These Vegetables Grow Like Fruit Trees Plant Once Eat Forever

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com today with another exciting episode for you. Today I'm here in Davie, Florida and I'm at the property of Natural High Farm and Gardens. And on this property here there's like three or four different businesses, like a little herb shop, apothecary, maybe like some kind of like restaurant and a fruit stand. And also more importantly, I am here for the Three Amigos Growers, which you guys can see is like the farm behind me. But over on this side, you guys can see there's a huge nursery behind me. So before I go into the nursery to show you guys all the amazing plants they sell, we're going to go back into the food forest, because what the food forest does, it shows you how you can use the plants inside their nursery in your landscape, transform your front yard into an edible food forest with edible vegetable plants and of course some fruits as well. This place does not specialize in any necessarily fruit trees, while they do have a few, there's plenty of other places doing fruit trees. The real reason why I'm here is more important than fruit trees in my opinion, it's the namesake of my YouTube channel called Growing Your Greens. I want you guys to grow your leafy greens and eat them every single day. Leafy greens are the most nutritious, nutrient-dense foods on the entire planet, with the least amount of calories! And they're so good for you, they're going to improve your life, you're probably going to live longer because of it, and unfortunately, when you live here in South Florida, you can't grow lettuce year-round, and everybody goes to Costco and buys a spring mix and a baby organic spinach and crap, when it's shipped all the way over from California or other parts of the country. When all you guys in Florida here, in South Florida, are so lucky, you can grow some amazing trees that look like a tree or a big bush, you can go outside your front door, pick those greens, eat them raw or cook them up, every single day of the year, and then you can save tons of money, because you wouldn't be buying stupid spring mix imported all the way from California that costs a ton of money at a whole paycheck. Anyways, let's go back into the food forest and check out what they're growing here and what you can grow in your front yard. So this tree literally grows like a weed, I don't even think they water it here, it's just basically the natural rainfall, it has deep tap roots, one grown from seed, that's why you don't want to buy a moringa from a cutting that has a weak root system, you want to grow it from seed, which is what they sell here, and they have the flowers here, which are pretty and edible, that's good. And then to harvest the leaves, depending on how you're going to use the leaves, like the lower leaves here, you can just snap off the whole branch, and then you could go and just take it all off and then you could cook this, you could also juice these, you could eat these raw but they're a lot more stronger tasting, so if you want to eat them raw, what I would do is I would come up to this, and I would come and maybe pick these little tender shoots right here, and then these would go in salads, these are so delicious, a lot more mild tasting, they still have a little bite, a really strong bite, but these are like the anti-cancer isothiocyanates in there that are really healthy for you. I mean, there's comparisons online, you could see like Moringa's more nutritious than kale for example, you could buy Moringa powder, but why buy powder that's been harvested, dried, and then you have to buy it at great expense when you could just literally grow a tree, these trees, they have a problem keeping these under control, because they're super tall and they just go nuts. This is probably the number one tree you have to grow if you live here in South Florida that you could eat from year round. Alright guys, so we're still walking on our way to the food forest in the back, but I wanted to stop here and share with you guys this, we got like three different varieties of basil, we got like African blue basil I believe, and you guys could see all the bees and birds and whatever coming around it, like the insects, they will attract pollinators, if you want to make more leaves, just cut off all the blooms, if you want to learn how to use these blooms, link it down below, I like to actually infuse these into juices, which will give it a really nice flavor, super medicinal, all these basils, and you know, for a lot of parts of the country, the basil is just an annual, you grow the basil in the summer when it's really hot, and in the wintertime when it's too cold, the basils don't make it, that's why if you try to go buy basil at Whole Foods, in the refrigerated section, it's often like wilted and black, because it doesn't like cold storage, it loves the heat of the summer here in South Florida, so literally you can plant a basil once, get the right variety, it'll grow year after year, look at these, these are like little shrubs and bushes here, this is actually a holy basil, a Krishna basil, it kind of has like a purple leaf, and you can see it's like literally grown into like a little tree here, this is another kind of holy basil on the back here as well, so yeah, I mean here in South Florida you should never have to buy basil at the store, if you see somebody buying basil at the store, you should laugh at them, because they just don't know that you should be growing it, because you'll have like basil forever, literally. Alright guys, so this is the beginning of the food forest, and you guys can see this amazing tree right here behind me, this is like one tree, look at this, they got one stalk and then it kind of branches up, I mean it looks like it could be just some kind of ornamental tree in your yard, but what this is, this is basically tree spinach or chaya, this must be cooked to be eaten, or it is highly toxic, so, but you could have basically cooked greens, you know, every single day of the year, look at this, this is beautiful, so you could just come here, and you would just get some scissors, and you just want to come and just cut the leaves off, right, and then you could steam this, we're going to steam these in the Instant Pot tonight, and cook them up, just like spinach, they're super nutritious, very delicious, and the cool thing about this plant is like once you buy it once, you literally just take some of the cuttings off the plant, you stick it in the ground, and then it re-roots, and then grows more, so these plants are very prolific, and you could have lots of greens to eat every single time of year, once again these ones are used for cooked only. So the next edible basically tree you could grow, basically it's this, it's like, as far as I'm aware, this looks like it's one plant, it literally was planted once, it grew up, it fell over, and then it made all these offshoots, so you can see all the offshoots, or the stems, the branches coming up, and this is so massive guys, like, this is the best plant for South Florida for your lettuce substitute, right, you could eat it raw, you could eat it cooked, this is known, I call it the bailey plant, or alhubiscus manuhat, or edible hibiscus, when I'm harvesting it, I just harvest like the little small tender leaves like this, like the ones just coming out, for eating raw, it's a really nice mild flavor, little bit gelatinous, not anywhere near Malabar spinach, but it's super amazing, you could also of course cook this as well, once again very easy to propagate, you basically just take cuttings of it, and you stick it in the ground, and they'll grow new roots, and look at this, this thing is so huge, it's all over the place man, imagine just having this in your front yard right, you'd never have to buy lettuce from Costco or Whole Foods, again, save tons of money, super easy. Alright guys, so we're standing here in the food forest, and there's so many different like crops like around us, this is the pandan grass, here they're growing the yacon, which actually I like a lot, looks like it's doing very well, I grow this in Northern California myself, but it looks like even healthier growing here in South Florida, they got some figs, but what I really want to cover for you guys are some of the most valuable food forest crops, in my opinion, that they're growing here, that are super easy to grow, that can grow year round, and provide you guys with more greens to eat, so let's check it out. Alright so the next one I'm not super familiar with because I don't grow it, but this is the surname spinach that I have seen before, you guys can see it's another nice beautiful plant whether it grows in one place or whether it reseeds on itself and comes up on its own, it'll grow year round easily despite the heat, of course another one I love a lot that I grow a lot of myself, even in Las Vegas in excess of 100 degrees, actually today was over 100 degrees in Vegas, it's this guy right here, this is the longevity spinach, so I find the longevity spinach tends to like a little bit more sun, then the next spinach I'll share with you guys, which is the Okinawan spinach that, in my opinion, and based on my experience, tends to prefer more shade. Alright guys, next one is the Okinawan spinach, I prefer this more than the longevity spinach because it actually has like a purplish tinge on the bottom, so there's more anthocyanins in here, if you have a nice shady spot, for example, they got this underneath a fruit tree, I think this is a lychee tree, it grows really well next to the coffee berry, you guys can see the coffee berry plant right there, just loaded up with coffee berries, but this really thrives in like a more shaded spot, and you guys can see this is like just a big mass of the Okinawan spinach, so we're going to just go ahead and harvest a leaf here for you guys, try it, it's been a while since I've had Okinawan because I grow longevity at home, I mean, to me, once again, that's a very neutral flavor and actually has a nice kind of like hit, I don't know, I'd say it's like, I'd say it's a really unique flavor that's like no other, I mean, I really like this actually more than the longevity, but in Vegas, like, the longevity does way better and this does not do as well, but of course, it depends on your context, you know, if you have a nice shady spot, do the Okinawan, if you have a more sunny spot, do the longevity. Alright, next up, guys, we got another, this one's kind of more of an annual that re-seeds on its own in Las Vegas for me, maybe here it'll grow year round, maybe it won't, but nonetheless, this is called the Jewels of Oak here, it's kind of like the other one I just showed you, the Suriname spinach, but yeah, there's all these unique greens that you guys need to learn about, right, everybody's eating lettuce, but you need to adopt the greens that are going to grow in the climate that you've adapted and are living in, right, that's why I'm really a big fan of growing this, because it grows year round compared to like normal lettuce that yes, you can grow in the, you know, in the fall season, which is the summer season for normal crops, but why grow those crops you can only eat for the winter time here in South Florida, you know, like the northern and things, when you can grow these year round, right, that's definitely a nice mild tasting leafy green. Alright, guys, so it's really hard for me to say which one is my favorite green, I would say buy all of them and see which one you like, and that's the amazing thing because they have a food forest, you know, you can come with one of the employees here and, you know, they can supervise you and maybe they'll even harvest a leaf so you guys can try them, but you know, this is one of my favorites to grow in Las Vegas, easily handles 100 degrees, this is known as the Egyptian spinach or Malahica, and this is the common variety that is most common, right, and these are nice fairly large leaves, they're really neutral flavor, it's related to like the okra plant, it also makes these little pods, when the pods are young and green you can eat them and they're actually better than okra, they're not really mucilaginous and when the pods get more mature, then you save them for seed, so we're gonna go ahead and try this. Once again, to me this is a nice like salad, lettuce substitute, so like combine half of these with half of the bailey or the Kikos crump or even take some of the jules of opar leaves, you can make a whole nice tropical salad here in South Florida, have your own tropical salad spring mix instead of buying the one at the stupid stores, right. Now the coolest thing here is that on this trip I learned about a very new Egyptian spinach that I didn't know about before, I know there's like a red stem Egyptian spinach which makes round little pods, I know there's this kind that's a regular Egyptian spinach that makes like long okra like pods, but the new kind of Egyptian spinach that they have here that I'm so excited about is this one, this is actually the large leaf Egyptian spinach guys, look at the difference between these, these are nice large leaves compared to the other ones which are pretty big leaves, but then these are also glossy leaves and they're like a different color green, right, so I was given the go ahead to harvest one leaf so I could show you guys, look at how the difference in size between these and like this is like a nice large one on this plant, look at the difference in size guys, these are amazing, you could use these for like wraps, put some hummus in there, put some guacamole, put some salsa right, roll it up and then eat it, and you know what, it tastes pretty much just like this one, a very neutral mild flavor, this is one amazing plant and this is one I'm actually going to be taking home with me today, because I don't have this one yet, so I'm so excited when I learn about new plants and you know that's what they're doing here at 3Amigos man, they're searching all over to get the best crops that will grow here in Florida, yes, even in the summertime, actually on their website, if you go to their website 3AmigosGrowers.com, you could find, they have a planting guide that say what can you plant in June, what can you plant in July, what can you plant in August, so that you could be successful right, don't rely on the stupid big box stores that sell you like Bonnie Plant Starch that are not grown for Florida, that are grown somewhere else, they try to bring them in Florida, maybe they're going to grow, maybe they won't right, everything they're selling here is guaranteed to grow, because they've tried it, they've grown it, and then they're going to sell it to you guys, so that you could be successful instead of fail by going to other nurseries that are not selling the right climate appropriate Alright guys, so the next green, another one of my favorites, that I am growing in Puerto Rico also, and I grew for many years in Las Vegas by growing it outside and then bring it in during the winter time, that being said, Katuk, from my experience, did not like the dry heat, it really likes a humid environment, it could handle a hundred degrees, but it really suffered because it just kind of barely stayed alive, because it didn't like the dry heat, it really loves the tropics, and as you guys can see, it is really loving South Florida here, look at this, this is one amazing, like literally bush, and once again, you take sticks off this, you stick it in the ground, they root, and then you could have more, and the Katuk is amazing, so like on this, I would just basically take this whole branch and go like this, and just, you'd have all the leaves now that you just dump in a salad, right, I'm not going to dump in a salad today, because I'm just going to throw them out my mouth, so as I'm chewing this up, I'm getting the most like nutty, leafy green flavor, I have a friend who says, it tastes like peanut butter, I don't know that I'd go that far, but it's definitely the nuttiest green you will ever taste, I mean, I'd prefer to eat this any day over lettuce alone, that being said, while you can eat this raw in salads, you definitely want to, don't want to overdo the Katuk, in high amounts, such as when you concentrate it in juices, can be toxic, you know, so you may want to be a bit more cautious with this than some of the other greens that I've shared with you guys in this episode today, nonetheless, it tastes amazing, oh, and the other thing I want to show you guys real quick, besides the leaves that I eat that are delicious, if you really want to get hardcore, you can just break off the little tips, right, if you break off the tips, remove the leaves, this is known as like tropical asparagus, it's nice and tender, reminds me of eating asparagus, like the young growth that you maybe get up north, but yeah, the tips, as well as the leaves, are delicious and edible, and this is another one that you guys must absolutely grow, I've been to places here, like the Echo, link down below to that, where they literally use this as a Katuk hedge, they grow this along like a border to keep like animals out, and it's just one long hedge of all the amazing Katuk that is completely edible, you know, what I think to myself, for people that live in South Florida is, why don't you guys have some of these edible greens, you could use these as hedge, you could use them as like beautiful plants, like the chai you guys saw that was a nice shape to it, it's all edible, so you guys could stop buying the stupid greens imported from California, and eat locally, eat more nutritious crops that are healthy for you, that are just going to go around without you, and that's the other thing, all these crops I'm sharing with you guys, these are like pest resistant crops, like they don't spray pesticides, organic or chemicals here, although they only support organic agriculture here, they encourage you guys to improve your soil, which this soil is really sand, so they are doing this all growing in sand, yes, the same soil you guys have in your backyard or front yard, right, with the right soil amendments, the right compost that they can teach you guys here, you could be successful, even more successful than they are. Alright guys, so another cool new crop to me, and I've heard this before in different circles that I travel in, but this is the first time I think I'm seeing it, this is basically a taro leaf, but this taro is not necessarily grown for the tuber, it is actually grown for the leaves, this was given to them by a chef from his country, that basically he uses this to roll up into leaves, to shop and make little designs out of, this does need to be cooked, it is high in oxalates, but you know, once again, when you come to Tree Amigos Nursery, they're going to have some of these rare crops that they've sourced from their friends, sourced from chefs, sourced from all over, that are proven to do good here in South Florida, because they've grown them out, they know what happens, they know the pests that the plant may get, and this can be prone to some white flies if you don't have good soil and whatnot, so this might not be the first thing you want to grow, but unless maybe you've eaten this as a child and you want to grow this, they got it, but I would definitely recommend some of the other ones that are a lot easier to grow, but this is definitely one that I want to grow, because once again, for me, it's all about growing diversity guys, I want you guys to grow one of each of these things, you know why? Because one of them might not make it, two of them might not make it, but guess what? The three that make it, they're huge and you can't even control them and you're going to have so much food, you're not going to know what to do with them except share with your neighbors, share cuttings with your friends down the block, so that everybody can grow more food and become sustainable on this planet where we are all addicted to the supermarket, we are all consumers, and you know, if you start growing your own food now you are a producer, so that you can produce your own food and not have to consume as much, and I think if more people were producers on the planet, the world would be a much better place. Alright guys, so while I've showed you mostly leafy greens that you can mostly eat raw with the exception of the chaya and the taro that you must cook before eating, they also have the Cuban oregano which is kind of used as an herb, you wouldn't want to make a salad out of this because it's going to burn your mouth, it's hot and spicy, but this would be great to put in like a, when you cook your beans to give it a nice aroma and nice flavor, right? And once again, if you guys are buying oregano in the store, like look at this, this thing kind of just goes crazy and you could have tons of herbs and spices to eat, you know, like the basil I showed you, or like the Cuban oregano, these are some amazing things that you should definitely take home if you come to Tree Amigos Nursery. Alright guys, so that's all the food forest tour I'm going to give you guys of today, I mean, they have so many more things growing and I'd be here like for two more hours going over everything, I'm going to head up to the front nursery and show you guys maybe like one or two more plants, but then I want to show you guys the nursery plants that you guys can buy and bring home. But before I head up to the front, I want to show you guys this double butterfly pea from I think Thailand, it actually, this butterfly pea makes actually two flowers, so you guys know butterfly pea flowers, you basically could dry these and then put them in water, then it turns the water really nice purple, it's gone kind of viral on YouTube and all these things, but what people don't know is that you could also take the flowers and just eat them. It's a really nice flavor that, you know, this would be an excellent addition to add onto the top of your salad, to make your salad look pretty, add some anthocyanins which are really healthy for you, that's what makes the butterfly, you know, pea flowers purple, which is one of the components that I'm most interested in eating because there's a lot of research on the benefits of anthocyanins. Alright guys, check it out man, when I come to farms, I harvest my dinner too, so I'll be eating all these chaya greens that I steam up in the Instant Pot, because when I travel, you know, and I don't have my garden, I like to eat locally, so I'm so glad for a place like Tree Amigos Nursery that will allow me to harvest some of their greens so that I could be fed tonight. Alright guys, so now I'm going to show you guys the Tree Amigos Nursery here, which is behind me, this is like a big kind of like Aztec looking facade, which is kind of cool, and we're going to go inside and check out some of the perennial vegetables that you guys can buy. Now you guys already saw in this episode like the big, how they look when they're grown out a couple years, right? But now I want to show you guys what the plants start to look like, and actually they're very affordable prices. So let's head in the nursery and check out what they're selling and what you can buy so they can set you up for success. Alright guys, so right when I walk in this nursery, I instantly knew that this was like my kind of place because they have this sign that I think everybody should stop at before they walk in the nursery. And I want you guys to study this sign, it is very important. It's called the soil food web, right? This is how nature makes its own fertilizer without buying miracle crap in a bag, right? This is how nature works. The trees grow, the trees drop the leaves, and then they degrade down into compost, you get organic matter, then you have fungi and mycorrhizae and protozoa and nematodes, mites, spiders, centipedes, earthworms, ants, millipedes, all these different creatures in the soil eating up the different, you know, compost, and then some of these guys eat other guys and then they keep pooping out nutrients, which then allows the system to work, which then makes nutrients for your plants so you don't have to sit there and put fertilizer every single week or month like some people do, right? Once you get the system built up, you do mulch, you do compost, you buy some of these different amendments they have here, especially because you have crappy soil here, you have sand literally, you need to bring in a lot of organic matter and they got all the bagged soils you will need to buy to be successful. You can set up your own soil food web so you don't have to continually fertilize it, right? This is an automatic system. Once again, I showed you guys in this episode the trees that are automatic. You plant the tree and then it grows into a huge tree, you got leaves every single day that you guys saw me harvest some of them that I'm going to be eating tonight, right? But more importantly, besides just buying the trees or the plants to grow, you need to make sure you're set up for success. Don't just buy the trees, oh I'm digging a hole, planting in the sand, it's going to be successful. No, it's not going to make it because you don't have organic matter, you don't have the right system so that you will succeed. That's what they can show you here. They can set you up so that you have all the different components of this food soil web system so that your crops will be literally self-sustaining. Alright guys, so you guys can see I'm sitting literally on bags of soil, right? This is very important. I know a lot of you guys want to be cheap and you want to avoid buying the soil here because it's probably a bit more expensive than the crappy soil you'd get at a big box store, but if you guys buy the crappy soil at the big box store, you're not going to be successful because they're using a lot of wood-based materials that are not fully broken down, they're not going to provide your plants the nutrients they need to succeed. So that's why I'm going to tell you guys, if you guys come here to buy and invest in your plants, invest in the right plants, I want you guys also to invest in the right soil. They have soil mixers and different things here. They make their own soil blends so that you will once again succeed in growing in your South Florida sand, right? This is called the Garden Mix Complete. It has things like the compost, peat moss, coconut coir, worm castings, like different kinds of dolomite, kelp, langbenanite, shrimp meal, and soil microorganisms, right? This is a very good mix. I wish I had a farm or a nursery near me selling something this high quality, guys. So very important, along with your starts, get some of the right soil that'll encourage your plants to succeed instead of fail. Alright guys, so you guys can see I'm here in the nursery and they just have tables and tables and tables and tables of different plant starts, and here's the thing, guys, they're going to sell you guys here at the nursery, right, what's going to grow in this season, right? They're not selling different kinds of tender greens that are good for the fall or the winter time here in South Florida in the middle of summer. You know, in the middle of summer, they're selling you the plants that you could plant in June, July, and August and be successful at, right? Very important. Most nurseries will just try to sell the same things year round. Some of them are even importing plants from outside the state or even up north. They're not going to perform well in South Florida. You guys are very special here in South Florida because you got some more mild tropical weather than all parts of the country. That's why you guys are probably living here, because you love the heat, the humidity, right? And likewise, the plants they're selling here are designed to grow here in the heat and humidity without you. You guys saw what they look like in the food forest, so let's go over now and show you guys what they look like when they're small, because you guys saw what they look like when they're big, as well as show you guys a few more plants that are my favorite that they're selling here. Alright guys, first crop I want to show you guys is the Okinawan spinach. This is the spinach that you guys saw growing underneath the big lychee, and when you guys come to select a plant, I want you guys to look for a nice plant, right, that's nice and tall, nice and big. You guys can see they're using some pots that the roots are already coming out. That's actually a good sign that the roots are not being root-bound, so they just come out of the pot. You can like literally plant this right in the ground. It'll take off and it'll cover a whole area, right? So literally, one of these plants just keep growing. If you want to make more of these plants, you literally just cut this off, take off the leaves, leave like a few leaves at the top, stick it in dirt, and then it'll grow another one, right? And so yeah, this is the Okinawan spinach, great for the shadier spots in your yard. These are at present time and price are subject to change, six bucks, which is an amazing deal. Next one up is the longevity spinach. This is five dollars, so this is a little bit less. I personally would spring for the extra dollar and get the Okinawan, but if you have a more sunnier spot, the longevity spinach will be good. It's known to maybe even control diabetes or help with blood sugar issues, maybe cholesterol. They say it's a cholesterol-lowering plant. But yeah, another one that's going to grow really easy. Nice plants. And on these, I'll give you guys a tip, right? You guys want to look for one that has more up shoots, so you guys can see this has like one main growth stem. This one has three growth stems, one, two, and then three. This is a much better deal than this one because there's three points where there will be new leaf growth, so you're going to actually have more leaves more quickly. Alright guys, so I'm always learning about new plants or even, or more importantly, new names for plants. And actually, this is, they call it the Callaloo Guyana. And as far as I learned today, the Callaloo is just kind of a name for green in maybe some Caribbean countries. But to me, this is known as the Malabar spinach. So when I was on their website, I'm like, oh man, they got all these new varieties I don't know. It's just basically they're calling them something else. So maybe they should also have the Latin names on there because I would see that and like, oh okay, that's Malabar spinach. I didn't get to show you guys this in the garden. They actually do have some growing somewhere around here that I saw. But yeah, this is another one. This is more mucilaginous. And it grows like a vine. So if you have like a hurricane fence, instead of growing passion fruit, which they also sell, growing this up the, you know, hurricane fencing would be really nice because it would kind of fill in nice and every one of these leaves are edible. In addition, when these are at the end of the season, they'll kind of make these little like berries. The berries are completely edible. They're rich in anthocyanins. I would just encourage you guys to mush the berries up in your mouth. They will stain. But then like spit out the seeds and then use those to replant. Alright guys, so if you guys come here, you guys have to buy this plant. Don't leave without buying this. This is, they call it the chief kubu's prize or the edible hibiscus. I call it belay. This is the main one that I grow in Las Vegas. It handles over a hundred days of a hundred degrees. So think, oh I'm not going to be able to grow stuff in Florida, it's too hot. No, it's hotter in Vegas and it's definitely more dry. And the ones here actually grow better than mine because they kind of leaf out. And you should do a lot more up shoots than mine, which tends to grow a lot taller. But then I cut them down and then I basically take them for a permanent vacation in Puerto Rico where I've been sticking in the sticks and then root them. So now we have like, not quite a field full of this now, but I call it the belay. But these are amazing plants, really excellent lettuce substitute. One of my favorites and it's really going to do good here. These are $12, a really affordable price, literally a one time purchase to have greens for the rest of your life provided you take care of the plant. Now aside from the chief kuboos, edible hibiscus or belay, they also have this variety, which is the ant lilies. Now if you come here for the ant lilies, and these are probably going to get sold out pretty quick after I make my video, some of the ant, most of the ant lilies are the green, but there's some of them that have more purplish traits. When you come here, I want you guys to only buy the purplish ones. They're going to hate me for this because everybody's going to come in, I want the purple ant lilies and they're like, oh sorry we're sold out because we only got the green ones. Hey the green ones are still good, but I love the purple because the purple leaves have the anthocyanins and some of these will express different traits. I think currently they have like two out here for sale, so I'm going to definitely take one of them home myself today. But yeah, I want you guys to get these plants because they're going to perform really good like you guys saw the huge bush that I showed you guys a little bit earlier. Alright guys, so the other tree that you guys saw when I walked right into the food forest was the chai and I was saddened to see they don't actually have any chai plants available for you guys to buy, but they will have available as cuttings or something in the future. So you definitely want to ask for them because that's another one of the top performers here in South Florida. I mean I have chai on my property in Puerto Rico when I bought my property, it was just kind of a wild weed that grows, I mean that's how hardy some of these vegetables can be. Of course next up, also in the hibiscus family or related, we got the standard Roselle or they call it Caribbean Sorrel. This is more of an annual that you plant, it'll go to seed, drop the seeds and then regrow and then that's pretty good, it has more of a lemony flavor, whereas the other chief kubus and the antlilies have more of a lettuce type flavor. And then if you're going to get the Caribbean Sorrel, they also have the cranberry hibiscus which I would call the false Roselle. This has a very similar flavor to the standard Roselle, but it has the purple leaves, a lot more decorative, looks like more oak style and also they're purple, but they taste pretty much the same. This one can be a little bit more perennial than the standard Roselle. So let's see, that one's four, this one's five, I would definitely spring for the extra dollar to buy the five dollar plant instead of the four dollar one myself. And yeah, this is another one in my opinion you should definitely take home. You know, you add a few leaves of this along with all the other greens and it'll add a nice lemony flavor without having to squeeze lemon on your salad to make it taste good. Alright, another one that I didn't get to show you that they don't have currently because they're kind of redoing their food forest, is this guy. This is known as the cassava or yucca. So this one makes like an edible tuber that like a lot of the world actually eats as a stable crop in South America. In addition, the leaves can be eaten if properly leached and cooked, that's very important. You got to do a properly look it up online how to do that if you guys want to eat the leaves. To me this is a very decorative plant, right. It looks like it's not edible and of course this is very easy to propagate as well. You take cuttings from the stems, you stick it in and then it actually will grow new up growth. So at Puerto Rico property I got some stick cuttings, stuck them in like almost dry dirt and just with the rain without any irrigation they basically re-bloom when there's like I think we did also chaya and another one and they actually didn't come back. So these are very hardy, can with handle, you know, like not that much water, right. Even if you're not on irrigation. Of course, all the other plants you want to make sure they get enough water whether it's raining regularly or whether you need to have an irrigation system if it's not raining enough. As the last couple of days I've been here in Florida, it's rained every single day. So in this case, this time of year, you wouldn't have to be watering that much at all. Alright guys, next up is the Moringa and another one that you have to buy. That being said, it's $12 and it's like would you rather have like two of the chief kubus or one Moringa and I would say get them all, you know. And the most important thing guys when you guys buy a Moringa, you guys don't understand. I visited many Moringa growers over the many years, links down below some of my videos on Moringa growers that I visited in the past if you haven't seen those, but basically you want to grow Moringa only from seed. While you can do Moringa from cuttings, you know, on a seed there's going to be a nice deep tap root. So it's going to be a lot more resistant and survive and be, you know, less prone to blowing over when there's strong winds or whatever. And you know, if you do a cutting and get roots from the cutting, then the roots are a lot more shallow and they're not going to, you know, the plant will not be as strong basically. So yeah, all their plants here for Moringa are from seeds, not from cuttings and they're looking really nice. These guys do take a little bit of a long time to grow. So that's reflected in the price, you know, how long it takes to grow to get them to size. So these are a nice size, like basically pushing two plus feet tall on some of them. Of course on these I would look for the ones that have the most foliage or the most leaf material and are the tallest and have the most, you know, thickest girth on the stem here. Alright guys, so besides a lot of the different perennial greens as well as a lot of herbs that I'm not covering in this video, they have a lot more that I can't just cover because I'll be here all night and they're already closed actually. But I did want to cover this. They have maybe like four different kinds of banana varieties at present time and I really wanted to show you guys this because I hadn't seen this before in my life. This is a variegated banana. It's kind of more of a dwarfish plant. It's called the Zebrina X. To me these leaves are beautiful. I have lots of bananas on my property in Puerto Rico, but I don't have a variegated variety. They don't know what the flavor of the banana tastes like that these grow, but I would just grow these for the foliage alone because it just looks like beautiful to have this next to your house, right. And that's what you're going to get when you come to Tree Amigos Nursery. You're going to get rare crops such as this that can not only look beautiful but also provide you with food. So why grow a regular banana when you guys could have a variegated Zebrina X. Of course they have other bananas that's really popular such as the red daca which is a Cuban red banana that even tastes like maybe a little bit hint of berries or something and has a nice red coloring. Alright guys so the last plant I'm going to share with you guys today is honestly the Egyptian Spinach or Molokia which is one of my favorites for sure. I mean definitely best started from seeds, but if you don't want to get the seeds because the seeds are, you know, a little bit hard to germinate actually. You need to heat up the seeds in hot water, let them soak overnight and then you can plant them in the garden. But these plants are looking really nice. They already have seed pods on them. So you're already going to get seeds when you buy this plant and of course some of these even have the young pods that you can actually just harvest and eat and they're nice and delicious and of course the leaves are edible. Now because this has been kind of like in a pot for so long, the leaves are a lot smaller than the ones you saw out in the food forest. You know when the plant's healthier the leaves are going to be a lot larger. But if you guys come to buy the Egyptian Spinach, you definitely want to ask them for the large leaf variety which actually I don't see on display today. So hopefully in the future they'll have a lot of those because actually that's the one I want to take home myself. So I really love the ethos here at Tree Amigos Nursery and it's like it says feed the soil that feeds you. And it says Tree Amigos Grower Cover Crop Kits, Specialty Formulated to Protect and Improve South Florida Soil. So basically what cover crops do is that actually they can add nutrients and bring benefits to your soil. So say you don't want to grow in the winter time here, you know you could actually have a cover crop that'll actually send nutrients down and then feed your soil. Also some cover crops can have other benefits such as suppressing weeds, such as conserving evaporated loss from you know water loss because it's going to you know prevent the sun from hitting the soil. It's going to encourage soil microbial growth right. And in addition you know here's some of the kits they sell. They have a summer complete kit to do cover cropping but more importantly this is the one you really want. They actually have a kit for nematodes. A lot of people may have nematodes in their yard due to the compacted soil. But you know what, can you, the way normal people would deal with nematodes is oh I got that chemical I can spray for nematodes and kill all the nematodes right. But that's also killing your soil. It's not good for the environment, all the chemical sprays. So you can do this naturally through natural methods that they have specifically formulated certain cultivars of seeds as well as inoculated seeds with different beneficial microbes so that now you can basically you know outcompete the bad nematodes with good nematodes and actually grow plants that actually discourage nematodes from even being there in the first place right. This is a more intelligent and a smart way to grow food by using nature to your advantage instead of working against nature with using chemicals. So I think the last thing I want to do is I want to interview one of the tree amigos here at the nursery and learn a little bit more about the nursery here and get you guys excited about it so you guys could come down and buy some of these plants that I showed with you guys today and start growing your food for us today. Alright guys so now the pleasure of interviewing John from Tree Amigos Growers. He's one of the owners, one of the three amigos that actually own this place. So the first question I have for you John is why did you guys start this nursery here? So this whole business is really a labor of love from Santiago and Jason. They really started with the whole concept of creating food security. Back about maybe 12, 13 years ago they started a separate project where they were growing food for the community and when that project kind of, that land was sold they realized just how fragile our food systems were. So they started a nursery with the whole concept of instead of getting people to come to us to provide these vegetables, kind of CSA style, it's why not get them to feed themselves. So this whole thing just really started with that concept of allowing people to become more food independent and more food secure. Right yeah, become a producer right? You can be a consumer and yes, support your local farms, they are great, I love local farms, we have to go and buy the food. But hey instead of buying the food every week from them, if you buy your plants and plant them once, like some of the ones I showed you, you guys will be eating forever provided you keep the plants healthy. So yeah, super, I love your mission, I love your work, that's also why I make my videos for you guys, to empower you guys to become a producer instead of a consumer in our consumer driven society. And like you said, the food security is so important in this day and age. During COVID I walked into grocery stores and there were no vegetables, I mean they were the last thing to sell out, everything else sold first, but there was no vegetables you could buy right? What if trucks stopped shipping, driving into Florida from California where most of the food in Florida is probably sold from the west coast right? Then you guys aren't eating, you guys aren't eating vegetables. But if you had trees and shrubs growing in your front yard full of food, screw the trucks, you don't even need them right? You can live a lower carbon footprint because you're now growing your own food and more food secure right? Without having to depend on somebody else. And of course you may like some of these crops better than others right? And those are the ones you want to focus on you know, because at the store you are dictated to what you have to eat based on what they have. You can't eat what they don't have because you can't buy it. Here you can select from anything and now you can select your favorites and then that's where you can grow. So another question I have for you John is very important, it's not just you guys supply the plants which are actually very difficult to find in South Florida unfortunately. When you go to most plant nurseries they are selling fruit trees. Hey fruit trees are great, while they can produce, you know many fruit trees produce once a year and then that fruit tree takes up space all year long in your yard. You can't eat the leaves from, maybe a few of them you can, but you wouldn't want to eat them in high quantities right? It's basically wasting space where you plant one of the chaya or one of the other plants I showed you guys, takes up space year round but every single day of the year you guys can eat food from it. That's very important. So the question for you is why did you guys get into perennial vegetables and vegetables that will reseed on their own versus you know selling lettuce plants for example which is every other nursery you know sell you guys like common plants that people would grow more up north. Yeah so for us the whole concept of food forest was something that's always been a part of the whole nursery system for us, not just nursery, the whole farming system here in South Florida. As you know we have a very diverse population here which means you know they bring plants, they bring different cultures, different foods from different places which means more access to different kinds of foods. So for us we started learning more about like the Caribbean crops, the Southeast Asian crops, the things that do better in our hot climates that maybe you know like us here and you know more Eurocentric, we're maybe not used to eating but you can still have a good nutritional value. You know my family is South American from Ecuador specifically and you know there's things like yucca, cassava that here Cuban communities also consume and a lot of the Caribbean and Latin communities but it's not very popular within the general you know North American communities. So we're trying to introduce new things, get people to kind of grow more, adapt it to the season and to the time of year so they can be more successful so they can actually feed themselves. So yeah the whole concept of making sure that you're growing with the seasons rather than forcing something and having to depend on the existing food systems that are very limited to us, that's what drove us to really go towards these crops that can help feed you and communities. I mean we've had, we work with different organizations that they do exactly that, they feed South Florida communities through these crops. We had someone come in here for Malabar spinach, longevity spinach, you know the okras, the things that do well here in the heat. So it's really cool to see how South Florida is feeding itself with these newer crops right new to us. Right yeah I mean I think that's very important is you know you can kind of like live here and then buy northern crops that are shipped in right which everybody does or you can even be better because now you can adapt to what grows here. You guys have all adapted to living here, if you guys are from up north you know now you guys don't have to live in the snow half the year because you live here in South Florida right. So you've adapted, why not buy climate appropriate plants that have also adapted or from around the world that grow in the same climate so that you don't have to stress out over your plants right. Once again plant it, have a good healthy soil system, water it enough or maybe the rain will water it certain times of the year and then it just thrives and you're just eating out of your yard and you've learned new recipes to use these amazing foods and eat. And they're I mean actually they're more nutritious than things like lettuce unfortunately. Actually they're more nutritious than things like lettuce which is even a you know icing on the cake. So another thing I want to talk to you about John is you know besides just the plants you also sell organic fertilizers and ways to build your soil including soil that they can be successful from right. Why did you guys also choose besides just the nursery plants which are really rare also selling the some of the best organic soil amendments and compost that I've found here in South Florida because you can't just go to Home Depot and buy some of these things that they sell here. They've sourced some special. They brought them in. This is probably one of the only places I've seen some of the things that they're selling here right. They're actually from Oregon you know the company in Oregon that I that I know and love so well right. So why did you guys do that? Why is organic so important? So yeah part of our love for the food is also and the respect for different cultures, different food is also respect of the land and you can't have respect of the land without feeding it what it needs. So if you're not feeding microbial life in the ground if you're not creating good atmosphere for even fungus to grow on there we cannot expect to get too much out of that soil. So for us it just became a it's kind of like a natural progression of like maybe our values and our moral kind of standing of making sure that we're being respectful to the things that are around us in particular the land that gives us so much and it feeds us. So for us to feed it organic food and something that helps create that life in the soil and helps makes things more soluble and helps plants grow greener, bigger, tastier it's just a no-brainer for us you know we want to make sure that we're focusing on that kind of growth rather than on growing things that maybe are chemically induced. Cool so I mean what that brings to my mind is you want to work with nature instead of against it. Of course there are you know whatever container farms here in Florida that basically grow lettuce in a shipping container year round with artificial lights artificial synthetic nutrients and yes you can have your lettuce you know and then they also have to use a lot of like burn coal or gas or whatever to basically provide cooling for that lettuce provide lights because it's inside for the lettuce right and then the chemicals to feed the lettuce right and chemicals agriculture to like you know kill weeds and do all these things or you can work with nature to grow plants like they're selling here that work with nature that work in this very environment that we're sitting in that we are today that you don't have to put up a you know a structure you don't have to like cool with air conditioners and all these things right and then you work with the soil instead of using chemicals you work with the soil so that the soil become better and actually you're leaving your property even better than you found it. So John another question I have for you guys you is specifically what are your favorite three crops that you enjoy eating and how do you eat them that you that you grow here that we grow here so in terms of in terms of like just general crops I mean I'm a big fan of hot peppers like I love growing all kinds of hot peppers so you know during this there's time of year just peppers in general things like the he do say which can provide you know year round year round which we typically do carry right now we're a little sold out of them but you know using those and like some so free those it's just really important not just culturally but you know ecologically and sustainably instead of growing bell peppers that make a few bell peppers and then it gets all diseased and stuff then you don't get nothing anyways right you gotta once again adapt to the local crops yeah but you know like things like the African blue basil making a really nice pesto out of that you know adapting to it in that in that way things like the the cranberry hibiscus are also it's just a really nice refreshing taste that has more of the nutrition then like you saying a lettuce leaf will ever have so you know those are things you could just go to the back harvest some and make yourself a little salad and have a tastier meal so wonderful so another question is if somebody wants to come down here like and they're just new here for the first time you know do you have staff on hand that could take them and give them a tour of the food for us they could maybe sample a couple things and see what they're gonna like the best so they could come in the nursery and then buy them and then will you instruct them and tell them hey this is how you plant that and this is what you should add to the soil so that you'll be successful I mean do you give them guidance besides just selling in the stuff you know thank you for asking that question John you know like something that we really pride ourselves on here and what a lot of people know us for is that we provide you support we almost handhold you through the whole step we explain to you how things work so you can make the decision you know it's we're not here to sell you anything we're here to just help you make a decision towards your food security future so whether it's you know buying the right kind of soil whether it's or even looking for the right kind of fertilizer that you need for your trees or your plants we will always explain to you how it works why you want to use it but also provide you access to we do through what's app you can message us directly for anything that you purchase here and we can kind of follow up with you to make sure that you're you know if you're a first-time grower you can learn how to water learn how to fertilize learn how to just grow in general whether it needs more light or it needs less water we'll just kind of handhold you a little bit until you get it just right that way you can become a little bit more independent in your food system wow it's amazing because I mean especially if you go to a big box store they're not going to hold your hand guys they're just gonna I mean the guys that work there I mean yeah they're all well to do but they may not have all the most you know knowledge about growing special specifically like these kind of edible plants which you know they've been doing this for many years now so all the owners are intimately involved in the business and helping people and I met with some of the staff today and they just know their stuff I was like asking the girls some stuff and she knew stuff that she taught me today here which is you know pretty rare so they definitely got a good staff here yeah we try to we try to train them you know like every every time we have a new employee we try to give them the same tour we try to encourage them to grow at home we try to just get them more involved into what we're doing and a lot of it is just practice you know the more you do it the more you get involved into gardening the more it's going to become easier for you but also you're going to get really excited about it you know my father who is someone that I next time hopefully you could meet him he's very very knowledgeable but he came into this this business a little bit late in his life you know maybe about five years ago he's a sponge you know he learns everything he could talk to you about all the microbes in the soil he could tell you know talk to you about a lot of the plants with great detail but you know he always says that it just gave him a new lease on life he sees life in a very different way now that he understands the science behind it and sometimes it just takes knowing just how powerful and how beautiful plants are for you to make get that aha moment to be like that's why I want to grow things that's why they need care that's why we treat them like living things which they are yeah so I say you know whether you're retired you know gardening is an excellent thing to do because you're going to definitely save money with all the food you that you're not gonna have to buy that's imported and but here's the thing guys even if you have a full-time job work 40 hours a week and you're like totally tired after work I can't deal with my garden this is the kind of garden you guys want why because you plant these plants you take care of them you plant them once maybe take a weekend day plant these plants put it on the irrigation system that goes off every day you're gonna walk outside the bugs won't get some of these plants and they'll tell you guys which ones are better or worse could because there's some plants that are higher maintenance and some are lesser maintenance so you can say I want the least maintenance crop so I could eat on my front yard by just planting a minute and basically just walking away getting getting a month water put in the right soil and then they're just gonna grow and then you even if you don't have time you just gotta have enough time to go outside every day and harvest the leaves and then cook them up or eat them fresh as a salad right it's gonna take you guys less time going out to your front yard harvesting stuff and making food I've been driving all the way to the store driving all the way back wasting all that gas right so yeah empower yourselves to grow a garden whether you're retired or student actually if your students even better to grow because you guys are like sponges where you want to learn all this stuff this is the perfect place to do that so speaking about learning do you guys have like classes that you guys give on a regular basis so that people could come in here and then you know learn about this stuff so at this time we don't have you know like a whole schedule for classes but last year we had a cover crop like workshop so we taught you all the science behind the the cover crops which we were happy to also explain to you in person but that way you could just get a little bit more immersed to teach you how to create your rows how to amend your soil how to seed how to do the things that are so important for our you know gardening systems to keep producing your in your app cool so can somebody get on an email list or how do you guys contact customers about your sales and what plants are in season and all this kind of stuff yeah of course you can visit our websites our website tree amigos growers dot com and that's T R E E tree amigos growers we have a an email list on it that you can subscribe to you can also follow us on social media or you can message us on whatsapp as well to our nursery number here you know we could send you things like our annual planting guides to show you what grows during the specific time of year we're at so that way you can plan ahead if you need to seed or if you know you want to just come in for those plants typically we have whatever's on that list available here wonderful so what is your address and what is your phone number for people that want to come down and then what are your hours when are you open so we're located here in Davie Florida at ten nine hundred Southwest 48th Street and we're open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. you can find us here from Wednesday through Sunday there for businesses in total here at natural high farms which is the property and we're tree amigos growers so come visit us anytime and there's always someone on staff here that is willing to help and can take the time to you know get your food garden started all right great John so yeah I'll put the address in the description down below as well as their website and social media like the Instagram which is actually where I found them actually on there and as well as online so last question I have for you John is are there any final words of wisdom you'd like to share of all my viewers today before we sign off don't be afraid to get started you know like I think that's the most difficult part for everyone they kind of put it off and put it off just get started don't be afraid to potentially kill a plant you know we've killed many plants over over the years sometimes due to disease sometimes due to neglect but you know you learn through everything that you do and just get started you know like whether it's one plant or a small bed we're here to support you we're here to help you and hopefully we leave you with enough knowledge and with enough enthusiasm that you can teach other people to do the same that's really our goal to help create you know more of a movement of people feeding themselves rather than being so dependent wonderful that's great to hear yeah and I mean I would I would concur basically you guys want to get started if you've never grown before been watching my videos for a couple years and you live in South Florida this is the place to come to whether you know if I mean I'm driving at the West Palm Beach later West Palm Beach you live in something where you know Miami Beach wherever you want to come here this is probably one of the best places I've ever visited that has the best diversity of plants and more importantly like an established food for us you can actually see what these baby plants that you're buying in the nursery will look like once they're fully grown so you can kind of envision you know what it's going to look like plus of course they also provide all the organic nutrients which is something that a lot of nurseries I visit unfortunately don't do and even the most important is that they will hold your hand and guide you so that you can be successful you're going to have the least you know amount of failure because if you follow what they say you will be successful and don't worry if you kill a plant you know you didn't fail guess what you succeeded in learning how to kill a plant and you're not going to do that next time because you know once you start killing a lot of plants like man this is getting expensive killing plants man I better shape up or I'm gonna have to ship out alright so yeah Tree Amigos Growers T-R-E-E Amigos Growers dot com once again we'll pop it up right here check them out online you can see all their available inventory come down visit them they are so friendly so nice and definitely highly recommend this place if you guys live Miami area for all my favorite perennial vegetables alright so if you guys enjoyed this episode today please be sure to give it a big thumbs up more importantly share this with other people that live here in South Florida so that they can now grow year-round and become food independent have food security instead of depending on truck trucks that get shipped all over the country to have imported food when you guys can grow much better local food more nutritious in your front yard backyard and beyond make sure you click that subscribe button right down below so you miss my new and upcoming episodes of community five to seven days you're going to wash up or you'd be learning on my youtube channel make sure you click a little bell so you're notified as many videos go out and finally be sure to check out past episodes past episodes are a wealth of knowledge over 1700 episodes at this time on the channel dedicate you guys all about how to grow your own food at home I'll put a couple links to let down below some of my other favorite videos I made here in the Miami area that will help encourage you guys to garden and show you guys what is truly possible in your amazing climate zone here so with that my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com we'll see you next time and until then remember keep on growing.