I Bought 3 Acres in the Tropics to Start a Farm… 2.5 Years Later!

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com today with another exciting episode for you. I'm coming at you from my property here, my three-acre property here in Puerto Rico, and I'm a good friend, best friend, Kyle Ash, who owns property five acres right next to mine. And in this episode, we're going to go ahead and give you guys a dual update on what we are doing to turn this eight acres of land into a permaculture, food forest, yoga, meditation, healthy eating, detox retreat center. Because I think we gave you an initial episode originally and then Kyle Ash hasn't been in any of my updates for quite some time and he actually has been quite a busy boy around his property. So Kyle Ash, what has happened since the last time you were in my initial episode when I bought the property? I'm excited to see that some of the trees and plants are bearing fruit now. Some that are planted and some that I discovered that I didn't even plant. The birds planted them, literally. And so yes, we're going to show you around. All right, great. Well, first, we're going to go ahead and check out around Kyle Ash's property. I'll hold the camera and he can explain what's new here. So I'm very excited to see that this pineapple is starting to turn orange, yellow, and should be ripe quite soon. And this was one that John sent to me, and it's one of those non-acid sweet pineapples where you can also eat the core. And so I personally have an issue with acidic fruits and I love pineapple, but I can't eat pineapple because it burns my mouth, gives me canker sores. So to have this here on this property is very exciting to me. I'm so much looking forward to eating this pineapple very soon. We've got a few more, like three more plants and two more have pineapples on them. So I'm very excited about this. I will for sure save the top or plant the top and the offshoots as well. So over time, we will have a pineapple forest here of this special rare variety of pineapples, which I've looked up and it seems to be called sugar or sugar loaf pineapple. So we'll see what we get here. All right, guys. So now we're at the front of Kyle Ash's property, but this is basically adjoining my property and we're here at the street. And I don't know where my property line is exactly, but basically you could go up to the street because the city doesn't really take care of it here. I've been having to take care of it, so I keep it trimmed down nice. And the goal is to get this area fully planted out in something like vetiver or something that will hold the soil because basically it's just kind of some weed grasses that continue to grow. But you can see basically all the trees that I have planted in this area were basically free. So these guys are Mexican sunflowers. They're great nitrogen fixing crops for chop and drop. You could also take the cuttings and stick them in. That's how we started these guys. Then of course from cuttings I have the chaya, which is done really well. This is basically like spinach. You do need to cook this to eat it. And then from the neighbor literally across the street, we got all these coconuts and we planted them every 20 feet. These are kind of like semi-dwarf coconuts. And this goes all the way down to most of my property line, all the way down where we got just the repetitiveness of these crops that we hope to plant more of in the future along literally the guardrail of my property. Alright guys, so this is the update on the nursery. We've had to replace the shade cloth a little bit, but you can see we have all the trees and plants that we're going to be planting out on the property in their baby stage, whether we got like a lot of different seedlings coming up. So we have things like the chacharoo, some grafted mangoes, and then we have a lot of the bailey, some javadacaba, flat leaf siso spinach. But yeah, mostly got a lot of bailey because we really want to get this out. And if you look closely here, you can see there's these little wild cucumbers hanging. These just kind of grow wildly in the nursery there. So you just come and snack on wild cucumbers. They're nice and crunchy. But yeah, this is when the automatic irrigation system comes off, whether it's going to rain or not for like a minute, and that's all we need in the nice tropics. All these plants are doing beautiful. So I'm very excited to see that finally I have some papayas here. I planted these less than a year ago, and I already harvested a few here. This one is beginning to turn yellow, and then there's a bunch of little plants here, and then a coconut in the middle. So at some point, I believed that one should not plant different plants or even the same plants too close to one another, but what I'm seeing here is the more plant things together close to one another and different varieties, the better they do actually. They seem to thrive in the company of other plants. So here we have the coconut, the papayas, and then further down, I'll show you, I also have a bunch of different plants growing all together, very close to each other. So here's another example, another coconut palm, and then the pigeon peas, the bananas, all growing very close to one another, happily supporting one another. And the pigeon peas, of course, they help bring up nutrients for the banana plants and the coconut palm. So I'm very proud of this coconut palm. I planted about 50 within a day or two, two years ago, and this one is twice as big or even three times as big as some of the other ones. And the reason is that the water flows down the driveway here, and this coconut palm gets lots and lots of water, the driveway and also down the hill. I have no other explanation. I'm hoping to get some coconuts from this next year or even this year. So this tree, Montinja or Jamaican cherry tree, the birds planted for me when I was with John in Florida last year. He pointed this type of tree out to me, the Jamaican cherry, but it was a yellow one. And then I said, I have this on my property. John didn't quite believe me. But then when I came back here, it was full of those cherries and like, this is definitely the tree we saw in Florida. And this one has red ones. They're still a little bit underripe, but can be eaten already. This one is just beginning to ripen. And this tree is packed. There's hundreds, maybe thousands of cherries on this tree. Let's see. Hmm. It's still quite green on the outside, but the inside is very sweet already. Tastes like nectar, agave, with a little bit of a bitter aftertaste. Quite delicious. So here we're in the final phases of building this deck, which I love because of its location. It's right under this tree, partially right under the tree, which gives shade and fruit. Then there's also an only tree on the other side, another tree that probably the birds planted. It was here already when I bought the property. And lots of bananas down that way. Lots of banana plants, many of them already fruiting. Those are planted two years ago. And I've harvested a good bunch of bananas from those. Just a beautiful place. I love being out here. So this deck I built so people can stay here and it'll be like, I call it a total nature immersion experience. The tents I have, they do have a cover, but here it never rains at night. So I suggest to keep it off at night. It's mostly basically a screen and air flowing through, good air ventilation, sleeping out here under the stars in tropical Puerto Rico. All right, guys. So now I'm on Kailash's property on this side of the fence and I walk under and now this is my property. Hey, my voice changed. So we're on this side. We basically got a path that we got, we built last time and I've been expanding the path and kind of what I call making more rooms. So off the path, I kind of forge an area of the jungle that's jungled and then I go in and clip it down, lay things down so it can mulch in place and create fertility for my new trees and then plant new trees. So this one, lucky enough, Kailash basically was throwing jackfruit seeds and his compost over to my side, my property, and then this tree just sprung up. So this is a jackfruit seedling, been going a couple years now. And let's go ahead and show you guys the new progress I've made on the path, including cutting down some old trees that were basically full of termites, which is fun. So I'm currently walking down the path. I basically started forging a new path down this way. It's mostly opened up, but I need to clear it a little bit more because we dropped the tree yesterday and it kind of continues down there. So I work my way up down to over there and I need to finish clearing the rest of this. Hopefully I can get that done this trip. And then further down, like a lot of the trees that I planted last trip, which was about six months ago, are doing great. So this is like my cinnamon. It's really been doing good. My longan is really sprouting up really good. The surname cherry is going good. The tamarind is kind of just doing its thing there, hasn't grown too much. And you know, mostly I've been focusing on fruit trees, but now I'm starting to incorporate the vegetable plants that are very important for me to grow on my property. So this is a new planting of my bailey, all edible leaves, and as we go down you can see coffee plants were planted six months ago with no, without any water, right? Only rainwater, all the trees you're seeing. Here's a blackberry jam fruit tree doing extremely well. Mamey sapote right here, and then this is a new area that I've kind of opened up because like I planted the mamey and then this, this trail kind of ended. So I chopped a bunch of stuff down so we have a nice trail, nice pathway. And then over in the full sun area, I mean, that's very important to me guys. When I plant a tree, I kind of like check out the tree, like in the wild, what would this tree like? Would it like the top of the slope where it is relatively dry? Does it like full sun? Is it more of an understory tree, right? Then I select the place on my property that best matches the tree's requirements, not where I think, oh, I think this tree should go here, right? No, it has nothing to do with me, maybe a little bit, but I'm like, oh, this tree would like full sun, maybe top of the hill, not getting too wet, doesn't like its roots wet. So I planted here the rolinia deliciosa, and it's, it's grown a lot in the last six months. And then this is a new area that I opened up, kind of working my way back up to that jackfruit tree. Once again, planted some more of the bailey, Brazilian spinach, planted a new rose apple, kind of struggling here, planted a sweet lemon right there. Over here I did cuttings of the, of a yellow muntinja fruit, or the Jamaican strawberry. This is a really cool tree, this is called the chorona. This is from Puerto Rico, also known as the orangello, so it's actually an orange grapefruit cross that was born here in Puerto Rico. Moving up further, we planted another bailey, we got a seedling rambutan right here. I planted this tree up, and guess how much this little seedling cost me, two dollars. So he makes it or he doesn't, it was only a two dollar investment, and maybe one day I'll have a lot more than two dollars in fruit. And this is the trail I need to kind of continue all the way up over here to the jackfruit. Yeah, so we just got to still clear that area in progress. Alright guys, so I'm trying a new technique, right. So like, one of the challenges I've been having is once I cut down a tree, I try to get as low to the ground as possible, the tree basically comes back up. So I've tried a number of different techniques this trip to see if I can get this tree to just not come back. So on this one I basically cut some grooves in it. And then on some other trees I've actually just cut off the bark in the cambium layer. At that point, usually the tree won't make it, but we'll see what happens, because I just like to experiment to see as I'm cutting with the chainsaw, you know, if this tree is more or less likely to come back now that I've cut it all up. And I'm hoping like bugs and things will get in there and eat it out, so it won't continue to grow without using any kind of drilling holes and Epsom salt, which you know, I know is another thing, but I'm not in a super rush to make the trees come out, because I'll just usually just keep cutting back and cutting it down. Alright, check this out. This guy's posing for you. Two little lizards, another $2 seedling rambutan down there. This guy's doing good. This is a rare Garcinia madronio, and I really love the new leaf growth on there. Look at that nice, those baby leaves coming out. This guy is nice and happy. You know, this is an area that the water runs through, but doesn't pool. He's also on a little hill, so he doesn't get too wet. And then coming down further, we got more coffee, purple guava that's really stunted, and a cacao doing really good under the shade understory. And basically a lot of this trip was basically just clearing the path, because a lot of things were growing over the path, so I had to clear new areas, or clear the path out, because things were just growing over. But I really love just the dappled light in this area, and how things are growing. So like last time, we planted the turmeric, along with the cacao, and you can see my turmeric growing really healthfully right next to cacao in this nice, more swampy area. My miracle fruit tree that was given to me by Paul Nissan from Fruitful Trees is growing great here in Puerto Rico, and I got a lot of coffee and cacao planted along this area. Here's a cacao doing really good. More turmeric and a cacao. And then I opened up this area, because this was just planted here, but then I opened up this whole area here, so now we have like a little room. And over here, we got my Fiji nut tree. So I was really happy to find this Fiji nut tree locally at a nursery for $15, so that's an amazing price. The Fiji nut is a beautiful tree, number one. Look at how beautiful that is. But number two, it can produce nuts year-round, and Fiji nuts are a nut that I've never eaten in my life. I guess I've been told they're similar to macadamia nuts and pili nuts, which I have had, which are nice fatty nuts. So I'm really looking forward to the day that my Fiji nut tree will make some nuts for me. And of course, I just love the beautiful foliage, the leaves on it. Alright, walking through my tropical rainforest after a rain. It gets actually quite slippery through here, for sure, and this is another area I opened up too. There was a lot of ferns in here and some trees that were hanging over, but I opened this up and then I planted this guy, and I got three of them this trip. This is known as the macumbo. So this is basically a theobroma bicolor, so it's related to the cacao, but in like at Sprouts Farmer's Markets in the States, they sell the macumbo little bean pods you could eat. And yeah, it's a beautiful, while cacao is like an understory tree, this can be an overstory, so I planted it in partial shade, but also I'm giving it a lot of room to get nice and huge and be that overstory that it will want to be one day. And those guys locally, $15, I know some of you guys live in Florida or Hawaii, trying to find these kinds of trees for these prices, you would never be able to do it. So I'm so glad I get really good prices on the fruit trees here. Alright, more wandering through my tropical rainforest with all the vines. I mean, the vines have been my biggest problem here. These vines just take over, so the easiest thing I've found to do is just basically clip them back so they don't get tall, and all the vines that are existing will just dry out mostly. So mostly these are no longer alive and just will come down. What I've also been doing is basically pulling them up by the roots when I find them where they grow and attach into the ground, because these vines just literally take over. And so you've got to control the vines or you basically won't have any light underneath. Now the camera person, Kylash, is standing underneath total vines and it's like super shaded. Now this could be good for a while because you could create microclimates, but it could be bad. But as soon as you come out of the vines, check out these guys. These were planted by stick cuttings. Stick cuttings six months ago, and now they're like four feet tall. This is just more of the chaya. This is not even in full direct sun. This is in a nice more waterlogged place at the bottom of my property where the water kind of comes and rushes down towards the valley. It's not at the lowest point. But these are doing quite good, and just next time I come I'll be able to take more cuttings off those and then stick them in in more places to have more leafy greens to eat. That chaya is doing so well right there. But yeah, I really love this area of my property. And now we're coming out of the forest area here. And now we get more into the flatland slash wetlands. And this gets quite muddy over here. And so this area was completely overgrown. I trimmed it back last time with this electric string trimmer. And it was completely overgrown again. So I had to basically just string trim it all the way back again to open it up. And you can see I was just in here the other day and this grass is already growing back as fast as it can be. So the goal one day is to keep working in the forest because this area to work is going to be a lot more difficult because things in this area gets more full sun. It's more wet. Things are going to grow back a lot faster. So unless I'm on property, it's going to be a lot harder to keep this area planted in what I want it to be planted in versus like the wild jungle, which is whatever is going to take over here, which is basically all the grasses and all the vines. All right guys, so we're headed into the taro patch. This is probably the wettest area of my property. You know, the taro kind of acts as a benefit to me because it kind of filters the water as it comes and runs off the neighboring houses. Last year there was also some Puerto Rican pumpkins planted in here. So I got some Puerto Rican pumpkin seeds I'm going to plant in this area this year as well. So I really love the large taro. And this is where literally the water just runs through. It's like super swampy in here. So once again, this is another area that just has vines on both sides that I'm not even going to deal with until I'm on property more or have somebody work on the property for me. I'm just going to kind of keep this trimmed down so I can get a path to my avocado tree, my bananas, my mango, and my Mamey Americana and my breadfruits. All right guys, so the good news is a lot of the pathways around my house now has been getting string trimmed. And so I don't have to like work this and now it's basically kind of turned into grass because grass is the only thing that can compete with monthly string trimming. So now I no longer have the vines because this area used to be just all vines and now it's basically a nice mobile grass. So that's cool. Probably the biggest accomplishment this trip was I met with a contractor who seems legitimate. I went and visited two of his different jobs that he's doing and he's likely to get hired to finish my house, get the roof on it, get the bottom floor done where I will have basically two shared Airbnb studios and or for lodging for people that are going to help me on the farm as well as the upstairs done. So yeah, that's the main update for me here on the property. I continue to plant more tropical fruit trees out in the main forest area that is the easiest to maintain while I am still just visiting every six months and hopefully next year my house will be done. So let's go ahead and summarize with Kylash on one of his newly built decks. All right guys, so the last update in this episode is I want to share with you guys what Kylash has been busy building. So Kylash, what do we have behind us here? A deck. And a tent. Okay. What are you going to use this for? I'll be sleeping there from time to time because I love this place so much, but actually it's for visitors. So many times my guests had to stay in Airbnbs like you as well and now I have this and I'm so excited about it and it's, I consider it glamping because we have electricity down here, warm shower, solar, heated shower. We have toilet, we have compostable toilet, memory foam mattresses. So it's, I'd say it's as luxurious as my bed, my home, my bedroom up in my house. But actually to me in many ways much nicer because this tent is quite open and here at night it doesn't rain during the day, but the outer, the flap, put that outer cover on so it doesn't get rain into the tent. But at night here in Puerto Rico, it almost never rains. So I don't have to worry about getting wet in the middle of the night. So now I have the ability to receiving people here in Puerto Rico. Wow. That's amazing Kylash because I know a lot of people have reached out to me, John, can I visit your farm? And guess what? Now you guys can if you guys want to stay here with Kylash. He can tour you around my property as well and see everything that I'm growing. See what we just talked about in this very episode. And of course, Kylash, what are your plans for right below on the other side of the deck? What are you going to plant down there? So we've got the Japuchicaba tree that'll go there, the Rambutan we just got and the amazing rare mango tree we got in Florida. Ah, yeah. Those name cultivars, the grafted mangoes that were kind of expensive actually. And then the coconuts left and right of the platform. Bananas right in front of the platform that we're looking at. Lots of bananas. Wonderful. So if somebody wants to have the on-farm experience here in Puerto Rico to experience the land camp glamping here with Kylash, how can they do this, Kylash? It's best to email me, kylashneils at gmail.com and then we can make a custom tailored package for you, which might or might not include food, whatever you would like the package to look like. I make smoothies, as you know, and had a few here during your stay. And I source, I'd say at this point, about 50%, sometimes 80% of the ingredients that go into the smoothie from this property. My goal is 100% and I know we're not too far away from it. So whenever you watch this video, we might be already, well, depending, if you want it very simple, I can do 100%. If it's banana, papaya, let's say, mango and greens, that we have available. And then if you want some other things in the smoothie that we don't grow here yet, then it won't be 100% grown on the property yet. All right. Wonderful, Kylash. So what are your future plans? Because I know now that you have this one, actually two decks built, what are you going to be doing for the property next to move towards our goal of, again, once again, you know, that healing, meditation, yoga, healthy eating, living, gardening retreat center that we're focused on building. I really see this as the sprout. So this is kind of the first one that came out of its shell and started sprouting. This is the first. In fact, we have two. So these are the two first platforms and decks. And I do envision this whole place here with decks and meditation deck and a kitchen and plants growing all around it and worm farm and this, this, this, I see this just as the beginning of something much bigger that we're co-creating here together. Yeah. So as you guys learned, Kylash is working on the decks and I'm still working on mostly planning all the fruit trees over on my property. And of course I did meet with the contractor this time and almost going to hire him to get my house finished. So this retreat center is in progress and we're continuing to build it. But for me, the most important thing are the plants, you know, because when we're built finally in a few years, all my fruit trees that I'm planting now will be in production and that's when you'll truly get to taste the amazing tropical fruits here grown in Puerto Rico on our land. All right, Kylash, any final words of wisdom you'd like to share with all my viewers today after this amazing, epic garden update of our farm properties here in Puerto Rico? I would say the more you connect with nature, be it through the food, the air, the sunshine, the more you feel that you're connected with your true nature, your inner nature, your, your great beautiful nature. Wonderful. Yes. And if you want to come to Puerto Rico, especially this is excellent time during to do it in the winter, even in the hot summer, because once again, Puerto Rico has that nice, you know, zone of weather, you know, it never gets too hot. Maybe 90 is the max in the middle of the summer, but we always get like a breeze most days and you know, it never gets colder than like 70. So 70 to like 90 is like the temp range. But even then it's, we're usually around the 80s. I think the mean temperature was like 77 to 82 or three or something like that. So yeah, this is a beautiful place to visit. So you can contact him at kailashneils at gmail.com if you guys are interested on stay on camping here on the platform, either, either just, just the camping or he will even provide you with yoga, meditation, even, you know, healthy food prepared on the land here, even outings to, you know, different markets, the beach, surf lessons, hiking on the property, going down to the river. So many amazing things to do here in Puerto Rico and it's waiting for you and hopefully in the future we'll are going to even have more platforms and more different kinds of accommodations to accommodate more of you guys in a retreat center. We take larger groups to do this all at once. So if you guys enjoyed this episode, please be sure to give this a big thumbs up. Also more importantly, share this with other people that are itching to get out of their shell out of their location and travel to somewhere new such as Puerto Rico so they could experience what we've shared with you in this episode in real life. 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 where I'll show up, what you'll be learning, what new farms I'll be visiting and I wouldn't want you to miss out on any single episode that is packed with knowledge that can enhance your life. So make sure you click the little bell to get notified as many videos come out. And finally be sure to check out past episodes, past episodes are wealth of knowledge. Over 1800 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to teach you guys all about how to grow your own food at home. And I'll put all the links down below to some of the videos I made in the past here in Puerto Rico on the land so you guys can see all the updates over time. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time and until then, remember, keep on growing.