summer vacations under $500

alright, this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com.today we have another exciting episode for you. i’m on yet another field trip herein west palm beach florida at mount’s botanical garden, and i’m here specifically becauseat mount’s today, they have a huge plant sale and orchard show, but also a huge plantsale with a lot of local vendors selling mostly non-edibles, though there are some vendorsthat have some edibles. so the purpose of this show today is to show you guys some ediblesthat you can buy that are going to grow well in south florida. now, if you’re livinganywhere other than south florida, take all this with a grain of salt because south floridahas unique weather and climate here that allows them to grow tropicals.

a lot of the things i’ll be talking abouttoday are tropicals, and they’re not going to make it in northern climates unless yougrow it in a protected, enclosed environment such as a greenhouse or something like that.these guys will probably grow really well in hawaii, and some plants may do good insouthern texas or south california where it doesn’t get too cold. anyways, let’s headinto the botanical garden and check out today’s plant sale. so now we’re walking throughthe botanic garden. botanic gardens are a great place to visit. most of the plants beinggrown here, and trees, are non-edible, but they have a small section with the ediblevegetable garden. i always want to encourage you guys to support botanic gardens in yourarea and even become a member so that you

can get in free to your local botanic garden,but also they’re networked together. so if you’re a member of your local one,you could also get in a botanic gardens that are in other states as well. so now we’reat the entrance of the vegetable garden just across the path there. i’m going to sharewith you guys what grows in south florida at this time, or pretty much at the end ofapril, early may, and they have definitely a lot of vegetables growing. some people mightthink you can’t grow plants or edible food crops in the summertime because it gets toohot, because most people in south florida will actually grow vegetables in the winter— what’s known as the regular winter, because that’s when it’s cooler. but that’sabsolutely not true. you can grow edibles

year round in south florida, if you grow theright things. so keep in mind the crops i’m going to showyou now are the crops that are growing right now and maturing now, so you would have wantedto have planted them earlier. if you planted them now, they’re probably not going todo well. but later in this episode, i will show you some things that you can plant prettymuch any time of year, and they’ll continue to produce food for you. so besides the vegetablegarden, we’re also going to look at some of the fruit trees that they have plantedhere at mount’s botanical garden. the entrance to the edible vegetable garden here on thisplague it says a few things, so i want to share with you right quick.

it says, “with fluctuating economic situationsand the desire for organic foods, home vegetable garden is becoming increasingly popular. withflorida’s unique climate, our season to grow harvests the most vegetables, takes placein the winter months. sowing seeds in november, cultivating the plants through the early springharvest, is a new concept for many newcomers to the region. this garden explores what willgrow well in south florida as well as incorporating herbs, tropical fruits, and edible flowers.”so one of my missions is to spread the knowledge that the gardening season, wherever you live,does not have to be confined to the season that they say. like it says, “with the unique growing season,most vegetables take place in the winter months.”

hogwash. you can grow completely through thesummer here. i mean, look at the nature around you. the grass grows in the summer. the shrubsand trees grow in the summer and winter. the problem is, when people come in from out oftown and they’re from the northern climates, and they come to south florida, and they wantto grow the things they grow in the north. well yeah, you can only grow those in thewintertime, but there’s plenty of tropical perennial edible vegetables and tropical plantsthat love the heat that’ll do well in this climate. so you just have to start growingthose in the summer, instead of trying to grow the lettuce in the summertime and ittotally failing. in this garden today, it looks like they havea lot of standard northern crops that’ll

do good with the mellow weather. they alsohave a few things that are going to do well throughout the summer but later on when igo through some of the vendors here at the plant sale, i’ll share some of the plantswith you guys that you can grow pretty much throughout the year here in south florida.so first, let’s go ahead and take a walk around the vegetable garden and share withyou guys what they’re growing right now. alright, so here’s a tour of the walkthroughon the vegetable garden. they do have a lot of non-edibles, but they do have some ediblesmixed in. so if you look closely at that plant rightthere, the spiny one, it’s a pineapple! and pineapples are something that are goingto grow really well here in south florida.

that is a tropical plant. next door here,it’s another edible, and it’s actually quite huge. i wonder what they’re doingto the soil. it’s like a cauliflower that’s producing some nice heads and going to flowersoon. and also don’t forget that all your cauliflower leaves and these leaves are huge,are great for eating. you can cook them up — i actually like to juice them — or putthem into some smoothies there. also, they have a lot of non-edible flowers like theones right there that i don’t know because i discriminate against the plants; i onlyknow the edible ones. it’s about right next door they got some nasturtiums. so the nasturtiums look like they might behaving some heat challenges right now, but

it looks like they’ve been growing good.nasturtium leaves are also edible, and the flowers as well. check it out. here’s ahardy patio avocado. cool. that’s the kind that i grow, especially with the weather herein south florida, especially if you get the freeze one year in ten years, you could loseyour tree, but if you get a cold hardy version, you’re more assured that it’ll be safewhen do you get those cold spells. there’s a little mexicola avocado on the tree. it’sgoing to ripen up here one of these days. continuing on the tour of the garden, lookslike they’ve got some watermelon. watermelon’s going to do really well. down here, we alsogot some onions. continuing on the tour of the garden, looks like they’ve got somepeppers. hot peppers, they’re definitely

going to do well in the climate here in southflorida. hot peppers love the heat, much like eggplants. over here it looks like they’vegot some carrots coming in, and also some more onions. in addition, they have some,looks like some beets and some turnips growing. and over here it looks like they’ve gotsome beans and some tomatoes, so let’s talk about tomatoes for one second. you’re goingto grow the tomatoes, i recommend the tomatoes that are small so that small-fruiting varietiessuch as the cherry tomatoes, they’re going to withstand the weather better. i always encourage you guys to grow the heirloomtomatoes that are native to your region. luckily in south florida here, you guys have got theeverglades tomato, everglades cherry tomato,

and they’re going to do really well hereyear-round, as a perennial, and keep producing for you throughout the weather because theyare native to the area. in addition, they have some corn that’s not looking supergood, and let’s see over there. looks like they’ve got some fennel growing. looks likethey had some snap beans growing on this trellis earlier in the season, looks like they’renow not making it, and here is some celery. probably growing for the celery root, whichis an excellent vegetable that i like to eat. in addition, it looks like they’ve got someswiss chard. so a question i get a lot is, “hey john, i got a lot of raccoons and possumsand cats and whatnot getting into my raised beds and either eating my stuff” — orif you have cats, they’re doing their litter

stuff in your raised beds. and no one wantsthat because that’s nasty. i have other episodes in the past, which you might wantto check out. basically makes simple ways to keep animals out of your raised beds, andhere’s yet another simple one i’d like to share with you guys. it’s simply by puttingsome 1x2 up the side and stapling on some wire mesh all the way around, and maybe leavea little section that opens up so you can get in there and work it, or just make thisportable so you can remove the whole thing. make it on a pvc frame, or some met conduitso you can lift the whole thing off and maybe even put a roof on it, a top on it, so thatthe birds can get in there either. so you can have a pest-proof garden. in my opinion,it’s much more valuable to make a pest-proof

garden using mechanical methods than sprayingtoxins or chemicals or other things in your garden. you want to exclude things so thatthey can’t get in, so that you can grow your own food. so let’s go ahead and showyou guys this part of the garden. these are like little raised beds made out of stone.now, something that’s very important in south florida is we’re pretty much on sandhere. this is west palm beach. you want to bring in some good soil to grow in. also, on this side they’ve got what lookslike some cabbage, some broccoli, some kale, and some of the cold crops. cruciferous crops.if you’re going to want to grow some through the summertime, i recommend growing the georgiacollards because they will withstand the cold

as well as the heat. they love the heat, actually.let’s see here, got some ornamental kale and some peppers growing. i’m not seeinga whole lot of variety or whole lots of cool different and unusual things growing. justyour standard northern crops. one that’s kind of cool that’s going to do really wellhere is the eggplant. the eggplant really loves the heat. it’s going to do super wellthrough the summertime here, even in the hot temperatures and the humidity, but it doesn’tlike when it frosts. and you may be able to keep this alive asa perennial if you protect it just a little bit through the cold winter months. now besidesall the edible vegetables they have, they also have a whole bunch of different fruittrees, so let’s go over and share some of

those with you. of course they’ve got thingslike the banana. now if i lived in south florida, i would definitely plant some bananas. i don’tparticularly care for store-bought bananas because they have no flavor to me, but ifyou plant your own bananas, you could grow some really cool varieties that taste totallyamazing. and as you guys know, things you grow yourself are going to taste way betterthan stuff bought from the store. prime example is the tomatoes. let’s see,they’ve got a whole bunch of other cool, unique fruit trees here. here’s a wax jambufruit. i think i might’ve had that once, i don’t quite remember what that is. sohere’s a cool example of container garden. they basically have a little tomato trellisand some plants growing in this nursery pot.

it looks like some tiny cucumbers. anotherthing they’re growing that’s really cool, looks like it’s doing really good in theclimate, is in a little sunk-in tub there. so they sunk it in the ground there that’sfor a particular reason, to keep the plants growing within it, because some of these plantswill escape and become invasive on you. it looks like they’ve got the carolina goldrice, and also the chuffa. and i’m really familiar with the chuffa, this the chuffaright here. turkeys love chuffa, if you want to draw turkeys for whatever reason to yourproperty, grow the chuffa. they love to dig them up, but i personally like to dig up thelittle chuffa nuts and eat them. they’re not that high in fat; they’re actually kindof starchy, but they taste quite good just

raw out of the ground. be sure to check mypast videos where i do talk about growing chuffa, because i have done it before in thepast, and chuffa is originally what they made horchata out of. continuing along here, theygot a lot of different kinds of trees. this is really cool one called barbados cherry,and you could see the little cherries up there. this is perennial that would produce manytimes during the year, and let me see here, some green ones in there, and there’s onethat’s not quite ripe back in there, it’s kind of orange. and as they get ripe, theyget red. these guys are not like a traditional cherry; they’re a bit tart, but i definitelylike them and i would have one of these, once again, if i lived in south florida. here’sanother fruiting crop that i never had before,

and there were some ripe on the ground earlier.but now there’s none. this is actually called the june plum. i don’t know if i’ve hadone of these before. here’s one of my favorite fruit trees in the world, it’s probablytowering at i don’t know, 20 feet tall. these guys get really tall. this is probablythe world’s largest fruit. and what this is called, i have to show you guys this, thisis cool, it’s called the jack fruit. and as you can see, they grow out of the trunk.this is the base of the tree and you can see them growing down there. these fruits canget up to like 100 pounds, and these guys are totally amazing. these guys are so delicious.these guys aren’t mature yet; they’re not quite ripe, but sometimes you can buythe fruits depending on where you live at

like a produce market, but it’s very rare.you got to go to like an ethnic market to buy them, and i generally get them for abouta dollar, two dollars a pound on the west coast, and they’ve been growing in mexico. what these guys taste like, when you cut itopen, you’ll smell it when it’s ripe. it smells sweet, fragrant, and when you eatthese guys, it tastes like the juicy fruit gum. they model juicy fruit gum after thejack fruit, not the other way around. so grow a jack fruit tree if you live in south florida.you’ll be feasting on some delicious fruits, one of my favorites actually. over on thisside, you might be thinking, “john, why they growing peaches? can you even grow peaches?this is the tropics. you can grow peaches

in the tropics?” well, these are actuallycalled the low-chill peaches, so they don’t need a whole lot of chill hours to grow. that being said, i wouldn’t waste my timeon low-chill peaches in the tropics. i would just grow some tropical fruit. to me, they’remuch more valuable than any kind of northern peaches that you could grow in the north easily,but south it’s going to be much more difficult. let’s take a look at these trees over here.here’s one of the trees i grow here in california. you can also grow it here. it’s actuallya subtropical tree, but will do good in the tropics as you can see. looks like it’shaving some insect issues here, with the leaves getting eaten. i don’t have any insect issuesin california, but this is actually called

the loquat tree. no, this is not related to the kumquat; thisis a loquat. as you can see here, some fruit that’s forming up here. it’s ready now.it’s early for what i'm used to, because my trees would fruit a little bit later onin the season, but these are evergreen, so they keep their leaves. they’re often usedin landscaping actually in california and also here in florida. so if you do want tobuy a loquat tree, i do encourage you to get a native variety, which we’ll actually takea look at in a little bit. native varieties will generally have larger fruits and probablytaste better because they’ve been bred for certain qualities. if you just take seedsout of the fruit and plant it like i did,

you never know what you’re going to get. but if you have something like rock dust andgood soil, you’re definitely going to be guaranteed better and larger fruits. alright,let’s take a look at some more trees here. one of the trees that’s really easy to growwould be the mango. the mango is a tropical tree, and it will grow really well here insouth florida. that being said, i’d encourage you guys to grow trees that are uncommon.so while mangoes are fairly common, grow some jack fruit. that’s much more uncommon. youmight have 100-year-old mango trees on properties already. it’s relatively inexpensive and yes, it’sa great tree and will produce a lot, but i

always want to encourage you guys to growthings that are hard to find. money can’t buy some of these unique varieties of fruitsthat are super delicious and if you go to buy them, are quite expensive. let me seeif i can find one of those next. here’s a huge avocado tree that’s going to havea lot of fruit on it. this tree’s actually pretty cool. it’s called an allspice. sothis is how they get the allspice on here. cracking one of these leaves and smellingit. wow. it smells so fragrant. that’s amazing. you could potpourri your house with one ofthese guys. let’s take a look at couple more of these fruit trees here. so if i did have some property here in southflorida, one of the things i’d be growing

is the star fruit, or the carambola. whilei don’t particularly care for the star fruits that much, the reason why i like the starfruit is because they will produce several times during the year, where some fruitingtrees will only produce once a year. also, there are sweet varieties of the star fruitand varieties that are a little bit more sour, so you want to definitely taste test the starfruit variety before you buy it to ensure that you’re going to like it. so here’s another crop that’ll grow insouth florida. i don’t know if i’d necessarily plant one, but it’s the pomegranate. i likepomegranates, but not as much as some of the other tropical fruits that you can grow, suchas the one next door. this is a guava tree,

so guava trees will grow like weeds on yourproperty. they may actually take over, seed, and start more. but one of the things i liketo grow is fruits that you can’t buy at the store, that are horrible store-bought.guavas are often sold far before they’re really truly ripe, and to get really ripeguavas, you need to get your own tree. and that’s another reason why i buy some ofmy own fruit trees and get fruits of much higher qualities than money can buy. so now we’re going to check out some ofthe vendors here at mount’s botanical garden plants sale. while there’s a lot of vendorshere selling native florida plants and other ornamental plants, i’m just going to coverthe edibles, because that’s what i’m all

about. i want you guys to grow some of yourown food, and there are so many cool vendors here. we’re going to go ahead and spotlighta handful of them for you guys, and this is especially useful if you live in south florida.now, many of these vendors will not ship. there are a few that might ship to you, soyou always want to contact them, and i will give their website details to get furtherinformation. let’s head out and check out some of thesevendors. so now we’re at the booth of the mount guild, and what they do is they propagatethe plants for mount here, but they also sell them to the public. so besides the plant sale,they also do have sales here on the property a few times a week. you want to learn moreat the website of the mounts botanical garden,

mounts.org. now the reason why i’m heretoday is they do have some edibles at the booth here. a lot are not edible, but theyhave some herbs and also some hot season tomatoes. so if you are going to plant tomatoes herein the summertime in south florida, you want to definitely make sure you grow ones thatare hot season, or ones that will handle the heat. many tomatoes shut down at like 90 degreesand will not produce reliably for you, but these ones hopefully will do significantlybetter than the others. so hot season tomatoes that they’re offering today are fla 91,heat wave 2, solar fire, super soaks, hybrex, sweety, arkansas traveler, abe lincoln, chocolatecherokee, and equinox. so that’ll be some

varieties to play with, whether you live insouth florida or other areas that have high heat during the summer. so now we’re atanother cool booth, and this is the booth of tropicalbamboo.com. they have a nurseryhere in tallahassee, and you might be thinking, “john, why are you at a bamboo booth? they’re selling bamboo plants or grasses.they’re not edible!” well think again. pandas eat bamboo. while we can’t necessarilyeat the bamboo, we can eat the bamboo shoots. i learned today that all bamboo actually areedible if you cook them long enough, and most varieties have high levels of toxins, cyanides,and things that you don’t want to eat, but if you cook them, you can cook it out of thebamboo. but there are varieties that have

lower concentrations of those, and some varietiesare actually fine to eat them when they’re young, especially if they’re covered andkept away from the sun. once the young shoots come up, you want tomulch over them, keep them dark, and they’ll be much more better-tasting than if the sungets to them and then they’ll start tasting kind of gross. all bamboos can be edible ifprobably prepared. you could also pickle bamboo, and that’s something also that i learnedtoday. so here at the tropical bamboo, they feature the tropical bamboos. these are thesouthern bamboos that grow well in the tropics like here in south florida, like in hawaii.these are the clumping bamboos, not the spreading bamboos of up north. while they have a fewsamples of some of the bamboo plants they

brought from their nursery, they have about160 varieties now and pretty soon they’ll have over 250 varieties, probably the largestcollection of the tropical bamboos anywhere, there’s a handful that are definitely goodto eat and are edible. so you could go to their website and do asearch for edible bamboos and they’ll come all up. so today, they brought a smaller selection.i’m going to share with you the one variety that they brought today that’s edible, andprobably the best one for edibility but probably not the best one compared to all the differentvarieties that they have, because i think they only brought a dozen varieties or sotoday. one of the varieties that’s good for eating, and once again, shoots are comingup the ground, is this variety here. this

is called the giant bamboo, and one of thecool things are the booth here is they have free giveaways! and i love free giveaways,especially when they’re useful giveaways. so we have here is they’re giving away littlecalipers, so you can measure the girth! not your girth, the bamboo’s girth! so thisbamboo grass here is a four-inch girth, and how do you compare to that? so now you guysmight be wondering, “john! the heck are you sitting next to? what is this, like anarmadillo tail?” well no, this is actually not. this is actually the clumping bamboounderneath the ground. this is like the network of the roots here. these are just two bamboosthat have been harvested, and they actually made a nice sign out of it. this shows youthe clumping bamboo network. and below here,

this is like the root system, and they arevery short because of the clumping style. now the running bamboo, this section herecould be 35 feet long. and that’s why i like the clumping kind. the clumping kindactually grows in a permaculture situation like in the forest. they’ll grow with otherplants; they’ll grow really tall to get the sun, whereas the standard running bamboowill really take over the forest and be its own forest in itself. i definitely like theclumping bamboo and that’s what they feature here at tropicalbamboo.com, which is the websiteyou can find all the different varieties of bamboo. now i only recommend you guys growthis in a controlled environment, or if you’re living in somewhere it’s the tropics.

they do ship all over the country and especiallyif you’re in southern california or southern texas, some of the varieties they sell willalso work there because they are all bi-zone, so that’s really cool. next what we’regoing to take a look at is a variety of the bamboo that they brought here today that’sthe most edible one, because they only brought about a dozen varieties or so. they have moreon the website. i want to share with you guys the most edible variety they brought fromthe nursery. they only brought a handful today so i asked the owner. he said that this varietyhere, the old hammy variety is probably the most edible for shoots here, but it’s probablybetter to go to the nursery to get one that’ll meet your specific needs. bamboos are usedfor many different things, like construction,

they use it for construction, not only fortimbers, you can also use it for staking and trellising in your garden. they actually take the whole timbers and grindup the pulp, the fiber, to make compressed bamboo, like 2x4s and whatnot. i have usedbamboo as a cutting board; they’re actually quite hard and bamboo, unlike trees, growsignificantly faster and are quite hard. so i like bamboo as a natural resource to usefor gardening. i want to see somebody lining their beds with bamboo as the edging. i thinkthat’d be really cool. also i use bamboo for straws when i’m drinking some drinkssometimes. this is the most edible variety for the young shoots. be sure to visit theirwebsite tropicalbamboo.com to learn more about

the edible bamboos and order your bamboo ifyou’d like to try some. so now we’re at the bamboo lychee fruitstore they specialize in growing tropical fruits and supplying people and wholesalein the area to give them the best-tasting tropical front in south florida. now besidesthe tropical fruit that they sell, they happen to be selling sapodilla, or brown sugar fruit,or zapota. these guys, when they’re ripe, taste like brown sugar to me. they’re myfavorite tropical fruits. they also have some florida everglades tomato, which are the nativetomatoes of this area that grow really well in this climate. they have some in-shell macadamianuts. macadamia nuts are probably one of my favorite type of nuts.

they also have some custard apples that ithink they sold out of and of course, one of my other favorite tropical fruits righthere is called the jack fruit. these guys get up to like 100 pounds. they have someavailable today, but besides selling fruits, they start and propagate the fruit trees,the tropical fruit trees that they grow on their farm. unlike many nurseries that aresimply resellers of the fruit trees, they grow the majority of the fruit trees themselves,they propagate them themselves by techniques like air layering or taking cuttings and evengrafting in some instances. so they have a wide variety that they grow themselves. soif you want to buy some of the tropical fruits or some of the trees that they’re propagating,you want to visit their facebook page, lychee

fruit store on facebook, and see their hoursand contact information. they are only open by appointment only. alright,so i’m really excited to show you this next booth. it’s called the dualtree fruit treesand herbs. they actually grow all their own trees and herbs that they sell you, and thereason why i like this place is they have the widest varieties of plants that’ll trulydo well here in south florida. so let’s head over and share some of the cool uniquevarieties of plants they’re offering today. so now i’m going to share with you the plantsthat are available here. number one, we’ve got the costa rican mint. so the costa ricanmint, it’s a nice shrubby type plant, and this is going to do very well in the southflorida environment, the tropics. you could

have a mint easily growing. one of my favoriteplants at this whole booth is right here. it’s called the okinawan spinach. this isvery valuable to you if you live in south florida. this is what’s called the perennialedible leafy green vegetable. that’s really long, but what that means if you’re goingto simply plant it, provided it doesn’t get too cold here and have a weird cold snap,this guy would continue to grow out and provide leaves for you to eat, like in a salad year-round.so i wish i could grow this one in california, and i have tried to grow it in the greenhouseand it just doesn’t make it, so i won’t bother until i move to the tropics one day,but if you live in south florida, you definitely want to get some of these perennial edibleleafy green vegetables.

they do sell the okinawan spinach here andsometimes you’ll also have other leafy green vegetables you can grow like the katuk andthe moringa. he didn’t actually bring any today, but he has grown them in the past.now i’m going to get to show you guys more plants and that i’m learning about becausea lot of these plants actually, believe it or not, these are new to me because tropicsis not my normal growing region. i’m not familiar with some of the plants here, actually,so when i saw this plant, i’m like, “oh, i know that plant. that’s a cuban oregano,”and i look at the tag and it’s not a cuban oregano. some things have different tags anddifferent names for the same thing, but in fact it’s not the cuban oregano becauseright next door they have the cuban oregano.

and while these look very similar and youprobably won’t be able to see from the camera, they’re actually two different plants. soalways be sure you know what you’re talking about before eating anything actually. thisis the cuban oregano; it’s actually used as a flavoring agent and next door we havewhat’s called the vick’s vapor rub or the horehound. this one’s really cool. it’shigh in i believe camphor, and i took a leaf and rubbed it on my skin, and it made it feelreally warm. so a lot of the different plants he’s selling here are actually herbal andmedicinal much like this one right here that i’ve never heard about either. it’s calledleaf of life, so how about you guys grow the leaf of life so you can have life. this isalso used for medicinal purposes and i really

don’t know a whole bunch about it, so i’mgoing to have to look it up and do some research on it. so here at d&g they’re offering many differentkinds of herbs and once again, some of them i don’t even know because it’s from jamaica,which is where the owner is originally from. so this is actually called the guinean weedand the guinean weed, he told me, is good for preventing cancer and things like that.of course, you need to do your own research and i can’t make any medical claims, butthis is what is reported. the okinawan spinach that i showed earlier, i’ve heard some otherpeople say it’s good for blood sugar regulation. my solution is to eat a nice, rich diet fullof plants and vegetables including some leaves

from these kinds of plants so that you’llget that in you don’t have to take a lot of it at any one time. so here’s the nextexcellent example of growing things in the sun and growing things in the shade. these two plants here, they’re both theguinean weed, but one was grown in the shade, one was grown in the sun. and so they’llcolor up different despite being the same plants. so i always encourage you guys toexperiment with where you’re growing your crops. sometimes it might do better in thesun, or better in the shade. it’s always best to grow fruiting crops in the sun nomatter what. i like to always get away with trying to grow leafing crops in the shade,so that i don’t have to waste my valuable

space for that. in addition, they got someother cool things. they actually call it the sushi mint here, which i call shiso, whichis really high in omega-3 fatty acids, and he said here in this climate it will grow.drop seeds in and basically the seeds will germinate on their own and come back for youeach and every year. so that’s definitely really cool. i just want to cover a few more unique varietiesof herbs and plants that he’s offering here, and then we’re going to check out probablyone more booth today. two crops that i'm going to show you guys i’m glad he has availablefor people, so people can grow more of their own food at home. this first one here’sactually called sugarcane, so sugarcane is

easily propagated just by getting a stickof sugarcane at your local supermarket, chopping it off, putting it in the ground, and it’llactually sprout and grow into a new plant. that being said, it’s always easier to getan established plant, because that’s more likely that you’re going to have guaranteedsuccess. and these are only $10 to grow your own sugarcane. you can juice the sugarcaneand have your sugarcane juice. you can dehydrate the juice to make your own sugar at home.i want to do that one of these days; i love sugarcane and get to enjoy it when i cometo visit south florida. next guy here is called the chayote. that’schayote squash vine, it’s a really valuable plant. besides just growing the squash, whichis not related to the standard squash that

we know and love, you can harvest chayoteand you can eat it raw, although most people do cook it. the reason why i like the chayotevine is because of the tips. so these little flowering tips you can break these off andadd these to your salad. these things will grow prolifically. you just grow it and it’sgoing to vine out for a long way and keep growing. if it doesn’t frost it’s goingto keep growing so you have to be careful. and if you do cut it down, it’ll start toreshoot out of the garden, if you want to keep it maintained and keep it nice and small.i’m excited to share some more plants with you. first we got what i know as epazote, but injamaica they call it worm bush. that’s because

it’s great for deworming. i know it’sgood for reducing the flatulence when you’re cooking your beans. and actually some peoplethink the taste, it tastes like gasoline, but now i know it’s good for deworming,too, because of the high flavors in there. most people don’t like it, but i just liketo snack on some epazote to learn that it’s good for deworming. definitely is good toknow, and that’s something i like also. the owner here is so full of knowledge andliving the natural lifestyle in jamaica, where they didn’t have all these stores and drugstoresto buy things. they had to use the natural plants, and he is a wealth of knowledge withthis. he’s been growing food for a long time.this is the standard calulu, and this is another

edible leafy green. it’s really cool, anddefinitely in south florida you’ll want to grow one of each of all these things toget your garden started. most of these things and plants that he’s selling are perennial,so that means you’re just going to invest in the plant once and they’re going to continueto live and make food, or medicinal herbs for you year round. another thing that i recommendtoo is also in south florida, you want to plant some trees. so one of the trees thati would highly encourage you guys to plant is this one right here. it’s only 15 bucksfor this tree. this is called the ackee tree, and i knowmost of you guys have probably never heard of ackee. this fruit is used in the nationaldish of jamaica. it’s the ackee fruit. now

the ackee fruit only grows in the tropics,and it has to be fully ripe to eat when it’s raw. it actually opens up like a little flowerand reveals like a fruit pulp and a seed. now you eat the little fruit pulp area. it’slike a nice, fatty fruit. it’s unlike any fruit you’ve tasted. it’s kind of likevery similar to avocado in that it’s a very high-fat fruit but it has a really uniqueflavor, and you have to get them completely ripe because when they’re ripe, they couldbe poisonous. so i can’t wait until the next time i try some fresh, tree-ripened ackeefruit. so now i’m going to share a few more plantswith you guys here. i can’t show them all because he has so many different unique varietiesand he focuses on growing rare varieties and

making these to sell to people, so i definitelythink that’s really cool. right here he’s growing some arrow root, and arrow root wasreally popular probably before wheat and things like that. and here’s a vanilla orchid plant,so yes you can grow your own vanilla beans if you live here in south florida in the tropics.i definitely like vanilla much more than chocolate. so if you want to get any of these plants,you’re going to want to call d&j; they’re here in west palm beach. their phone numberif 561-833-3975. at present time he does not ship, but hopefully soon he will start shipping. that being said, i can only encourage youguys to grow these plants in the tropics in the weather here. in other parts of the country,like northern climates, probably not going

to make it. you’re probably not going tobe able to grow the ackee unless you live somewhere in the tropics because it’s notgoing to take to the cold weather. so next i’m going to get to show you guys my favoritething in this whole place. it’s right here, it’s called the vertical garden kits, andwhy this might be my favorite is it gives you a whole system that easily lets you growfood, even if you’ve never done it before. so next i’m going to go into the booth andshare with you guys vertical system that could allow anybody, wherever you live, to growsome food at home. so now we’re at the booth of mighty finegarden, and their website is mightyfinegardens.com. they have this mighty fine vertical garden,and that’s their product that they make,

and they’ve actually developed it so youcan grow food at home. so i’ve shown many of these vertical garden systems before onmy channel when i visit different strawberry farms of examples of growing using a verticalgarden kit, but a lot of those systems are not complete. they might send you the equipment,but they don’t provide you with the technical support or so many other things like the soilmedium, pumps, timers, and even the nutrient solution that’ll go in to grow some successfulplants like they have here. so at mighty fine garden, they’ll basicallysend you the kit with everything you need except for the pole, the mounting pole, whichis available at like a home depot, the garbage can or reservoir — you could use a 55-gallonfood-grade drum — and the water. other than

that, they’re going to provide you withthe seeds, the soil medium, the nutrient solution, the pumps, the timers, and everything youneed. they’ll include a tray to start your seeds in, that’s guaranteed to grow. it’s a float system that’s ingenious.and in addition besides you’re going to get all that, you’re going to get the supportyou need to ensure you’re going to be successful at doing this, because a lot of you guys maynow have the knowledge, and they have a support staff that’s going to help you ensure thatnot only do you get an instruction manual when you buy this, you also get is emailedas a pdf document to you. they have videos showing you online, and if you really needhandled, you can call them up and they’ll

walk you through in your own home. there’sno other company i know that has this level of customer support that’ll basically encourageyou and walk you through it, and if you can’t set one of these up, you must be from anotherplanet or maybe not understand english. so in here, what they’re growing are a wholebunch of different things. this is a soil-less medium. this is like a hydroponics system,using some really good nutrients including the trace minerals. that’s another partof why i like the growing system; they’re using the trace minerals because they arethat important to the plant. as you can see we have amazing crops that have been growingin this system here, from chard, they got the red sails lettuce, which is a good varietyto grow here in south florida. they got also

one of the hottest pepper here, this scorpiontrinidad pepper here, so don’t even pick one of those and think about eating it. you’llbe in pain. they got the joe’s atomic bomb here. i mean, they got four peppers in one pot.each pot holds four. four, eight, twelve, sixteen plants in this whole setup. one ofthe amazing thing is, this whole setup, including the support and everything you need is under$250, and if you want to add additional towers, then it’s even cheaper because any additionaltower is only under $100. and actually, they’re going to be offering a growing greens specialand you’re going to stay tuned for at the end of this. so how this system works is youhave a reservoir and a garbage can right here

filled with water and the reason why i likethis system is it’s pretty much foolproof. all you’re going to do is put the pump inthere and set it up properly. you’re going to add a little bit of thenutrient solution, then you add water, and then it’s going to automatically water foryou. the water’s going to go up, it’s going to trickle down to all the differentplants in there, and then come down to the bottom. and this can be mounted in the ground,or actually you can put it in a pot that’s filled up with cement to keep it stable ifyou have a patio. so this is an excellent way to grow things on a patio, and many ofyou guys may have seen the tower garden. that thing’s like $500. i would much rather haveone of these, or actually several of these

with several different towers instead of oneof the tower gardens. i think this is a much more useful and better-designed, plus you’regoing to get much better support in my opinion. so water dribbles down, it goes down to thebottom, and if you do own a patio, you could drill a hole so that it drains out into thelittle container so it won’t drip on your neighbors below you if you’re on the secondfloor. or, if you’re just on land, you could have a container below that it just soaksinto and it soaks through the ground. so these systems save a lot of water compared to destroyingthe standard environment. water conservation is huge, and this company is going to continueto make advances in saving water with other vertical gardening devices. he’s told meabout a few right now. that’s top secret

right now, but i’m really excited aboutthis company and some of the work they’re doing to make gardening affordable, and sothat you can grow food at home. once again, the company name is called mighty fine gardens,you can reach them at mightyfinegardens.com to learn more and to get the growing yourgreens special, which is 10 percent off, you want to make sure you mention the code gygwhen you place your order. so now we’re going to share with you guysanother crop you should definitely be growing if you live anywhere in south florida, andthat’s right here behind me. the place is called going bananas. it’s going-bananas.com,and they sell bananas plants. banana plans are not banana trees, because they’re notreally even a tree. but the reason why i think

you guys should grow your own bananas in southflorida is because it’s really easy. now if you live in any part of the u.s., he willship the banana plant sot anywhere in the united states, so you could try to grow bananas,but they are a tropical plant and need tropical weather to survive. and of course if you wantto go out and go the extra mile and bring it inside in the wintertime and plant it outsidein the summer and keep doing that and keep having headaches with moving things, you coulddefinitely try to grow bananas in other places. i’ve also seen people grow bananas successfullyin climate-controlled greenhouses, so let’s check out going bananas next. now we’re in the booth here and they havea whole bunch of racks, and this is called

a rack of bananas. and you know many bananaplants will produce edible bananas, and there are some ornamental varieties of bananas.the reason why i think you guys should grow your own bananas is if you go to the standardgrocery store, you’re going to find a standard banana. and many people think that’s theonly kind of banana in the world, because that’s the only kind for the most part.now if you go to an ethnic market, you may be able to find five different varieties ofthe banana, but for the most part people eat cavendish bananas that are picked when greenfrom south america, central american, and then shipped up to us. to me, those kind of taste like cardboard,and it’s no surprise that i just don’t

really like imported bananas. but there’sa big different as you guys know between imported fruit and things you grow yourself. tomatoesare a prime example. you’ve all had the home-grown tomato, and they taste amazing.and you go to buy tomatoes at the supermarket that are nice and pink in the wintertime andbounce off the ground and have no flavor. well bananas are completely the same way,and besides just the cavendish banana, imagine only ever eating the granny smith apple. thereare so many different varieties of bananas that are available, and here at going bananasthey have over 70 different varieties of banana. each one tastes unique and have differentfeatures. for example, this one right here is calleda thousand fingers, because this banana plant

produces maybe even up to a thousand littlebananas on one rack. that’s a lot of food. this banana here is a special variety; it’sactually a seeded variety banana, so i’m going to show this on the video for you guys.this is the balbisiana, and as you guys can see we’ll open up this guy and there’sno only the banana fruit, but there’s a whole bunch of little seeds in there. nowyes, you can eat the fruit, but there’s not a lot of fruit. it’s mostly all theseeds, so you’d pretty much got to suck off the fruit that’s inside there. theseguys are about the size of a papaya seed and it’s more for ornamental use. i wouldn’tbe growing this to eat, but it’s definitely a cool curiosity. now besides this kind, hehas other kinds of bananas. he does not sell

the bananas; he only sells the plants. so you could go to the website and learn aboutall the different kinds of bananas he offers. next we’re going to take a look at the sweetestbanana that he brought here to sample, and i’m going to get to sample one good banana.now here’s a rack of the namwa banana that we’re going to go ahead and pull off, andno better food than food you grew yourself, or a farmer grew themselves. we’re goingto go ahead and peel this guy. these are the kinds of bananas that i strive to eat. i usuallydon’t even bother eating bananas unless they’re really good bananas, or unless ineed a cheap inexpensive filler to get some calories in me, fruit calories. wow. it hasa flavor like no other banana you’ve ever

tasted. it’s really super sweet, really nice texture.now you always want to let your bananas fully ripen. if they’re not fully ripe, they’regoing to be more starchy than when they’re fully ripe, then they’re going to be muchmore sweet. next, let’s take a look at just a few of the banana plants that he broughtand is offering today. as you guys can see, i’m sitting in front of a whole bunch ofdifferent varieties of banana plants, and they brought probably over a dozen varietieshere to offer to people, but they have over 70 varieties an dup to 90 different varietiesat the farm. now, how they propagate these or how bananas are normally propagate theseis once you buy one plant, you have these

little babies, or pups, coming up. generally you want to leave one pup growingnext to the mother plant so it’s going to replace the mother plant because one bananaplant is only going to produce one bunch of bananas and then that’s it; you’re goingto cut this guy down. and then you’re going to let the new one follow in its place. thenew one, the pup, forms in about six months after you plant the main plant. this one actuallyhas a few pups at the bottom. what you would do is leave on and cut the other two off andput them in new pots. so to start the plants here at going-bananas.com, they actually don’tharvest the pups. they tissue-culture the bananas in a certifiedlaboratory that’s sterile, so you’re going

to get disease-free plants that can be shippedanywhere in the united states, including california. so the next question is, if you don’t livein south florida, which you should come visit their nursery and take out a whole bunch ofstyles of banana plants and grow them and get your own bananas that taste far betterthan anything form the grocery store, if you do need some shipped to you, what varietieswould you want to get? well they do have some varieties of bananas that will grow up tofour feet, five feet, or even eight feet tall and stay relatively small. so you can growthese in a container. id’ recommend as large of a diameter of a container as possible,minimum size i would recommend is like a wine-barrel size for some of the smaller varieties.

the roots don’t go very deep, but they liketo go out and spread out laterally. besides container growth, if you do want to have abanana shipped to you to try the variety, i would recommend veinte cohol, and that varietyis good because it will grow if planted in the wintertime. in the summertime you’rebasically going to cut it back and then mulch heavily and keep rhizome in the root systemalive. if it has any pups, you can actually cut those out and repot them, put them ina garage, keep them nice and warm or even a sunny window inside your house to keep thoseguys going. and then in springtime, if it does come back, it’s going to come backright where it left off. so you can successfully grow bananas, although the whole cycle isa total of 18 months form planting it to growing

some bananas. so with this information, you’ll now beable to grow some bananas definitely in south florida, but potentially no matter where youlive by using some of these techniques. if you do choose to grow bananas, get some ofthe smaller varieties in a container or, once again, other variety where you can plant itout and mulch it during the winter and save the pups over the winter so you could plantout next season if you do lose your big root mass. so if you want to learn more about someof these banana varieties or order them yourself, you’re going to want to visit going-banans.com.i’ve saved the best for last. now we’re going to show you the booth of hopkins tropicalfruit nursery. now hopkins is a wholesale

nursery. what this means is you can’t visitthem. they won’t ship or anything like that, butwhat you can do is they sell through a network of independent garden centers and nurseriesthroughout the gulf region. so between florida and texas, you can probably find their trees.so what you’re going to want to do is if you like any of the trees that i’m talkingout, you’re going to email them if they have any nurseries of garden centers in yourarea so you can support local businesses and also get some of the cool trees that i’llbe showing you in a minute. now we’re going to talk about another tree here. this is notnecessarily a fruit tree. this is called the pigeon pea, and the pigeon pea is a nitrogen-fixingtree that will fix nitrogen so it will enrich

the soil. you could chop it and drop it toadd nutrients to your soil, but it also makes pigeon peas that you can also eat. i like that this is a very useful tree andhere they’re only selling them for ten dollars, so that’s definitely a good price for apigeon pea. of course, you’re going to have to contact them to find a local nursery inyour area that can order from the company so that you can get them, because this companywill not ship directly. another tree they’re offering here is the moringa. i like the moringa,also called the horseradish tree, and sometimes they call it a drumstick tree, depending onwhere you go. the moringa tree actually has the edible leaves that you can eat raw, althoughthey’re quite hot-tasting. you would want

to harvest the smaller leaves; they’re definitelymuch better. this is a tree that’s good for zones 9 and10. it doesn’t take the frost, but you can grow these outside in the summer, put themin a pot and then grow them inside if you put some good lights on them in the wintertimeto keep them alive so that you can have access to these very nutritious leafy greens. ifyou go to a health food store, they’re now selling powdered moringa leaves, but alwaysbetter than buying a powder is to grow the food fresh yourself and especially use nutrient-densesoil. so make sure you use compost and things like the rock dust and some of the other thingsthat i recommend in my videos so that you can grow really healthy plants. that willnot only be good for the plant but also when

you harvest the leaves, nourish you as well. so now i’m going to share some more treesand plants with you guys that are going to do well in south florida and the tropics.so when i go to hawaii, they’re growing this kind of raspberry. it’s called themysore raspberry, and this is a tropical raspberry. standard plants form the north are not goingto do well in the tropics with the high humidity and the heat and the weather. but this guy,if you want raspberries, is the one you want to start growing. next we’re going to lookat some grapes that are going to do well in the south because standard, regular grapesare not going to do so well with all the humidity. so if you want to grow grapes, don’t growthe standard kind of wine grapes or table

grapes; you want to grow muscadine grapes. and i don’t have a whole lot of experiencewith muscadines. i did have some of my friend’s tree or vine in alabama when i was visiting,but the muscadines are the kind of grape that are going to do really well here in the south.and no matter where you live, i always want to encourage you guys to grow the plants thatare going to do really well in your area. one of the things that i like about the hopkinstropical fruit nursery is that they’re a local nursery, and they really specializeand ensure that the plants are going to do well. there’s many different root stocksyou can’t put some of these cold-hardy plants on, and on certain varieties like the avocado,they use the really cold-hardy root stock

and some other growers may not. so even though above the graph there’s coldtolerance, below the graph there may not be. i really like that they optimize and get intothe nuts and bolts of ensuring that you’re going to have the best quality of tree andplant to grow in your specific region. so another thing that i like about the nurseryis that they have a lot of different plants besides the standard muscadine that i justshowed you guys. they have this new variety — it’s a patented variety — it’s abunch/muscadine hybrid. so this is a cross between the standard table grape and the muscadine.and it’s actually quite beautiful. i don’t know if you guys could see the differencesin the leaves there. it’s the standard muscadine

and these guys. one’s more jagged leavesand stuff, and i’ve never tried one of these fruits. hopefully one day i’ll get to tryit. and that leads me to my next recommendation for you guys is to experiment with differentkinds of crops. maybe you’ll grow the standard muscadinecrop. you just don’t like the flavor. but maybe you’ll grow this, which is the crossbetween the standard muscadine and the table grape, and you’ll be like, “wow, that’samazing!” but if you don’t grow them you’ll never know, and i don’t know anybody thatgrows this variety, and i’ve never even tasted it yet. so maybe one of my viewerswill grow it and i’ll come visit your house and get to try it one of these days, and it’llbe good because you’ll be growing it in

rock dust and compost, right? so the next tree that i’m going to go overwith you guys is called the cherry of the rio grande, and it’s eugenia. and i havetried to grow eugenia in california, northern california, and it just didn’t make it.but i was told this tree can survive down to like the single digits, so that means you’llbe able to grow this in a wide variety of places. now the fruits are definitely notlike a cherry. they have a little bit of a stringence to them. it’s absolutely importantto harvest these when they’re ripe. i actually like the flavor. they’re probablyreally high in antioxidants, so this is going to be one to try. i don’t know about theother eugenia that i grew before, but i probably

definitely want to try this specific variety,if i can get it to stay alive in the cold weather and cold winters in california. soone of the main reasons why i stopped to come at this booth is because the work they dowith the cold-hardy avocadoes. avocadoes are one of my favorite foods and in the west ofthe united states, they can be fairly inexpensive to buy, like three for a dollar. that beingsaid, things you grow at your house yourself are always going to taste better and be worthno amount of money. while i am growing my own avocadoes, i do buy them sometimes becauseif my tree’s not fruiting yet because i didn’t get a super cold-hardy that’s handlingthe frost. so what they do here is they propagate thecold hardy varieties and have many different

varieties. so this is cool. it says, “coldhardy down to 15.” and these are the varieties: the brazos belle, the fantastic, the joey,the lila, the pancho. and these are some of the ones that i showed in my avocado videothat i had. down here they have varieties specifically for the florida region. orlandoand north. they got the brogdon, day, mexicola, mexicola grande, mexican, orlando and south.they got the choquette, the hall, the lula, the marcus pumpkin, the monroe, and southflorida and coastal. these are the most tropical ones: the bernicker, pollock, the russel,and the simmonds. so you always go tot buy the right tree that’s going to do well inyour specific climate zone. if you try to grow some south florida avocadosin tennessee where it’s not going to get

too cold, it’s not going to make it. that’swhy you need the cold hardy ones. what i like to do is what i like to call hedge my beds.it’s always better to grow the cold hardy varieties if you like the fruits in a placeeven like south florida, because on that one tenth year that you get that super cold freeze,these guys are going to make it, and some of these others may not, or you may have toprotect them to keep alive. so next let’s take a look at some of the cold hardy varietiesthat they’re offering here. so now we’re going to talk about the cold hardy avocadoesand they have several varieties that i just mentioned. they’re cold hardy between 16to 18 degrees, depending on the variety. that being said, you would not want to plantone of these young trees out and expect them

to survive that cold weather. they need tobe of established age, so once again, we got our standard calipers here to measure thegirth of the avocado tree silly! and it should be at least four inches for a nice, establishedtree, and it could survive these low temperatures. of course, when your trees, of course they’regoing to be hardy, when they’re young they’re little babies and they do need to be protected.actually i built a little greenhouse around my mexicola avocado tree for the first yearand since then i’ve taken that off and let it do its thing. and if it’s not going to make it, it’snot going to make it. that’s my style of gardening. i don’t want to have to babyall my trees to get fruit. i want them to

be able to produce on their own. one of thereasons why i like the hopkins tropical fruit nursery is because they use the cold hardyroot stock for these cold hardy avocados to ensure that you’re going to have the bestpossible chance of your avocado surviving the cold weather. to learn more about themor find a local nursery near you if you live in the gulf states, once again between floridaand texas, you’ll want to contact them at hopkinstropicalfruitnursery.com. i’ve had an amazing time here at the plantsale at mount’s botanical garden, but it’s getting late and i got to go. i’m givinga talk tonight on growing food, so hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. i always wantto encourage you guys to visit local plant

sales to buy all your plants and support localcompanies that are going to support you to grow your own food at home. once again myname is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com. we’ll see you next time and remember, keepon growing.