My 3 Acre Farm 2 Years Later From Raw Jungle to Future Food Forest

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for you. Today we're going to go ahead and give you guys my three acre Puerto Rico farm update. Currently I'm staying at my friend Kailash's five acre, like his house and then his properties all around me, and you can see the property line which is the fence which we conveniently cut a hole in. So this trip, the main goal was to basically make a trail from here to my house property that hopefully will get started construction 2026, and aside from creating the trail, we planted over 50 different fruit trees and fruiting crops and a few leafy greens too. So I want to go ahead and give you guys a tour, so let's hop up and let's head through the fence. Alright guys, so this is the trail, I had it going in maybe 10 feet, and then I have to give thanks to my friend Ellie who literally created this trail, that's why this trail is called Ellie's Trail, and it has basically grey PVC pipes with Ellie and an arrow so you don't get lost on the trail. The goal of this trail is once again to get between our properties but also this would be good for exercise and in the future we're going to have lots of fruit trees producing on the property. So this is truly going to be a food forest, not just only food, but literally we planted the fruit trees within the forest and we will over time selectively cut out the larger overstory trees as the smaller trees get established. So this is a jackfruit tree that was planted maybe over two years ago, and we planted other little fruit trees, and we put white stakes with the dates so we know what we planted and when, and honestly guys, all the plants that you're seeing here is going to be on natural irrigation, if it rains they get water, if they don't they're relying on the soil moisture, which of course in the shaded forest it holds the moisture a lot better, also of course this is the humid tropics where it's just more humidity in the air. Right over there we have a may sapote, and continuing on we got a jackfruit, and we probably can't point everything out for you, but we're just kind of going to go quick because I got to catch the flight here, but yeah we got things like the money tree or malabar chestnut there off the trail up there, we got the mulberry right next to the trail, I planted a cinnamon tree, that's like how they get the cinnamon up there, we planted another jackfruit, here here's a tamarind, and look at how beautiful the forest is guys, this is all my property, we did a lot of clearing to make the trail happen as well as basically what we did was we created a room for each of the fruit trees, that's how I like to think of it, basically we cleared an open space around the fruit tree so that nothing would compete with it, hopefully no vines would go up it, we planted it so it has its own little space defined by other trees around it, the other trees around it over time will get cut out to give this blackberry jam fruit tree a lot more space. Over on this side we got a Jerusalem lemon, and I want to stop right here guys because one of the reasons why I chose Puerto Rico is my best friend lives here of course, but the second reason is because it is very affordable to grow fruit trees and buy fruit trees here, we're going to go ahead and clip in a segment of the video where I unload most of the fruit trees I got and you'll see the prices range from $3, $5, $10, $15. Alright guys just want to give you guys an update, we just got back from the fruit tree nursery and I want to show you guys what $231 in fruit trees looks like here in Puerto Rico, now I think most of these guys are from seedlings and I know some of you guys in Florida are probably laughing at me for buying seedlings because it's always better to get grafted trees so you know what you're going to get, but when plants are this cheap and more importantly you have a lot of space like I have 3 acres, you have space to waste, either I could have junk trees that produce nothing or I could have some fruit trees that maybe aren't totally the best fruit, but they're going to produce fruit and give me delicious at that so check it out. So coming out first we got these guys and these guys were like $10 each, this is a $10 fruit tree in Puerto Rico, this is either the santol or the rose apple, we got two big ones, $10 each, next up, this is the most expensive, this was $15, this is a little baby durian. Next up I got some nut trees, these are known as the money tree that a lot of people have for good luck in their house, but this tree actually makes some nuts that you could eat called the malabar chestnut, so I got two of these, $5 each for these trees. Next up we got some sweet tamarind fruits, these trees were $5 each, next up I got a giant ice cream bean fruit tree for $10 and this was also $10, this is like a purple skin and flesh guava from Asia, Southeast Asia. I got a bunch of these mainly because they're cheap, these are basically just seedling cacao, I mean it's probably better to get grafted cacao but the trees cost more money and once again guys I have like three acres and these also grow in good shade, so five bucks man for a cacao tree this large, it's amazing. Next up I got some red surname cherries, I personally prefer the black but he didn't have any of the black, these are more of a bush than a tree but they can be quite fruitful and fruit throughout the year actually and these trees guys, $5 each, look at how big they are, like at least three feet tall, can't beat the prices here in Puerto Rico for being in America still. The other thing I got since I'm planting like mostly in the shaded area of my farm, like under big canopy trees are like coffee, so these coffee will produce more sun or more shade actually and each coffee tree was $3 each so I got like I think nine of them. Alright next up I got a passion fruit, $3. Alright now we got another tote of plants, I'll just go over real quick, let's see we got more coffee, this is for the trail, we got a long on for $10, that's this guy right here, we have the blimby fruit, they're $10, we got the star fruit, actually the star fruit are small, for $10, the blimby's are $10, we got a mulberry for $10 and a jackfruit for $10 also and some more star fruit, but yeah, basically as you can see guys, I got lots of fruit trees for my farm here for $230, so we got to get planting them. And then even after that I went to the flea market in Mayaguez and got fruit trees for lemon there, actually I think maybe this mamey was also from the same guy, but yeah we have plant, then this one, here's a trick guys, I bought this rose apple, it was coming out of the pot, the roots were going into the ground at the nursery, I'm like oh that's a good deal, the roots are bigger, the plant's tall, it was $10 and I was supposed to plant it like that day and it didn't happen for a couple days so I'm not sure if it's going to recover. So the moral of the story is, if you're not going to plant it immediately, get the trees with the roots still in the pot so they don't get uprooted and then get shocked. We got a lot of surname cherries, here's a passion fruit so we could vine up this fence, and I really wanted to show you guys the expanse, I got a lot of old growth trees like super tall and then like a lot shorter ones, over there is a blimby or pickle tree, and then we planted a lot of cacao, in an upcoming episode I visited my friend Juan who has the best selected cacao seedlings, and so we have some of his seedlings as well as some seedlings from the nursery which were only $5, all planted throughout here, we also planted coffee, and although I am not a coffee drinker, the thing I like about the coffee is that there's a coffee fruit that's red, that's very nutritious, that unfortunately nobody gets to eat because in coffee production they throw this red fruit out, which to me is the most delicious part, and then as we go down further you can see it really thickens up and a lot of vines overhead, and we planted a lot of cacao in the more shaded areas because it does like a bit more shade, especially before it gets established, because they're kind of younger trees. This is a dead end that will hopefully continue one day, but actually we're going to take a right turn right through this little fence area, and if you're wondering why there's a fence here, this was a former pasture land, they would graze animals here, actually I found the remnants of a barn on the property this trip also, and so this is virgin land, and I know some of you guys are thinking, John, why don't you take the bulldozer and bulldoze all the trees, so you can start with a blank slate and then start planting trees where you want, you wouldn't have to cut back things, you wouldn't have to create a little room or space for your fruit trees to get planted, and that's not how I want to do it, that's how modern farmers and gardeners think, but I want to work with nature instead of against it and use the existing trees that have been living here for hundreds of years, like native, virgin, to my benefit, and selectively harvest them out, and if we look down at the trail at Spots, I have really good mycorrhizal fungi networks, I've seen a lot of white fungi when I dig up, more cacao, more cacao, lots of cacao, cacao everywhere, cacao for everybody, and then here we got a Surinam cherry, got a cranberry hibiscus, and we're going to go ahead and continue down the trail, the coffee and the cacao are the number one and two crops that we planted in the shady area, because they could really handle the shade and produce well, actually coffee doesn't like full sun, it'll do better and partially even more full shade, and here's the thing guys, some of you guys that do fruit trees in the tropics are thinking, John you're crazy, you're planting in full shade, well here guys, check it out, these plants are young, we literally just got them out of the nursery, they're not going to get watered for like six months by me, because we watered them right before we're leaving, but they're going to get watered by the rain, we're going into the dry season, I wanted to plant these in the shade so that they don't need as much water, they could suck up the ground water and in some of these areas, it's quite moist, because this is basically getting to the bottom of my property, where the water kind of collects and literally sinks into the soil, and once again, as these trees get established, we're going to cut around these surrounding trees, so that they will get more sun, I really like how this trail kind of just bends and curves organically, and this is all because of Ellie's connection with nature, the higher power, she selected these the way we went, and then I cut down trees to make the path a lot wider, I put them along the side to kind of create a little border, and this is the end, this was so tight through here guys, this was like you could walk like this and I had to take out so many trees, and then amazingly enough, this opens up to my house property, and there's a fence right here, a fence opening, and somehow Ellie found the opening, she just like went right to it, because otherwise if she went somewhere else, there would have been a fence that would have stopped us, so then we opened up over to here, and then this was just totally covered in just overgrowth weeds, so we planted a few coconuts pretty close together there, and then basically this was all overgrown vines that we had to string trim, it pretty much looked like this, so we got this string trimmed down, and the funny thing is, like right about here, I started noticing there's some like asphalt shingles on the ground, and I can only surmise that somebody had built a wooden barn right here for maybe the animals in the olden days, and all the wood basically collapsed and rotted down, and the asphalt shingles still remained, so we had to actually dig up all the shingles and get them off site, and I didn't even get them all, you can see we got some taro here, this is also the bottom of the property, so it stays pretty wet during the rainy season, still a little bit moist, we opened this up, I took down a lot of trees, and a lot of vines, and basically this right here is what this trail used to look like, and then we have markers on the trail so we don't lose it in case the vines grow back, and then we go through my taro patch, you haven't seen it from this side because I always show it to you from the other side, lots of taro, and we go into my huge breadfruit tree on this side, my huge avocado tree over on this side, we head up the hill, I have some sugar cane growing over here, and of course I've planted a lot of bailey, like last trip, and the bailey has grown amazing, look at this guys, this is called the salad tree or bailey, I planted a rooted cutting, remember the roots, six months ago, and this thing is huge, this is how easy it is to grow in the tropics with nothing but the rain water, and the trick for the bailey is when it falls over, it wants to make a lot more up shoots, so instead of growing straight up and tall, I would encourage you guys to bend it over, it'll make a lot more up shoots, you will get a lot more food. You guys can see I harvested a rack of bananas, I still have lots of bananas, here's some bananas here, a giant avocado tree that actually got avocados off of this time, so it's fruiting this month, they're almost about ready, some of them dropped, there's still some on the tree, late November, early December, oh look, here's one that dropped, it split open, look at how huge my avocados are on my farm, this one basically cracked open and ants got it, Another thing, I had a two-wheel drive rental SUV, and I came down this road here, and then I couldn't get back up, it's the only time I have problems getting it up when I'm in Puerto Rico, and the ground is slippery, and I tried to get a run at it, and the two-wheel drive was just too wet, didn't get enough traction, and I tried to get pulled up, and I just kept slipping right here. Always fun in Puerto Rico when I have my fun experiences. Alright guys, so that's the end of the tour, I normally start the tour right here at my house, glad to say that basically the building permits are issued, ready to get made, and the signs put up as soon as I hire the contractor, which hopefully should be 2026. We got some pigeon peas there, pigeon peas there, and of course my mango tree, my Americana, my maize over there, and my huge moringa now, I got a lot more belay over there, the one sad part about this trip is I really wanted to work that mountainside, which is my first zone that I started working, where I plant a lot of food crops, it's just completely overgrown, but I ran out of time. So how it goes in Puerto Rico, I've really been enjoying this trip, planted over 50 fruit trees, I hope you guys enjoyed this little tour today, I actually gotta head out and head to the airport so I don't miss my flight home. If you guys enjoyed this episode here from Puerto Rico, please be sure to give this video a big thumbs up, also be sure to share this with other people so you guys can see how amazing it is farming in Puerto Rico raw land that is a lot of hilly, not just flat, and a lot less expensive than buying in tropical places like Hawaii. Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss out on my new and upcoming episodes, I've got 5-7 days, you're gonna know where I show up, what you'll be learning on my YouTube channel, make sure you click the little bell to get notified as my new videos come out, and finally be sure to check my past episodes, and past episodes are a wealth of knowledge, over 17 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to you guys how to grow your own food at home, and of course, links down below to all my updates from my Puerto Rico property, I do one update about every 6 months when I come and I show you guys the progress that I'm making, and it's always fun stuff. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time, and until then, remember, keep on growing.