax is going to end up in your juice and you're going to get the benefits of that. This is something you don't get when you get white sugar, right. You don't get the green chlorophyll. You don't get the polyphenols and different antioxidants, the structured water when you guys are eating white sugar. This is totally different than eating white sugar. So the next thing we're going to do, some people will just take the sugar cane and chop it up in little bits and then chew on it because our teeth are our best juicers. That being said, it's a lot of work because this sugar cane here at Derek's is quite fibrous. So what we got today is, we got a sugar cane juicer. This is actually the David's Mighty Mini Cane Machine. David's Cane Machines is a company that makes the world's best sugar cane juicers that I've found to date. He's been in this industry for a long time. He works directly with the factories to basically make the best performing machines that aren't going to break on you like a lot of the cheap ones. I mean a good sugar cane juicer runs in excess of a thousand dollars. I do not encourage you guys to try to juice sugar cane in any other household juicer. There's videos online where people blend in a blender and strain it or put in a high speed machine and cram it in there. That's going to break your juicer guys. Don't do it. If you guys want to juice sugar cane, get a proper juicer to do it. There's many different online websites that may sell inexpensive cane juicers from China. Maybe you know, for hand cranked ones, two to four hundred dollars. Maybe electric ones, five hundred plus. You know, you guys get what you pay for. So I encourage you guys to research and buy a machine that's not going to break. And if it does break, make sure you guys can get parts for it. And I do not recommend the squid style machines that only have two rollers. Those ones aren't going to juice cane well. So as you guys can see, we cut this at an angle so we can easily feed it into the cane juicer. So let's go ahead and put our jar underneath the cane juicer and turn the cane juicer on. Alright, let's go ahead and juice some Las Vegas grown sugar cane. Oh my gosh, it's almost, this is almost too fat for the juicer to fit in. So we're just going to go ahead and shove this in there. Too fat for the cane juicer, man, I can't get it in. Alright, we're going to have to cut this cane in half. Alright, so we split this cane into smaller pieces so the juicer can handle it because Las Vegas grown sugar cane is too thick. So let's go ahead and put a thin piece in. See if we can get some juice out. Look at this, Vegas grown sugar cane juice coming right out of the juicer. Look at that, we're almost up to a half a quart, three quarts of a quart. This stuff is so juicy. Almost a quart of juice coming out, Vegas grown sugar cane juice all grown here in Las Vegas. I wouldn't have believed this if I wasn't here to harvest it and juice it myself. Look at that. That one stalk, guys, wasn't even that big. It's like made one whole quart of sugar cane juice, super fresh, and we're going to taste if it's actually sweet or not. So that's the real big test. Yeah, it could be nice and fat, but is it sweet is the question. We're going to turn our cane juicer off, move that out, and we're going to go ahead and get Derek in the shot so he can enjoy some of this fresh grown cane juice with me while we talk more about growing sugar cane in Vegas. Alright, so we got that fresh squeezed sugar cane juice we're going to be sharing with Derek. So the first question is, Derek, did you ever think you'd be drinking the sugar cane juice literally out of your backyard? No, because I'm not used to it already by just break it down, chop it up, and just chew it, because that's how we do it in Belize, in the country. We chop down stuff and just bring it up, and we just chew on it, because that's what we've been taught. But first time when I see you do this, excited, you know, I need to get me a machine, you know, because I'm very excited. Alright, let's go ahead and pour it, man. Make life simple, huh? Yeah, so I mean, chewing it up, you could only eat so much sugar cane, so surely if you're just chewing it like you did, you got so much more sugar cane than you could just chew up, man. Like you can't, you can't even, you can't even chew it all, you got too much, man. You're doing, you're growing sugar cane too good in Vegas. You should open a sugar cane juice shop, man. Soon, soon. Alright, man, to your health, man. Las Vegas grown sugar cane juice, first ever on E on YouTube. Not going to see those other places, man, because nobody else grows sugar cane in Vegas like Derek, and they ain't got a juicer either. Wow. If, if, if I was never here, I would have think you just pour some sugar in there. Oh, really? Yeah, if he was not, if I was never here to see, you know, for myself. So I will say that I, I've drank a lot of sugar cane juice over my years, and I'm going to say this tastes more like minerally, like very rich in minerals, like I'm just literally feeding my body, and while you're, you know, you're tasting the sugar, I also taste the sugar, but to me it's not like the major player, you know, like some sugar cane juice bars I've been to, like they'll juice the sugar cane, they're sugar cane juice and sweet, they'll add white sugar in there, so then it's like overpowering, right. I prefer sugar cane juice that's not sickly sweet, guys. The reason why I drink sugar cane juice is not for the sugar, man, it's for all the phytonutrients, man. You got some chlorophyll in there, you got the sugar cane wax, you got the different antioxidants, polyphenols, you got the trace minerals. You can't forget the sugar cane here is a grass, it's not a regular vegetable, right. It absorbed more of the trace minerals, and that's why it's important to add things like rock dust, which is what Derek does here in the garden, so now the sugar cane can be more nutritious when we drink it, and I'm going to say it definitely is. So Derek, why did you decide to grow sugar cane in Las Vegas? Well, I grew up with a lot of sugar cane, and when you grow it in Las Vegas, you grow different tropical trees, subtropical trees, then it starts to serve like a fan. So when it cools, when the weather is hot, 100 and something degrees, and the wind is blowing, it starts to cool down the area, you know, make the area get cooler. And when the weather is cool, it's like a windbreaker, because it slows down the frost or whatever, it slows it down, and it gives you good nutrients too, you know, because in Belize now, when we get it and we chop it up, the first time I see it, it's like what to do, juice it. You've never seen anybody juice sugar cane before? No, like close up, I see it on TV. I see. Yeah man, but close up like this, it's very exciting, you know, and because in the country now, like I said, in Belize, we chop it and we chew on it, but the reason why we chew on it too, it clean our teeth, you know. Brush your teeth after sugar cane juice. Yeah. So this is a big different story here, you know what I mean, that's why now, like I said, I need to get me a machine, because the excitement is here now, because I plan to plant more sugar cane, different kind. I never know there is so many kind, but since I study about it, there is so many kind, so I need to get me some more, you know, because it's good nutrients for the body too, energy. Yeah, you could use this for like the base of a smoothie, you could mix it in stuff, you could use it as a base of a salad dressing, you know, blend it up with some like tahini and some miso and some garlic, makes a really good dressing. So Derek, how long ago did you start growing the sugar cane in Vegas? Well, I would say like five years ago, five, six, between five, six years ago. When I first started, I ordered them online. For three years I failed, because I don't really know what I'm doing. You failed, so you weren't able to do it. Yeah, I wouldn't know, you know. The first time it come, I kill it. Second time, I kill it. The third time, I tell my wife, you know what, the third time is a charm. You order it for me, I won't kill it. I'll be like, all right, but the third time when I get it, well, when I say the third time is a charm, it work for some people, not for me. I kill it. I give up. I say I give up, you know. Then my neighbor come, my neighbor say, hey, Derek, you want a sugar cane? I'm like, no, I give up. She was like, just try it, you know. So I say, you know what, let me put my heart and soul into it. And I start mix my soil, because I start think about when you're in Belize, it's like they grow around the quenelle or whatever, muddy, muddy soil. So I say, all right. And so when I do it, boom, I hit the jackpot right there, you know. And I start scatter about, I start sell it to other people, give it to other people. Now it's all over Las Vegas. So that's what I learned after like four try, not three, but four try. That's when I get it, you know, and let it be adaptable. Then I start do it from the greenhouse, I bring it out, and I put it all over the yard. Then I start issue it out to other people. So now Las Vegas grown sugar cane. Bless. Yeah, so I'm going to say, you know, hey, one of the experiences of gardening and to succeed as a gardener, you have to fail, right. If Derek didn't keep trying on how to grow sugar cane, he would have thought, oh, I can't do it. And many people may say, you can't grow sugar cane in Vegas, it's impossible. But they haven't met Derek yet, because he figured out the way to do it. Not only creating the right soil to grow it in, more importantly, getting the right varieties at the right maturity level. Maybe he got the ones on the mail order, and they were the wrong varieties, or maybe they weren't hardened off to the Las Vegas climate, right. He got cuttings from a friend locally that was, you know, been growing here for years. He's been growing it for years. He knows it can be done. He's got the right soil. He's dialed it all in, so he can now have sugar cane juice out of his backyard, if he had a juicer, but he's got a friend with one, so that's the next best thing. So Derek, I want to ask you, because sugar cane is a tropical plant. Vegas, this is not the tropics. This is the subtropics. It freezes in the wintertime. What does the sugar cane do in the wintertime? Because it gets too cold, does it freeze and does it die? What happens? Well, my one keep on growing, because what I say, I keep on based on the soil. I got living soil. What I mean by living soil, you can come to my soil anytime, and you'll see animals just crawl right through it. The bugs and the worms, they keep on crawling. So that make the soil keep on moving, breathing, and the insect, different type of insect, different type of worms, they keep on breathing and poop and do all them stuff, and it make the soil get richer and richer and make the roots, and it's like, like I say, that's like living in the country, when you see your soil moving. You could be right here standing and just look at the soil and the soil moving, but it's the animal then, and that's what, when the animal poop and everything, it keep the soil, even through the winter, it keep the soil warm. Once the animal start move around, the animal, the animal, they keep, make the soil warm, and the animal, they keep warm, and everything start recycle itself. So everything I base on is the soil. So that's why I say, none of my trees, even in winter, summertime, like looking like they burned up or whatever, because of the growing again, you take care of Mother Earth, and Mother Earth will take care of you, put it that way, very simple. So that's why my sugarcane, even through the wintertime, they keep on growing, because you take care of the mother, your mother, your mother will take care of you back. And that's what's going on, that's why they keep growing even through the winter. Yeah. Yeah, so basically what Derek's telling you is that he just grows naturally, he works on having the best soil possible, and, you know, the reason why I know this works is because I've studied this kind of stuff. And here's the thing, guys, the healthier your soil is, the healthier plants are. The healthier your plants are, the more resilient they are to stressors, whether that's cold stress to a point, whether that is the heat stress, you know, it's like us, if we eat McDonald's diet, you're more likely to get sick, because you're eating the junk food. If you're eating a healthy diet, then you're going to have a stronger immune system, our bodies could fight off diseases and whatnot, you know, if we get proper exercise and eat properly. Same thing with the plants, right, Derek is not sitting here dumping on 10-10-10 chemical fertilizers into his ground to grow the sugar cane. You do that, you probably will kill your sugar cane in Vegas, that, you know, needs to have the extra oomph of good healthy soil to grow the cane. So Derek, this patch behind me, I know you have multiple patches of sugar cane growing around your yard, how old is this patch, how long did it take to get this thick, which I would personally say this cane right here is ready for juicing if we wanted to juice it today. Yeah, but this one here, I don't know, probably around four years. Four years? Yeah, probably like around four years. And have you been harvesting it the whole time? Oh yeah, a lot. A lot. That's why these look sharp. The other ones, they're long, they flip over, and all them stuff, but the patch, the patch here about like around four years, I've been reaping a lot from it too, you know, I just cut them and chew them. You cut them and chew them? Yeah, I take my time and just chew them, never been in no rush, you know, like I get my, I cut it down, I cut from here to here, then I shape it off with a knife, and just looking for the inside and just chew it. Yeah, so it's been like around four years, but the longer part of them, like I said, you know, they always flip over and we need to walk past, you know what I mean? So I always cut it and leave this new one to shoot up. Each time I cut it, they got the new one in them that's shooting up like this, you know what I mean? Yeah, but the patch is four years. And then how does the, we talked about how the sugarcane does in the wintertime, where you said it still keeps growing, how does it do in the summertime? Does it, does it like, does it get all brown because the heat's too hot, or what happens? Same thing, looking beautiful, looking nice, and the summertime, it grow more faster than the wintertime. So the summertime, you just love the summertime, but like I said, I base on the soil again to bring up all the nutrients, you know? So you pour a little water in there, and you can see the difference with the sugarcane on summertime. Wintertime, I don't really give it water, but summertime, you give it a little bit of water and that's it, you know? I want to give that little bit of water because I base on the mulch. I do a lot of mulching too, if you watch my whole yard. So if I pour a little bit of water, it keep up, it keep it up with the mulching, you know? I just, I just need to wet the mulch on top, and that's it. And everything start break down, and make the soil get thicker and thicker. And that's how the sugarcane, they live their life too. The bugs them, the worms them do do, and everything. And that's it, you know? And summertime, like I said, it grow more faster than the wintertime, and looking more nicer too. So Derek, if somebody wants to grow their own sugarcane and you sold them the plants or even went over to their house and planted them for them in the good soil so that they know they're going to have sugarcane, how many years would it take them from the time you plant the plants from a pot into their backyard until they're harvesting their own sugarcane like we did today? I want to say a couple of years. Couple of years, like two years. Yeah, two years. Two years, two years, you get a nice amount. Three years, you get a amount, big amount, yeah. So after two years, you start to reap. That's it. Because I have them already in pots, I have some in pots already, ready, and I know when I sell my pots to anyone, they got the worms in there already, everything in there. Just natural. I don't put them in there, but the soil that I make, they find their way inside it, you know? So it's like natural, and if you treat it the way I treat mine, it will come up nice because it's already worms and stuff in there already in the pot. But if I sell it to you all and you all put chemical in there, you all will kill the worms and everything, don't think it will be like mine's. I don't think it will be like mine's, it will be different because chemical is different from natural growing. It's totally different. But if you grow it natural, in two years' time, you're ready to reap. Three years' time, you're ready to reap good amount. So, yeah. What tips would you give people besides getting the right variety, using the right soil, what other tips do you have to grow sugarcane in Vegas or other climates that might be considered impossible to grow sugarcane? I would say when you first start out, once you know your north, south, east, and west, and look for that cool area because most of the trees there that die from the winter is because of the location. If you put any kind of tropical or subtropical where it's west at and the west wind come and hit it when it's cold, and don't hit it and hit it, it will kill the tree, even the sugarcane. So, you always have to look for that corner where you can block it off from the wind because it's the frost and the wind will kill it in wintertime. Any tropical or subtropical that died is from the frost and when the wind come and that frost come, it's a done deal. Even if I sell you the sugarcane and I say the sugarcane is good or you order any plant online or whatever and they say it's cold hardy or it can take full sun, Las Vegas is totally different. You always have to look for that location, that good location. That's the only way your subtropical and tropical will survive, like the sugarcane. Put it in a nice corner where you can know it won't get so many wind, so many sun, and you can start off from there, then when it multiply after a year time, two years, then scatter it all over your yard. That's the only way you'll win. Cool. So, if somebody's not good at figuring out what's the best location in my yard, do you do consults and go to people's house, maybe even design them a food forest like you have in your backyard? Yeah, that's what I do. That's my job. I go to people's house and I go create something for them. If they want, I show them to plant a couple of trees. I'm like a teacher going to your house, like I always say. I teach you how to plant a couple of trees or if you don't get it, I can go back again or I can just go to your yard and do it just like I do my yard. Take it over and just plant out tropical or subtropical. And I want to tell people like once again, I got my LLC and everything I'm equipped, you know what I mean? And I'm legit and I can do this thing for you all and take no problem because I used to it already and this is my life, you know? It's not hard work. I love it. You know what I mean? Like I say, if you want me to teach you all or you want me to do it for you all, and like I say, it make no difference to me, you know what I mean? But like I say, I got good mulch, I do good mulching, I don't use no chemical and we're good to go. Yeah. So that's what we do, that's what I do. Alright Derek, that's great man. So here's the thing, like how can somebody get a hold of you if they want to, you know, start growing the sugar cane to buy the plant starts or for you to even to, you know, do a consult and tell them, hey, plant it here, here and here and sell them the plants or even do all the work for them, how can they contact you? Well, my number is 702-759-9781, 702, let me repeat it, 702-759-9781, LLC, and next thing too, when you contact me, you can always leave a message because once I'm with a client, I give my 100% to that client and I try to listen to the phone, once I'm in the backyard or whatever, I don't listen to no phone, I just base on my plants them, you know, and the trees them or whatever and think and make sure everything grow right and everything grow good. So that's how people contact me, but like I said, always leave a message and I will get back to you all, probably a day or two, but I'll get back. Alright, Derek, yeah, you about to sound as big as I am, but yeah, I mean, here's the thing guys, like, I've been, this is like my fourth or fifth time to Derek's house and I'm going to say, this man is legit, like, I mean, if I want to grow tropicals in Vegas, I'm going to him, man, because he done it all, I haven't done, I grow mostly annuals, I have a few tropicals I play around with and actually I brought Derek some of my tropical vegetable plants, so we'll see if he can keep those alive, but every time I come here, man, from the first time, you can put, check the videos down below, right, to check them out, right, there's always more and more growing, like, he used to have a bigger patch of, like, lawn, and I'm like, whoa, Derek, you took out your lawn, man, he's, like, growing more stuff, and he keeps experimenting, like, he experimented with sugar cane, he's experimented with super hard stuff, man, like the coconut palm that I talked about, like, in the last episode and the breadfruit tree, he's always experimenting and this is how you learn, right, nobody has done the kind of work that Derek is doing in Las Vegas with the tropicals, I mean, yeah, we got the university extension who deals with all the, you know, cold season crops and the standard crops, but Derek is literally pushing the boundaries with what he's doing here, and if you guys want to push the boundaries and grow what he's growing here, give this man a call, you'll be glad you did because he'll help you out, get you started to grow all the amazing things he's grown here. Now, yeah, some of it does take some work, man, a lot of, some of his stuff is undercover, but the sugar cane is totally not undercover, and every time I come over, it's just bigger and bigger, and now you guys know, now, that growing sugar cane in Las Vegas and potentially other places where they say you can't grow can be grown if you use the right techniques and of course you could also make your own sugar cane juice, I encourage you guys to stop drinking the soda and start drinking the fresh sugar cane juice, I'll put links down below to some videos I made in the past about sugar cane juice, how to store sugar cane juice for up to 7 days, how to make it into a sugar cane juice soda, I did that with my nephew one time, we basically carbonated sugar cane juice with lemon and lime in there, off the hook, I encourage you guys to consume more fruits and vegetables, right, use what you got, right, Derek has so much sugar cane, I wish this was my backyard, I would have been harvesting the sugar cane by now because I would have used it all, because I got the juicer, but anyways, we're going to go ahead, before I leave, we're going to go ahead and make Derek at least a gallon of juice today, and he'll be able to use it over the next several weeks, alright, so Derek, any final words of wisdom that you'd like to share, my fellow gardeners watching us today? Well, don't stop growing, keep on growing, you'll fail, you'll try again, because things are getting expensive at the store, and it will get more expensive, and you don't know if you're getting, when you buy organic, you're not really sure if you're getting organic, so it's good to grow it yourself, and just keep on growing, like what General John say, keep on growing, yeah, alright, yeah, keep on growing, and yeah, the thing is this, man, like guys, when you guys buy stuff at the store, they're not adding the trace minerals in the garden, they're not growing it in the best growing practices possible, the prices are going up, and the food quality is going lower, the way you guys could put a big dent in that is by growing your own, I mean, I'm here looking at leafy greens, I've had fruits off Derek's trees, Derek's eating out of his garden every single day of the year, and you guys could do that too if you live in Vegas, I don't do any kind of consulting, but you know, I'm going to recommend Derek here, because he'll come over and he'll get you that vegetable garden you've always wanted, he'll get you to grow sugar cane, something that I don't even do, he'll get you to grow some of these tropical fruit trees that he's growing, and he'll be straight up with you, telling you guys if it's easy or if it's hard, of course, I would encourage you guys to grow the stuff that's easy if you're brand new, unless you're going to have Derek make the rounds and actually come back to your place and take care of your stuff, because some of these things, if he just lets you take care of it, some of it ain't going to make it, because it needs some special love and care that I can say only he would provide, because some of the stuff is like, I'm not going to do that to make that fruit tree, but Derek loves this stuff, you know. So yeah, reach out to him, his contact information is down below in the video if you want to contact him if you live here in Vegas or the surrounding area, so that you guys can grow your own fruits and vegetables in your yard, I recommend him highly. So if you guys enjoyed this episode today, learning how to make fresh sugar cane juice out of the backyard here in Las Vegas, Nevada, please be sure to give this video a big thumbs up, more importantly, share this with other people, if you have a community of people from Hawaii, for example, and you live in Vegas and you're like, they want to all grow sugar cane, let them watch this video so that they can see, this is a legit thing, it can be done, you just got to call the man that does it, his name is Derek. Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss my new and upcoming episodes, I've got them every 5-7 days, you want to know when they show up or what you'll be learning on my YouTube channel, all these new content sharing on the power and how to grow more fresh fruits and vegetables, make sure you click the little bell so you get notified as many of you as you can, and finally be sure to check my past episodes, the past episodes are a wealth of knowledge, over 1700 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to teach you guys how to grow your own food at home, and links down below of course to all the videos I've done in the past with Derek, showing the journey of his amazing backyard tropical food forest here in Las Vegas, Nevada. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time and until then remember, keep on growing.