MD Reveals 3 Plants You Should Grow to Help Reverse Chronic Disease

Alright! This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for you. I'm back here in Northern California to visit a friend, Dr. Jeff Pierce. I think this is my fourth visit to his homestead here in the middle of a city where he's growing, I would say, hundreds of varieties of different kinds of fruits, berries, beans, nuts, seeds, greens. He's grown it all and he is a fanatical collector is what I'm going to tell you guys about him. He has more varieties of things that probably shouldn't even grow here that he's attempting and trying to grow and actually something he reminded me of is that, like, he's only doing this after he's got all his established plants that are just making tons of fruit, you know, all his normal crops, apples, pears, berries. Now he's growing cacao, edamame, cherimoya, different kinds of avocados, like, I don't know, all kinds of crazy things that probably shouldn't even grow here. Papayas, mangoes, let's keep going down the tropical fruit list. Anyways, in this episode, what we're going to share with you guys today is the amount of diversity he grows, you know, not only just for the diversity because when you grow a diversity of different fruits and vegetables and other plants, right, guess what that means for you? Well, there's two main things. Number one, the main thing it means for you is that you will have more success because maybe his Logan berries don't produce, but his mulberries will or his, you know, different kinds of blackberries will, and he has four or five different kinds of blackberries alone. And maybe these three varieties don't really like the climate or where he planted them here, but that one variety, it has bumper crops every single year, right? So the more varieties you plant, the more successful you will be as a gardener, right? He has multi-grafted fruit trees that have, you know, five different types of pears or pluots on there, and you know, maybe some of those varieties won't really pan out, but some of those other ones may do really good. On the same token, right? When you're growing more of a variety, you have a greater level of success for you because something might do good, but more importantly, when the varieties grow out, then you're going to be able to eat those different fruits or vegetables of different varieties and have different benefits from them because every different plant makes a whole different host of different phytochemicals, phytonutrients, different amounts, and even types of specialized fiber that can improve your gut health. So in this episode, we're going to go ahead and get with Dr. Jeff, show you guys some of the crazy varieties, and also more importantly, how the fiber and some of the plant phytonutrients can positively affect your gut microbiome so you can have a healthier gut because the fact of the matter is, guys, most of the people eating food in America are eating food that has the fiber removed, that is highly processed, ultra-processed, and these are not good for you. Dr. Jeff wants you to get back eating from nature, eating from the Garden of Eden, which can be your home garden like he set up here. So let's go around on a tour with Dr. Jeff and show the guys all the amazing fruits and vegetables he's growing in his yard. All right guys, so now I'm going to introduce you guys to Dr. Jeff Pierce, and Jeff, what kind of medical doctor are you and how long have you been a doctor? Yeah, I'm a family doctor and also a lifestyle medicine doctor. I graduated from my residency training all the way back in 2007, and yeah, I practice mostly the kind of medicine where we talk with folks about, hey, I got diabetes, I got high cholesterol, I have high blood pressure, I have heart disease, how can I try to reverse these things with my lifestyle habits, with my diet, with my exercise, with how I de-stress and all these kinds of things so that little by little we can peel off medications and get you feeling healthier and enjoying life again. That's great, yeah. So in my opinion, a lot of doctors that are not trained in lifestyle medicine, they are trained in pharmaceuticals and basically giving you a pharmaceutical that you have to take pretty much for the rest of your life, in some cases that can be lifesaving, but in many cases that just prolongs the damage and injury to your body, whereas it sounds like to me, Dr. Jeff, what you're trying to do is trying to just get people to eat healthier as well as many other factors in the lifestyle medicine so that they can maybe get rid of some of their drugs. Yeah, I agree. I'm very thankful for modern medicine and many of the pharmaceuticals that we have out there are definitely life-changing and life-saving, but if you can avoid them, if at all possible, why not? So try to take those steps early on so that you can avoid needing them in the first place, and then also when you have certain conditions, you can work with your doc and say, what can I do just day in and day out in a healthy way so I can get off these medications if I don't need them? Wonderful, and that's what you can help people to do, and it's not just like, you just don't teach these people, you're actually doing it yourself. I mean, I've seen more different kinds of berries here in this berry alley, and of course, besides this berry alley, you have berries planted amongst your whole property. Why is your focus on the berries? I mean, we know that berries are some of the most nutritious foods people should eat, they're high in antioxidants and these other compounds, but why did you decide to plant, I don't even know, dozens of different types of berries here? Yeah, definitely. So yeah, I agree with you. From a health point of view, berries are so packed with good vitamins, phytochemicals, et cetera, that just a little bit goes a really long way. They're great for folks with blood sugar issues because they don't tend to raise your blood sugar very much, but from a gardening standpoint, they are really easy to grow. There's a berry for every kind of garden in every part of the world, basically, and you just got to figure out what works in your garden. They don't need a ton of sun as compared to some other things like oranges or avocados and bananas, things that would want some more sun. Berries, this part of our garden gets morning sun until about 12 or 1 in the afternoon, and then it's in shade for the rest of the day, and it still produces raspberries and black raspberries and currants and blackberries and all sorts of good stuff. Wonderful, and what are some of the main compounds in the berries that are so beneficial for our health, Dr. Joe? Yeah, I mean, the one that comes to mind quickly are the anthocyanins, this deep pigment that tends to be the deep blues and the deep purples, and they're attractive to our eyes. We see something, this deep blue, deep purple, it's attractive to us, and that's for a reason. We've evolved along with these fruits for many years. We know in our genes, in our core, that these are good things to eat. They have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties, and so if you could put some on your morning bowl of oats, it kicks it up to a whole other level. And the interesting part is that one of the foods that's most highest of the berries in these anthocyanins are actually the black raspberries, because they have a deeper, richer black, even higher than the blackberries, which are also wonderful, and people think, oh, eat blueberries for your anthocyanins. Blueberries are relatively lower anthocyanins than even the blackberries, but then if you guys could grow the wild blueberries, you know, they are significantly higher. But yeah, tell us about your black raspberries, which I think I'm seeing right here, that are not quite ready yet. They're not ready, but they are, we maybe had just one or two from last year because they were new canes, and I bought them in part because I had read about how good they were for us, and I also like trying to grow as wide of a variety of just about everything, and so if it can grow in our area, I give it a try. Even if it can't grow in our area, I might give it a try. But the black raspberries have done well. They have this tendency to sort of flop over, and when they hit the ground, they will root and throw up another cane. So if you don't want that, you just kind of have to be on top of them a little bit more. But if you don't mind that, they'll just keep multiplying that way, and so this year looks like it's going to be a good harvest, knock on wood. And then in this berry alleyway, like what is your best performing berry? Oh, I'd say in general it's the raspberry, which is funny because before I was a gardener, I'd see wild blackberries everywhere. We have these, what some people refer to as Himalayan blackberries, just kind of growing wild along the roads, and I would never see raspberries. But in the garden, once you plant some raspberries, they tend to either grow by runners or fall in the ground and self-seed and start. And they have just been very productive, and they're not as thuggish as some of the blackberries can be. Some of the blackberries can be really aggressive, and you're spending a whole lot of time pruning them back. The raspberries are kinder, gentler versions, and just really tasty too. And I think most of the varieties of the berries you're having here are basically like the thornless variety. That's right. So we pay particular attention with the blackberries to make them thornless, because a lot of the blackberries have really powerful, very strong thorns. The raspberries have sort of naturally just very little, very minor thorns that usually even when I'm working with them, I'm not wearing gloves. But for the blackberries, we have enough of the wild blackberries that are really thorny and will get you real good. So the ones that we've purposely planted have been thornless. Awesome. And how do you use the berries in your daily meals? Like how many times a day do you eat berries, and what are some ways you use them to give people ideas instead of just, I mean, I'll just come out to your garden, I'll snack and eat all the ripe ones, but how do you use them to, you know, last them throughout the year? Yeah. So we sort of do a twice a day pick. This time of the year, the berries are in full force. And so one of us will usually go around in the morning, usually my wife, and we'll pick berries to put on either just to have with some nuts, or I usually have oatmeal, and so we'll eat them along with oatmeal. And then in the evening, kind of a sweet family thing that we do with our 12-year-old daughter, she calls them fruit feasts. And we'll just do a walk around the garden after dinner and just basically pick our dessert. And this time of year, it's blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, cherries. We're not quite at our first plums being ripe yet. So it's all about berries right now. And that's another thing about berries, that they're one of the earlier fruits to be in season, because they don't need to get that big, right? They're a little small. And once it gets warmer and warms up, the canes are off and growing, and before you know it, you've got some berries to eat. So I definitely want to encourage you guys to plant some berries. And also, they're long-lived plants. You know, it's like your annuals, you've got to plant every year and replant, right? The berries always just stay underneath the ground and just pop up in the springtime, give you berries, and they could go dormant. Or even in the last winter, I know here in this area, all my canes stayed pretty much alive and just resprouted, because I didn't even have to cut them to the ground. How do you take care of yours, Dr. Jeff? So because we're in a fairly mild climate, probably zone 9b, they do pretty well. I heavily mulch in general for all of our fruits, but we don't have to worry about the cold too much with these berries. I will look in the late winter, early spring. I'll find the dead canes and cut those down to a couple of inches above ground and hopefully leave the canes that are going to flower and fruit this year. And if you, you know, you asked about how to enjoy the fruit year-round, if you can show some restraint, it's sort of like putting money away from your paycheck. If you just put $10 or $20 away every paycheck, it'll add up. So if you can show a little restraint and put just a few berries in the freezer every time you harvest, then in the middle of December when you don't have much growing, you can heat those up and make a nice sauce out of them or put them in a smoothie and things like that. Wonderful, yeah. The way I recommend you guys freeze them is you want to basically take the fresh berries, freeze them like on a pie plate on a tray so that they're frozen hard. And then once they're frozen hard, then you want to put them in a vacuum seal bag and put them in a bag and then suck the extra oxygen out. And then if you're going to defrost them, the best way to defrost them is defrost them in the vacuum bag and let it just fully thaw out without the oxygen so that you retain the most amount of phytonutrients in there and then just use them thawed out. Or what I would like to do is just open them out of the bag and then just actually put them in my oatmeal to help my oatmeal cool down. And they thaw relatively quickly and then I just get to eat them and they're basically room temperature at that point. All right, let's move on. All right, the next tree we want to share with you guys is an avocado. And we got a ripe one right there, ripening up. And he has other avocado trees. So Jeff, I know you recently gave a presentation at the local library that was actually packed house. Actually, you couldn't have more people in there because the fire marshal said no more. You're at the capacity. And so tell us about the avocado, why you grow it here in this zone, which is not known for avocados. Normally they grow avocados in Southern California, but Northern California can grow avocados successfully as you have proven and all the varieties that you're growing. Sure, yeah. I think most of us love avocados. And if you get the, if you have the potential to have success with one, we thought we'd give it a shot. You look around town and there are these old trees that have just been in the ground for decades that no one's covering with frost blankets because they're too big and half of them aren't on any kind of water probably. And so it was exciting to find that certain varieties do well. I think the winters are getting a little bit milder and they're just folks all over this county that have been growing avocados. And it's kind of under the radar unless you have, you're really tuned in. So I started meeting with people and finding out what they were growing and learning a lot about it. And now it's really one of my focuses is to spread the word that if you live in at least this, you know, speaking just for the county that I know about, if you live in Sonoma County, you can probably grow an avocado tree. Maybe not if you're right on the coast, because it doesn't, you probably won't get enough heat. But some of these, you know, a lot of people, when I first got into this, I was worried that the main issue would be too cold in the winter. But a lot of these trees are hardy down to 18, 20, 22 degrees. And we almost never get that cold. Usually 28 is about as low as we get at the house here. And this winter we probably only got down to about 30. And so the cold hardness is not the problem. It's mostly making sure that they have excellent drainage because they don't want to be cold and wet. And so if you're on clay like we are, like a lot of us are, you got to plant on a mound or in a raised box or raised bed. And if you've got really well draining soil and you baby them for a couple of years up front, you're probably going to have avocados before too long. So the question I have for you, Dr. Jeff, is what variety specifically or what types do well? I know there's different, like the Mexican types or what the Indian types? Particularly the Mexican types do the best. There's the Mexican heritage, there's Guatemalan, and there's West Indian. And of the three, the Mexican genetics are the best for cold hardiness. And a lot of avocados out there are a mix of genetics. So the most popular HASS is a mix, mostly Guatemalan genetics, but also Mexican genetics as well. So if you're in an area that's really marginal for cold, the toughest ones are the Mexican varieties. And they taste great. A lot of them, they have super thin edible peels. So you can eat the peels, but you don't want to eat the peels on the Guatemalan types because those can be toxic. So be careful, do your research. But so specific types that do super, that are kind of no brainers would be Mexicola, Mexicola Grande. Bacon also does well. Zutano, probably not the favorite flavor, but it tends to be a powerhouse, workhorse and handles the cold real well. But some lesser known varieties that you can get in places like Epicenter Nursery are D'Arturo and Palo de Oro. And Bonnie Doon are three types that are harder to find, but have been shown to do well. And yeah, they're just a bunch out there that can tolerate really cold temps. And then if you're in an area that only occasionally gets down to 27, 28, but is mostly 32 or above, you can get away with just about any of the Guatemalan mixes like Hass and some of these others, Jan Boyce, etc. So what are the specific varieties or cultivars and name varieties that have been growing here in Sonoma County successfully? People found some big tree and then, you know, make that available through grafting or whatever. Yeah, those are cool because these are these trees that are seedling trees and have stood the test of time and also produce really tasty fruit. So some local names that you might hear about if you do some exploration in our county would be Second Red and Royal Right. We got a new one called Petaluma Pear. There are a lot in the Bay Area like Oak Lando and Bay Giant and La Morinda. And so avocado enthusiasts are finding these seedling trees, tasting the fruit, realizing the fruit's awesome, and then helping to spread the genetics by taking cuttings and doing graftings. And then you can find these trees that you wouldn't be able to find at any big box store that have been proven to do well in your area. So then how would somebody get some of those trees that are grown, you know, or found originally in Sonoma County, for example? Yeah, so I recommend if you if you are on Facebook at all, then there's a group called NorCal Backyard Avocado Growers, I think is what it is. And they have people post in multiple times a day and they will have get togethers often in the spring and say, hey, we've got a bunch of we're going to get a bunch of scions, a bunch of these trees and get together and exchange scions. If you can do your own grafting and then sometimes people bring grafted trees that you can buy or trade. So that Facebook group is a great, great possibility. And you can also get involved in your local California Rare Fruit Growers group because they often have avocado growing enthusiasts. And then, like I mentioned before, I'm a big fan of Ellen and Freddie over at Epicenter where they specialize in some of these avocados that people bring to them and say, hey, we found this growing in our neighborhood and we've loved it for decades and we just want you to propagate it. And so that's a neat place to get some stuff to. Awesome. So aside from the growing of avocados, Dr. Jeff, what are the health benefits of avocados and why should people actually eat them for a healthy source of fat and other phytonutrients? Yeah, it's interesting because there are not a lot of fruits, very few fruits that have this mix of macronutrients. So much fat and you just don't get that from a peach or a pear or an apple. And so they're pretty special. And what they have is healthy fats of mono and unsaturated fats compared to saturated fat or trans fat. And the worst fats for us as human beings, the ones that are known to raise our, quote unquote, bad cholesterol or LDL cholesterol are saturated fats and trans fats. And you want to stay away from those whenever possible or really at least minimize them. And so avocado is a great source for fat. It's better to get the fat from eating the whole fruit than pouring a bunch of avocado oil on your salad. And they are calorie dense. And so if you are working on weight loss, I wouldn't eat three a day. But actually, I haven't looked into the study, but someone was talking to me recently about a study that showed a certain amount of weight loss on a smaller amount of avocados. But in general, I would just say eat the avocados in moderation, enjoy them, and you'll be getting not only the healthy fats, but also fiber and other micronutrients. Wonderful. All right, guys, so I wish I could stay here all day and share with you guys like every little pot because he has pots of different fruit trees and veggies all over the place. But we're going to share with you guys a few of the more uncommon things he's attempting to grow here in Northern California. So in this bed, it looks like we got some bananas and some papayas. So Dr. Jeff, why are you trying to grow these exotic fruit trees that aren't really native to this area with or without success? Well, I mean, multiple reasons, I think. Number one, we do have our main crops that are dependable, like our apples and our pears and our plums and our peaches. These are the ones that will give us, if we're lucky, they'll give us fruit every year. So for experimentation, just for the challenge, for the fun of it, for the look of it, that tropical plants are so beautiful, for different flavors and different fibers and different nutrients and whatnot by just having a wide variety. And so, yeah, and it also keeps, you know, just keeps me from getting bored. And so, you know, in this little plot here, we've got, these are dwarf namwas that I was gifted from a friend of mine in Petaluma, who, not far from us, same growing zone and has fruited multiple times off of these. And so, crossing our fingers, we'll get our first bananas from these. And, you know, dwarf namwa, a lot of these bananas can tolerate, can survive temperatures into the upper 20s, low 30s. They may freeze down to the ground and pop back up. My hope is that, especially if we give a little bit of frost protection on the coldest nights, that they won't die to the ground, that they will maybe hold the fruit over the winter and finish ripening in the spring or early summer. But then we have some other things that we've had, definitely we've had experience with. A huge fan of these Peruvian ground cherries, Phacelis peruviana. Cape gooseberries or, yeah, poha berries. Yeah, and they have great, to me, great flavor. They grow, you can grow them just like you do a tomato, grow it as an annual. But we've had a number that survive over the winter and act more like perennials. Yeah, I can't say the same for the papaya. The papayas are going to be probably one of the most challenging because they really don't like to be cold and wet. So at the least, they'll look pretty this year and might die over the winter. But it's worth a shot, you know, we'll give it a shot. Wonderful, yeah, what I tell you guys is that, hey, if you want to experiment with tropicals, that's great, but like Dr. Jeff has already done, make sure you have other fruit trees that is dependable so you'll be eating out of your garden instead of just trying to like spend a lot of money and time and effort to grow something that may not produce here. I mean, for me, of course, I mean, I'm growing the bananas and papayas in my property in Puerto Rico where I already have existing bananas that I just show up and get to eat bananas when they're ripe. And the rain comes and I don't have to do anything and no protection, no nothing. So that's my personal solution. It's a lot easier to hop a jet, even if they're delayed or canceled, unfortunately, and show up to my property to have fresh bananas to eat. But yeah, I admire somebody that wants to try because, I mean, I do love the look of the bananas. But in the tropics, when they grow so fast, like the brown leaves and they just get really messy underneath and I get all these vines growing up and it could also be a lot of work too. Alright, so every springtime in my garden, like Dr. Jeff's garden too, he's growing and I'm growing fava beans. One of my favorite beans to grow because it's basically like a no-brainer bean in my opinion, especially I plant it during the wintertime. They come up. They're one of the first beans to emerge aside from runner beans that mine have not overwintered successfully in the last couple of years. And Dr. Jeff, what's the benefit of growing favas as well as other beans in the garden? Yeah, favas are great because you can, depending on your climate, but you can grow them pretty much through the fall, winter, and spring. And a lot of beans really are summer crops. So this is a great one for the off-season, if you will. And you can, as John knows better than I do, you can eat the shoots and in all sorts of ways, put them in the salad. They have a nice flavor, especially the tender young leaves. We mostly grow them for the beans themselves. Personally, we let them get the pods to get quite large, but still green. And we pull out the favas. And this year we had some real nice size because I think we had a nice balance of rain and whatnot. And then you can steam them or you can blend them down into a soup that's traditionally eaten in Northern Africa. And beans are so good for us. And the study after study has shown benefits for heart health and diabetes health and longevity. And so get any kind of bean that you can in you as often as possible. Wonderful. Yeah. You talked a bit earlier, Dr. Jeff, about saturated fat, which comes actually when you're eating animals, for example, and how that's not good for us. But also when you're eating animals, it comes with saturated fat, but also protein. So talk to me about why you would choose to eat beans instead of like an animal protein. Yeah, it's funny, in a lot of places that you'll read or listen to someone on social media, they'll say that animal protein is very high quality protein. But I look at it a little bit differently. I see what travels with the protein. Beef comes with a lot of protein, but it also comes with a lot of saturated fat, a little bit of naturally occurring trans fat, no fiber, et cetera, et cetera. So I consider and many in the health community, scientific community are looking at things differently now and saying that actually the legume family, beans, chickpeas, lentils, split peas, these are some of the highest quality protein because they travel with fiber, with plenty of nutrients, and they are very low in fat and they're a lower caloric food too. So you can eat a lot without worrying about gaining weight. And so I get the majority of my protein from beans, chickpeas, lentils, split peas. And of course, besides just the protein in the beans, something very important for me is the resistant starch that can help improve your gut health and your microbiome. So you do want to touch on this, Dr. Jeff? Sure. Depending on how you look at it, we are more microbe than we are human because there are just trillions of different bacteria and viruses and protozoa and archaea that are living on top and within us that allow us to thrive as human beings. It's a very conventional relationship. And what they thrive on, what they feed on, the healthiest bacteria, the ones that are most associated with our own mental and physical well-being are the ones that their preferred food source is fiber. Humans by themselves cannot break down the fiber, the resistant starches that you see in a lot of plant foods. And so we depend upon our microbes to do that for us. And as we feed them, they produce a very healthy substance called short-chain fatty acids, which are super important for our health on many, many levels. And so yeah, beans, great place to get it. But fiber, of course, from all plant foods. But these resistant starches are in high amounts here. Wonderful. All right, guys. So now we're in the converted carport greenhouse. And if you want to see more about this, I'll link down below to the videos I made in the past with Dr. Jeff. But Dr. Jeff, this area was completely full just a few months ago. And now you're starting to take everything or many things out from this greenhouse and then put it outside for the summer. So what did you have growing in here that is now outside? And what do you still have growing in here? All the tropicals that you are experimenting with here in northern California. I see you have a java de cava, which actually I just planted a nice java de cava in Puerto Rico, like in my forest, but I don't do anything with it. And here you have fruits on it, but you have to protect it and keep it warm. And it's in a, in my opinion, very undersized pot to be this big and producing a good handful of fruit there. Yep. So this is where we do some more of the experimentation or the weird stuff. So, yeah, we've got that java de cava. Things that we've taken out were the black sapote and an Alano sapodilla and maybe a babaco and a glen mango and a very small, more dwarfing type of avocado called a holiday. And so all those are out of here now. And what we've got left are also some more of the Peruvian ground cherry. We've got a couple of mangoes, a quesar and a nam doc mai, a babaco and a lemon guava and strawberry guava and a white sapote. This is a cocopo banana originally from like New Guinea and then a canistel, which is also called an egg fruit. And, you know, some of these, they don't have a super high chance of fruiting. But again, this is part of that experimentation. And you've got a cacao right here. And actually I just recently saw a video from a news people. They're in Santa Barbara and there's a guy growing cacao successfully in Santa Barbara now. I think he's all covered in a greenhouse zone. He only has like 50 producing and they're going to have a chocolate company. I'm like, that's really not going to produce a lot of chocolate. And of course, you also have a pretty nice macadamia nut in here, too. Yeah. I mean, things that probably look better on the online store and you get excited about it, but you never know. You know, maybe John's going to come back in a couple of years and we'll have some chocolate covered macadamia nuts for him. And so what keeps you going, Dr. Jeff, with investing all this money in like, you know, like he paid $40 for this cacao and went in Puerto Rico. I buy one for like $2, a cacao seedling this big and I go back in six months and it's this big. Yeah, I know. I'm jealous about you there for that. Yeah, I'm not going to buy too many of these cacao trees. You know, you try a couple of times and if you fail, then I'll just move on to something else. But, you know, cacaos are cool because they don't get very big. They do fine as an understory plant. And I'm going to have it in the greenhouse to where it's protected from the coldest weather. So why not? All right, guys. So now I want to show you guys another cool technique that Dr. Jeff has been doing here since I've known him, because I know when I originally came, he had a few of these holes built and I got to explain to you guys the process. But now I'm here when he's actually still doing it. He's still taking out more concrete on his property. And even though there were so many poor concrete before, he's making more spaces for plants. So literally all he does like this is like a part of his driveway that only needs, I guess, only one place to park his car. And he basically takes it. He takes a concrete saw that he rents and he basically comes and basically cuts out a square out of the concrete to plant in here. Some of these he doesn't put a box on. He just plants in the ground and then sometimes he'll build a box like this that literally goes right over the hole. So now he has like a raised bed that now has a deep bottom. So you could grow a nice fruit tree in here that could establish in the top nice soil and then send down a deep root in the bottom to get literally endless sources of water. So Dr. Jeff, you want to tell us about this technique and why you started doing this and why you continue to basically keep renting, you know, concrete saw every few months and then dig a few more of these and keep taking out concrete? Well, we think it's a good technique for places where you've got a lot of concrete and not enough space for your trees and vegetables. And so it's a lot of work up front. You know, it's noisy, it's heavy, and oftentimes the soil underneath is going to need a fair amount of work to make it ready and to support your fruit tree or whatever. But you do it once and you're done with it. And just make sure that, yeah, you amend that soil. You're putting a great mix in this raised bed and then you grow all sorts of things and it's going to be pretty and hopefully bring more food and sustenance to my family. And for folks who have got just a lot of concrete and you're like, I can't grow anything, you know, there's a lot of movement in the de-paving approach so that we can get back into the soil. Yeah, I mean, what I would say is if you guys are just wanting to grow vegetables, I would say don't, you don't need to cut up your concrete and then do this. I mean, I'd say, you know, because like most vegetables, the roots don't go more than a foot down anyways, right? So you could save your, save your, all the labor from doing that. But if you want to grow a deep-rooted tree, then by all means, this could definitely be a really good technique. And also it'll make the tree more resilient over time because the tree roots could kind of go deep and find the water it needs to, you know, get. So what will you be planting in this box Dr. Jeff? And what did you plant in the box behind it where you did the similar technique for maybe a few back? Okay. And the first box that we did, we had a multi-graft pluot tree that was just in a raised box on concrete and it struggled along for some years. And then we cut a hole, replaced the tree. That was a heavy root ball. And then in just this one season that it's been in the ground, it's growing more, so much more in one, this one spring, it's probably put on four, three, four feet of growth on some of these branches, which it never did in the, in the small box. So we're excited about that. Pluots, if you can grow them, they're so tasty. Plum, apricot hybrids, and some of the, some of the sweetest fruit out there. So, and then in the next box, I had grafted a Carmen avocado. This is a great avocado named after, I believe, Carlos Mendez in Mexico. And that puts together into Carmen. And it's special because it can, in the right environment, flower twice in one year. And so most avocados will flower in the spring to early summer, and then that's it for the year. But in certain locales, these Carmens will flower and potentially fruit twice in a year. So really, really excited about that one. And in this one, I'm not 100% decided, but I think I'm going to do another one of my experiments. I've heard a lot about a type of mango called a sweet tart that can, does better in California than a lot of other mangoes. And so I think I'm going to try a mango here. And, you know, I think in five years, we'll either have an update and be eating mangoes, or you'll see what my wife told me to plant here after the mango tree died. I think maybe next, next spring, we'll find out the first year, man, you get a three gallon put in this thing. And like, if at least I would plant it in one of the ones in the back, that's kind of protective from the house. You have more thermal mass with this. I mean, I'm just sitting here right now where we're here in the springtime. I'm just getting a nice cool breeze. I can only imagine the winter and you better just protect this baby. Like for a while, at least you got a box to build something over it, man, to keep it small. That's going to be a tough one in my opinion. But you know what? Maybe I'll put an apple tree in. Don't waste your time with an apple. Hi guys. So the last part of Dr. Jeff's garden, I want to show you guys are the greens. Greens are an important component of everybody's diet or should be. I mean, it's a namesake on my channel, growing your greens. I want you guys to grow your greens and eat them every single day. And as much as Dr. Jeff loves to eat his fruits twice a day, he also eats his greens twice a day. So Dr. Jeff, what is your favorite green that you eat twice a day out of your garden that literally is you planted once, you have planted it once and now you forget about it and you have greens to eat basically for the rest of your life for the most part? Yeah, hands down my favorite are the purple tree collards. They grow really well here. They'll survive our winters. And you can use them fresh in a salad. You could use them cooked. You can blend them up in a green smoothie. So many ways to use them. And then when you got to move the plant, you just cut off the top, you know, four inches and stick it somewhere else and it'll start growing again. So I'm a huge fan of it. You know, collards are in the brassica family with the broccoli and the arugula and the cauliflower, all these in the same family are just so good for us for, again, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer benefits. And I wouldn't want to live without my purple tree collards. And what other greens do you grow in your garden, Dr. Jeff, and how often do you eat them? So we have a mix of others. I think the rest of my family prefers kale over collards. So I'm the one eating most of the collards. They're eating kale. We all like the arugula and it's just amazing how different, how much spicier you can get these, this wild arugula and stuff that you're growing in your garden. And then you compare that to something from the store and the store stuff is usually pretty darn bland in comparison. And so plenty of arugula, but then other non brassica stuff like New Zealand spinach and chard and sorrel. We have a little bit of longevity spinach that was given to us as a gift from our friend John. And that's probably most of what our greens. We grow some lettuce, nowhere near as much as what John grows, but I'd say definitely our go-to green are the collards. Right here in this crack is a self-seeded arugula. It just grows everywhere. Yep, there you go. All right, so I'm going to take the opportunity to interview Dr. Jeff before I take off today. So Dr. Jeff, I guess one of the final questions is very important for me is, how can gardening improve your gut health? Yeah, we can't really have health if we don't have good gut health. And so how do we improve our gut health? I think a major point is to eat as many plants as possible, not only volume, but also variety. And so just like you were mentioning earlier, the majority of our calories in our modern diet come from ultra-processed foods. These are the foods that a lot of the good things have been taken out, like fiber and water and various nutrients, as they process them in a way that makes them shelf-stable for a lot longer. And I think that would be particularly important if we were facing food insecurities in America where we are running out of calories. But that's not really an issue, right? There's food everywhere you look, and we don't need this much processed food. And we certainly don't need the food that is processed to such a degree that the good things are taken out, a lot of unhealthy things are added back in to make it palatable, to make it tasty, and to make it irresistible, as they were designed in the lab to be, so that we can't just eat one. And those foods just don't have fiber. They have very little fiber. And we developed eating many, many grams of fiber, depending on when you look in human development, but maybe 100 grams of fiber a day. And we're probably eating closer to 15, 18 grams of fiber a day right now on our modern diet. And so the more plants that you can eat, the more different fibers you get. And we always simplify things and talk about fiber as a number, like X number of grams, or just get more fiber. And there's all this social media craze about fiber maxing and things like that. But it's more about the quantity. It's also about the quality, right? There's so many different kinds of fibers and different foods. And the beauty of having a garden is that you don't depend on the fiber in the food at your local grocery store. Many of us are lucky to have a grocery store that has all sorts of different fruits and vegetables and beans and nuts and seeds and all these kinds of things. But if you're in a place that doesn't have a great access to farmers markets and stores, and even if you do, but you want to take it up to another level, is that you plant stuff that you're not going to find at the farmers market. You're probably not going to find longevity spinach at your farmer's market. You're probably not going to find a purple tree collard at your grocery store. Fresh cacao, even though I probably won't grow it myself successfully, you're not going to find fresh cacao unless you happen to be in Puerto Rico and some of the other places. So my message as far as gut health is, is eat a lot of fiber, but eat a variety of fiber. And gardening can help you grow those foods. And then you're also getting the microbiome underneath your fingernails. And we have evolved having close contact with the microbiome, healthy microbiome of our soils. And we're also far removed from that in many ways for good reason. We don't want to all have infectious bouts of diarrhea and cholera and all these things that come from microbes that are getting into our system that shouldn't be there. But, but, but healthy microbes that are the predominant species that you see in your garden, having a little bit of interchange on, on your vegetable that you didn't wash it completely like that's, that's good for us. That's how we develop. Wonderful. Dr. Jeff, I also want to ask you about like, what are the benefits of gardening besides just the food you're growing, right? I mean, to me, gardening is about health. I mean, I think people that are into their health, everybody that are, that's into your health should have your, have a garden because it takes your health to the next level. And even if you're not into health, having a garden will take your health to the next level, whether you like it or not. So why is this? Yeah, yeah. I think about gardening clearly for what we can eat from it, because it's, it's clean in the sense that you're not, it's not covered with all sorts of pesticides and whatnot. You have the variety that we were just talking about. But beyond what you're eating, there's all the physical labor that's involved from preparing the soil, planting the seed, weeding, picking the slugs off, watering, all these sorts of things that just nudge you out of your chair so that every day you're doing a little bit of work. You know, if you go to the gym and you work out hard once for one hour, once a week, that's probably better than nothing, but it's much better to do something that pulls you out of your chair every single day, multiple times a day. And so the physical activity, being outside when there's sun and getting vitamin D, which our skin makes naturally from the rays of the sun is beneficial for our health. And we have lots of studies showing that people with low vitamin D are more at risk for a number of conditions, cardiovascular cancer, not living as long, et cetera. So there's the food, there's the movement, the vitamin D, being exposed to nature and hearing bird calls and a little fascination with little things that you see outside that you don't see inside. I mean, studies show blood pressure goes down, pulse slows down as you are exposed to just nature. As simple as that. As simple as being surrounded by the things that grow naturally in the planet. And so we have to create these areas because many of us live in concrete, cement, steel jungles. So we have to create this and the best way to create it is creating your own garden or at the very least getting out to a public garden if you don't have the ability to grow stuff yourself. And then we go on and on, but in short, the benefits to getting out early to work in your garden is going to help reset your sleep timer that we have internally. So we'll be able to sleep better when it comes to nighttime. And the de-stressing in general, in addition to the lower blood pressure, also lower cortisol levels and whatnot. So there's just so many beneficial aspects and one that I think many gardeners get, certainly John has it, I have it, is the sense of purpose that comes with it. That's so important to longevity and quality of life and growing something that you can put on the table for your family, growing and teaching about it and sharing this with millions of viewers like John's doing. The sense of purpose, you can get it from all sorts of things. You can get it from being a great stamp collector, but if you're a great stamp collector, you might have that sense of purpose for it, but you don't have some of those other aspects such as eating the food and the movement and all these other things. So it's such a great package all in one to improve our health. So if you're not growing, start with a single pot and we have a great guide that we'll put in the show notes, I think that has the benefits of gardening for our health, but then also how to get started. And this was put together by the Plantrition Project, which is a wonderful organization run by Dr. Scott Stoll and his team. And it's a helpful thing to take a look at and spread around if you like what you see there. Wonderful. So Dr. Jeff, if somebody wants to keep up with what you're doing, how can they follow you? Do you have any social media or anything, websites like that? Yeah, I do a little bit of social media on Instagram at Dr. Jeff Pierce, and that shows some of the highlights from the garden and whatnot. So from a perspective of lifestyle medicine, that's probably the best way. Maybe one of these days I'll get a little YouTube channel going, but for the meantime, we're leaving it to the professionals. All right. Thanks. And the other thing, if somebody needs to find a doctor, I know you do online telehealth, right? And you could help people, consult with them and even consult with them how they can integrate their garden into their health or just help them with their traditional health conditions and maybe even get them off their drugs, depending on the situation. So you want to share how somebody can get ahold of you to do that. Yeah. I mean, I'd say first step is just to talk to your health care provider about, see if they know about lifestyle medicine, ask them what you can do as far as diet and exercise, sleep and stress and all these kinds of things to get healthier and to potentially get off medications. And if they are, if they're at a loss and they can't help you in that arena, then we are one group that does this sort of a consultation. We're called Lifestyle Telemedicine, and it's a great group of docs that covers all 50 states and DC. And you could look on there about how to schedule an appointment. But I think the most important part is to know that we have so much more control over our health than we often give ourselves credit as having. And so let's let's do our best to control what we do have control of so that we get ourselves and our families, our loved ones on on the path to health and happiness. Lifestyle telemedicine dot com. All right. Link is down below to that. And what I would add to that is that, you know, I would say that, you know, a lot of people, unfortunately, in our society and no offense, Dr. Jeff, you know, we leave our health up to our doctors, you know, because we have like a response system like, oh, you go to the doctor and he'll make you better. And instead of leaving the responsibility of your personal health to the doctor. Right. I want you guys to take personal responsibility for your health before, you know, something happens too bad. Then you've got to see the doctor. Right. So if you were to lead a healthy lifestyle, which is actually just the whole practice of lifestyle medicine, which is what Dr. Jeff teaches, eating healthy, getting exercise, getting saying basically doing all the things gardening can help you get, you know, we can actually avoid going to see the doctor and be in relatively good health. Aside from some weird things happen to me, I rarely, you know, go to the doctor because I just don't need to because I'm not, I don't have any health conditions that warrants me to get, you know, sick care, you know, from the doctor, you know. So to me, gardening is about health. And I'm so glad you guys stayed to the end of this episode to learn all we can from Dr. Jeff about how he is able to remain, him and his family is able to stay healthy by growing all the amazing plants, the varieties of plants he's growing and, you know, getting out to the garden. You know, I really liked the most, the biggest idea I liked it was actually for dessert every day, you know, after dinner. Right. They go around and they walk their garden to find the dessert. Right. So number one, you're getting outside, you're getting exercise, you're walking, you're using your, your vision to spot the right mulberries, the purple ones, not the red ones that are ready to eat. You're connecting as a family, having community. That's one of the best things. And one day I hope to have a family and be able to go out at the end of the evening and go around my orchard farm to find ripe fruits to eat for dessert. And actually I'd probably bring some back and then turn that into some crazy blended sorbet slushy thing with some machine I got. All right. So if you guys enjoyed this episode, hanging out with Dr. Jeff this time, please be sure to give this a big thumbs up. Also, more importantly, share this with other people that need to take a step in the right direction to better their health, no matter what level they're at, right? Gardening can improve your health and take it to the next level. And this is especially true for people that are not gardening. And if you are gardening, plant more varieties, plant more different kinds of tropical things. If you have a full garden already going that's successful, then experiment with some of the experimental, you know, different tropical fruit trees and see if you guys could get them to garden as well. Because this will up your garden game, up your green thumb, make it even greener. Also, be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss any of my new upcoming episodes. I'll be coming out every five to seven days. You never know when I'll show up. What you'll be learning on my YouTube channel, make sure you click the little bell so you get notified as many of you as you can. And finally, be sure to check out past episodes. Past episodes are a wealth of knowledge. Over 1,800 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to you guys all about how to grow your own food at home. And some of my favorite videos I made with Dr. Jeff in the past, links down below. So make sure you guys watch those as well. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. We'll see you next time. And until then, remember, keep on growing.