this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com, i have anotherexciting episode for you. i'm on another field trip and this going to be super cool, and i'm super excited to be here. where are we at today?we're actually at the hippocrates health institute, here, in west palm beach, florida. so, the motto of hippocrates is that they're "helping people help themselves" now, what is hippocrates? you may have heard that... i think that it's something like... it's some famous greek dude, i don't know, something like from the olden days. and basically, he said "let food by thy medicine, and medicine by thy food" so that's how this whole place was founded; on those principles.and what they specifically do here is teach people how to help themselves by eating healthy, staying fit, getting excercise, and all that good stuff. so, one of the things they do here is that they help people that are maybe not in optimal health; people that may have been eating a standard american diet and got unhealthy or maybe even got a sickness or disease. i mean, there's many testimonials of people that have come here with things like cancer and different diseases in the body, and have gotten better by just simply
allowing the body to heal itself when you're doing the right stuff. so that's what they teach here. they actually have a few different courses: a three week program where you come here and get fully immersed in education and eating their proper foods, so that people can get healthier. one of the things, actually, that i've been wanting to do lately is actually... i've been telling my parents for the last three years,that if they want to come for three weeks i'll pay for them to come here. and yes, it can get quite expensive but the question i have for you is "how much is your health worth?" i mean, my health is worth more than all the money in the world. so, if i have to charge it on my credit card or go into debt, it's worth it to me. because, you know, you can't do anything with all the money in the bank if you're at the end of your life, but you can do something if you're healthy, vibrant and strong. so, anyways, that's what they do here. and the purpose of this video today is because part of their program is about getting people to eat green; eat green foods.
i mean, my show is called growingyourgreens because greens are very important, and the diet here at hippocrates is based around eating green foods; eating things like green sprouts and leafy green vegetables. that's a big part, and the chlorophyll in the greens, which is, you know, in my opinion, one of the things that are really healing for the body. so why i'm here today is to show you guys how they grow the leafy greens that the people that pay a lot of money to be here get to eat. and also, that some of them get to learn how to do it. actually, they have a couple of different programs:the three week program immerses you in this stuff, and you get to learn about the diet and eat the diet. you also learn how to grow your own sprouts, and you get tours of the actual farm here. and then they have a nine week program to actually teach you how to teach others about this program, so that you can go out into the world and make positive changes in the world and teach people about a healthy diet to eat. and those health educators get to learn how to go do sprouting, they get to learn how to grow their own food in the gardern and all other kinds of cool stuff.
so why i'm here today is to actually specifically show you guys how they teach growing the food in the green house, which are the sprouts and the small leafy greens like the microgreens, and also, we're going to go into their farm and garden and show you guys how they grow here. so, wherever you live you can always grow sprouts, and if you live in south florida, you'll see some of the unique and specific varieties they're growing in their farm. and also i'm going to make some recommendations; probably what they could do to improve what they're doing here, because i think it's truly great. so, next i guess let's head over and go into the greenhouse and show you guys how they're growing their sprouts; and how at home you can too. alright, so you guys caught me enjoying the south florida sun, here. as you can see, we're like sitting on a little pond, here, actually. this is an amazing property. they actually have 50 acres, or nearly 50 acres here. but we're not here to look at ponds or any other cool landscape. i want to see the stuff that's growing that people eat, because while this looks cool, it's not edible. so what we're going to do next is actually go to the green house which is right behind me here.
and first we're going to check out the sprouts that they're growing in there and share with you guys how you can grow inside your house, sprouts, year-round. now we're at the entrance to the greenhouse, and they're open 7am to 3pm every day. but just because they're open doesn't mean that you can just come to visit. this is actually only for people that are staying on-site at hippocrates. at any given time there can be over 100 students here learning to improve their health and their life through eating a healthy, plant based lifestyle. so if you want to get a personal tour of the place, you can get a whole tour of the facility and learn more about them by coming out at any thursday or saturday, at noon, and they'll give you a whole tour including a tour of the greenhouse and what they do here. but, if you do want to come on a tour, i recommend actually that you come on the last wednesday of the month. you'll want to come at 4:15, they'll have what's called "save your life day". and at 4:15 they'll give you a tour for 45 minutes and then at 5 o'clock, you'll get to hear an informative lecture and get to eat free dinner. and i've eaten there many times and actually, it's quite a good dinner; especially for free.
so yeah, you can come and get a whole free tour of the place, but they do not allow any outside visitors to their facilities to tour any of the things that i'll be showing you guys today. i actually have a special behind the scenes pass, just for you guys. so, before we go into the greenhouse, the part that is really important is starting with the soil. the soil is the key to growing some of the greens that they're growing in the trays inside which would include the sunflower greens, the pea greens, and the wheatgrass. so, actually, let's spin around and show you guys how they do that. it all starts with the soil. and actually, right in here, they get a good soil mixture, and they're using a local place called odems, i believe, to get the soil mixture. this is nice rich, black, dark soil, that i'm sure is very nutrient dense and also organically produced. so they take this soil and they fill it up in these trays, right here. and these are your standard nursery trays that have very few holes in the bottom. you know, i like to get these trays. you can buy these... but i like to buy them at like a big buck store. when i'm buying trays of plants and i'll bring
them home, a lot of those ones will have large holes at the bottom. i'll just put a layer of newspaper and then pile the soil on. they've actually packed the soil in here pretty tightly, and it's about half way full. so you can see that they have all these flats ready to grow. and literally, what they're doing here is they're growing food or the sprouts, on a production scale, so they can feed the visitors here all the wheat grass juice they want, and aswell as provide all the sprouts that the guests here will be eating for lunch and dinner. after they have their trays full of soil, they're going to go into the greenhouse and start growing. now, this is a controlled environment and, actually, wow, they cool it because south florida is actually quite warm and humid. and one of the big problems with growing food is the humidity. and they definitely need some airflow going on, otherwise mould can be created. so if you're growing your own sprouts you'll definitely want to have some air circulation. don't just put them in a dark room with no fans or anything like that. it's very important for the air circulation.
so really quick, what i'm going to show you guys is just the two ways they are actually growing food or sprouting inside here. they're first doing these little trays, here. so this is something like the alfalfa sprouts, and there's many ways to do sprouts. you know, i like this device called the "easy sprout" - i'll have an episode on that really soon for you guys - to show how easy it is to sprout with the "easy sprout". because they're doing it on a more production scale, you know, it would not be practical to do it with "easy sprout". so they're using these little grids here, which are just some plastic with holes in it. and as you can see, all the roots grow down through there and it kind of anchors it. so this makes harvesting very easy. and as you can see, they've got trays and trays and trays of different kinds of sprouts. i think these are some kind of radish sprout, and they've probably got some clover and alfalfa sprouts. they're growing on here, as well. now these sprouts are the little green sprouts; they're just growing them to around this height. they're pretty much going to harvest them and they're going to be out, probebly even tomorrow, for lunch or for dinner here.
so besides these sprouts, which are the green style sprouts, which are the sprouts that i like the most, they're also doing some bean sprouts. now, you can't eat all bean sprouts raw, there's only certain varieties of beans that you can't sprout and eat, and other ones will get you really sick. so the ones they're doing here, i think, are something like these guys. these are the mung bean sprouts. also they're doing some, i guess, fenugreek sprouts, that's what these look like. and also some lentil sprouts, as well. and how they use these sprouts is that they'll simply soak them and then they'll sprout them for just a few days, just to get a short little tail on them; they're not going to grow out this big. and then you're ready to eat them. so, that is one way you could easily grow some sprouts, even in just some old bowls in your house in a colander. i mean, they're just using these little pitchers here to grow their sprouts. so, those are two sprouting methods. the third way is the way in soil, and that's the way i like the most, but it's also a little bit more complicated. so let's go ahead and show you guys some of the different types of sprouts that are growing in trays next.
as you can see here now, we're where they grow all the sprouts in the trays. and one of the main things they grow here is the wheat grass. they really encourage wheat grass, and actually hippocrates health instiute was founded in boston by dr. ann wigmore, and she was really into her wheat grass. now, yes. the wheat grass is a grass, and how they use it here is actually they juice it, because we're unable to really digest the grass like a cow can, because they have multiple stomachs and chews up its cud and all this kind of stuff. so by juicing the grass, you can effectively get the nutrition out of the grass and into you to get more green in your life. and that's why my channel is called growingyourgreens. although, that being said, i don't often drink wheat grass juice. i will, but i prefer to grow plants in my garden like kale and cauliflower; greens, and the other kind of greens that are a lot easier to grow than trays of wheat grass because i have a yard. if i didn't have a yard, i'd definitely be growing some wheat grass to get some green in me, because it's all good. so a tray of wheat grass can maybe get about 16 ounces, plus or minus on average, and it also depends when you harvest it. they are really careful to harvest it before the jointing stage.
and the jointing stage is simply when the grass grows up and is a single blade and then it joints into and it actually turns into two blades. so you'll want to harvest it before that stage for the optimal amount of nutrition. and as you can see here, they're just grown in the soil. this is the soil they just added up to half way. and as you can see this mass of root mass down here. basically, at this point, the plant is mostly feeding off the seeds, and they want to harvest the grass before it really starts sucking up nutrients from the roots there. so really the energy that's going into the greens is from the sun and from the seeds alone. now beside the wheat grass they are growing some other crops here that i really like a lot. up top here we've got some buckwheat greens. so, i do not recommend juicing the buckwheat greens, but it is alright to include sometimes in your salad. it can cause some issues with sensitivity in your fingers when you're getting too much of a certain naturally occurring toxin in there, so you don't want it concentrated. but eating some sprouts and some buckwheat greens shouldn't be an issue for most people. but once again, i always encourage you guys to rotate your diet. so, don't always grow buckwheat greens and eat those every single meal.
no. grow this for like this week, and eat buckwheat this week. next week do some sunflower greens like they have here. and then the next week do something like these, these are the pea greens right here. and there's so many different kinds of microgreens that you can grow in this same fashion, like they're growing. so once again, this is in half soil. and all they do is seed the seeds down there, cover it, and then let it start sprouting up and then they take the cover off so it can actually green up. i'm not really going to go into how you grow these guys today, but i have some couple of good past episodes on how to specifically grow your wheat grass and your sunflower greens. and if you come into hippocrates, you'll actually get classes on how to do and make fabulous greens like they're growing here. i guess that's pretty much it for this green house. the next area which i'm really excited about showing you guys is their brand new farm here that they've just started about a year ago. so, it's in its fledgling stage and i'm going to show you guys how they're growing what they're growing here, and more importantly, what some of the students that are coming to hippocrates are learning.
now we're standing outside the hippocrates health institute organic farm. and that's what they recommend here; they recommend people eat organic foods, and they're growing organic foods. so i'm going to ensure that they use only organic approved things on their farm. but anyways, they're growing in several different areas, and this is a very valuable learning experience for you guys to learn that's not just one way to grow. i mean, what i show you guys in my videos is the way i would do it, and there are many instances where i would set up container gardens, raised bed gardens and stuff. but there's many ways to garden, and just because i show you guys a way, i mean, that's the way i use - that's a way you guys might want to experiment with, but there are other ways of doing it. and they're doing many different kinds of gardening here, including container garden, raised bed garden and even standard field crops growing in rows like you would at a regular farm. plus they have like a hoop house and a shade house. so they have many different environments they can put the plants that need that kind of environment. because here in south florida, especially in the summer time, the weather can be quite harsh. some people believe you can't grow food in south florida in the summer time. but, you know, the people say you can't grow because it's too hot or because it's too cold. but look at the nature around us, as you can see, there's grass, there's palms, there's all kinds of different shrubs growing.
so i mean, things grow. the problem is when you try and grow like northern crops that aren't used to the sunny south florida weather, then you run into some issues. and that's why they would normally grow in south florida in the winter season, when it's cooler and they can grow the cooler crops. so here i'm proud to say that they're growing some heat tolerant crops, but they're also growing some ones in a different way that you could actually get away with growing here in south florida. so, let's actually come inside the farm and tour you guys some of these areas and what they're doing here. so the first area of the farm here is the hoop house, which is a hoop and it also has a shade cloth on it. they have a whole bunch of different areas in here. first they have these grow tables, which are really nice. i wish i had some of these myself. and they're actually starting some different plants including passion fruits and marigolds, lambs-quarter, magenta springs and lambs-quarters, some stevia they started from seed; all different kinds of things. oh, swomp pink mallow, plantain, cumin, black cumin; wolf berries, so they got the goji berries started. i think this is really cool that they're experimenting with a lot of different kinds of crops to see what's really going to do well in this climate; in this growing situation.
i mean, you know, if they started to try and grow things that are just common that, you know, people try to grow in new york, you know, in the summer time, then it's not going to do well here because this is a high humidity area and actually fairly high heat as well, and a lot of normal crops won't make it. so i really appreciate that they're experimenting and i want to encourage you guys to experiment also, with all kinds of different crops, because you may find some crops that do well or do better than others. and there's no way you'd learn this aside from trying it yourself and finding out. and guess what, a pack of seeds is really cheap. let's continue to move on and show you guys what's growing on here. and as you can see, they've got different flats here of seedlings growing. and actually, these are the very seedlings that some of the health educators started on their own. so they take classes on how to grow food in their health education program. these are the people that will go out to the world and start teaching people about eating healthier and growing your own food, frankly. and that's what they've done here. and everybody has a little tag on theirs - so this is brian's tray. and i think it's not doing quite as well as the one here.
so rich, w., you kick ass. brian, you need to take some more seed dispersal classes because they're not quite growing as well. alright. oh, so back over here. check it out, man, they have so many cool things growing, i'm going nuts here. over here they've got some of my favourite leafy greens. this is actually called the red vein sorrel. also looks like they have some water crest there. and here's some standard sorrel. so the sorrel is a plant that may do well in this hot heat, and they're just growing these in little containers. so, you know, wheather you have a full yard or a little balcony, you can definitely grow in little containers like this. if you have a lot of containers, you could actually grow a lot of food. i would have no problem coming out here any day of the week and picking one leaf out of all these plants; it would actually make you a nice salad. in addition besides this, over here, they have these guys over here; they're growing some anise hyssop, and lemon balm and one of my favourite plants, the shiso. so last year, i grew this shiso and the shiso's a very good crop to grow in a high heat situation. i grew this in las vegas, and here it's not only hot, but also humid, and they're probably going to do good here.
i like the red variety. so. this is actually related to the mint family. and the shiso makes actually little seeds that are high in omega 3 fatty acids. so if the seeds have the omega 3 fatty acids, so do the leaves. so eat your shiso leaves people. next we want to go out into the other areas of the garden, i think we'll hit the container garden next. they have some amazing containers and some cool irrigation set up to water the containers that i have never seen before. this is an amazing container garden. all these containers are just large plastic pots. these are the same pots where they put like, trees in. so they're like large nursery pots with very thin plastic. i think these guys run, you know, at a local hydroponics shop near me... i bought some for about $10. so for $10 you could have a nice large container, fill it up with some soil and grow some food in. really simple. so, you know, one of the cool things that i like here is that they're growing a wide variety of food. i haven't seen such a wide variety food grown anywhere else in south florida that i've been. i mean, it's amazing that they're experimenting with a lot of different kinds of foods, but more importantly, a lot of nutrient dense foods
like some of the uncommon leafy greens. because the common ones like lettuce, frankly, in the summertime in south florida, they're not going to do well. but check this guy out, this stuff is called purslane. and the purslane, while it is getting eaten by a few bugs, looks like it's doing really well. and purslane is definitely a green that's high in omega 3 fatty acids. it's a nice succulent style leaf, and for many people purslane actually grows as a weed, but they're actually cultivating it here. now i do want to mention that there's different kinds of purslane: so, you've got your common garden weed purslane which kind of creeps along the ground and you've got a more erect version of purslane which is this. which is the cultivated kind. so if you're going to grow it, i definitely encourage you guys to grow. order some seeds and grow the upright variety. some of them will have fairly large leaves and will give you more food than just the common weed type purslane. but that being said, they're actually all edible. here's just a little smaller container here with some parsley growing. they've got more purslane.
here's some chives. let's go over here for a second, this is one of my favourite herbs. i love herbs whether they are medicinal or not. this is actually called the hot and spicy oregano. so this is oregano, but the trick on this... and i've grown this... when you eat it, to me it tastes like a hot pepper, man. it'll light up your mouth. and you know, all the different flavours in the food are different flavonoids. and these are flavonoids that are basically nutrients for us. i mean, they have things like oregano extract on the market that kills bacteria and what not. so why buy those extracts when you could pick and harvest your own oregano and put it in your meals every night? not only will it make your food taste good, but it'll also give you some good nutrition that most people aren't eating. over here is something they said probably couldn't be done and i'm really surprised that they're growing this stuff here. the ground is actually quite moist in here, and this stuff is actually called the chick weed.
so the chickweed, you know, in south florida, underneath a tree is growing really great. and i mean, this thing in my garden is literally a weed. and in the winter, probably like spring time, it comes up so hardcore. this thing will drop seeds and reseed itself and keep coming back. but to me, this is an excellent edible salad green and it looks like it's doing very well here in south florida, underneath the shade of a tree. definitely really good. in addition, i like that they're growing things in this container here, which they have labelled, which is really nice. i really like places that label their stuff because a lot of the visitors here that come in for the program, frankly, probably have never seen things growing before or don't know about things growing and can't identify chick weed like i can and identify the majority of plants here. so it's really great that they have the tags, so people can get to know the plants. because a big part of what they do here is about education. you know, all the crops that they grow here, whether it's the fruit trees on property, or the vegetables on property, are the number one goal for them
to use in the education of people that come here and to serve it as the food for the people that come here. because the home grown food here at hippocrates is probably the best food they could be serving to their guests; because local food; high quality food grown in compost and rock dust minerals, which they do use here, is some of the best food in my opinion. so here in the tropics, they are growing ginger. ginger is an excellent tropical perennial to grow. if you live anywhere in south florida, you'll definitely want to grow some ginger. and also another tuberous root that they're growing next door, which is, in my opinion, more nutrient dense than the ginger. and that's right here. it's not coming up yet, it's actually the turmeric. so i love the turmeric. it's actually a really good anti-inflammatory. there's curcumins in there, anti-inflammatory, and hopefully they'll be coming up here very soon. and once again, the turmeric needs to be grown in a place where there's a long season and it doesn't freeze. so if, you know, you maybe have a green house in california you could do that, but south florida is a perfect place to grow acres of turmeric. i mean, they do that in hawaii.
and literally, to start the turmeric you could just buy little roots at your store and plant them, and keep them watered and warm, and they'll come up for you. continuing on, they've got, you know, containers full of weeds, or many people might say that these are the same dandelions that you might find in your lawn. but these are actually french dandelions -- and they spelt it wrong. they spelt it "dandy-lion", which is kind of cool. but it doesn't matter how it's spelled, these are all edible and these are some super greens. you can use the greens, the roots, and even the flower stalks; all edible and really good for you although it is definitely an acquired taste. we've got to keep on moving here. oh, here's another cool one, man. now, to me, this is the kind of stuff that they should be growing in south florida. you know, not the standard northern vegetables, but you want to grow the tropical perennial vegetables here in south florida. this is actually called the cranberry hibiscus, also called roselle. and this makes a fabulous, nice, large, shrubby, bushy thing. i grew this over last summer in california, and it doesn't like the frost, but during the summer time, it grew amazingly well.
and what you can do, literally, this grows as a shrub and you can pick every leaf and eat it. it has a nice soily flavour, and man, it's so delicious. i only get this when i come to the tropics. in addition, besides the leaves, they make these nice little flower buds, that they use folower buds to make like a lemonade type drink as well. i wish they had other perennial vegetables that are native to the tropics that'll do well. you can literally just plant it once and it'll grow forever. so imagine a hedge full of shrubs that are all edible. so there's crops like ktuk and okinawa and spinach that have a purple variety and a green variety, that they can literally grow as ground cover that is all edible. in addition, another great thing to grow and use as ground cover here in the gardens is what's called perennial peanut, or perennial peanut grass, that actually grows as a ground cover. it's nitrogen fixing so it's adding nutrients to the soil, but it also covers an area so it chokes out the weeds. so that's definitely really cool. you know, i've been to hawaii, and that's what they do in hawaii, and this would be a similar climate.
so over here they have another cool one i grew once that i don't particularly care for, and it's actually called salad burnet. i really think that its ultimately cool that they're growing so many different varieties of things. i mean this is like something you'd find in my garden but it' here at hippocrates. and i'm sure, you know, because it's their first year that they're trying a whole bunch of different things to see what does good, what doesn't, and, you know, may keep some of them up because they're new and different and the chefs in the kitchen may want this flavour of this herb, or, you know, leafy green or whatever. oh, we passed by this one. this is one of my favourites. this is the stevia. so the stevia is another excellent crop to grow here in the summer time, even in the middle of the hot summer here south florida. the stevia will do really well. you can see here that they're actually starting to bolt and go to flower. and besides, these are leafy greens that are edible. now stevia is known as a sweet leaf. it's actually a sugar substitute with no sugar in it. it tastes, wow, it's really sweet. the flowers are also edible. it's rare that i get to eat stevia flowers.
and then it goes to seed. so, it looks like these went to seed, and now the seeds are kind of blowing in the wind. and those are little stevia seeds right there. let me go ahead and spread some stevia seeds in the wind. i have other videos on stevia. stevia is an amazing green. you can actually use it to flavour up smoothies and make teas out of it. i want to show you guys this cilantro here. number 1: it attracts beneficial insects. so you can see the bees there just going around the cilantro plant and actually getting the pollen. and when the cilantro plant gets too warm, it does what's called bolts. so when a plant bolts, it actually goes into its reproductive stage, it's no longer at its leafing stage and is not really going to make much more food for you in the sense of the leaves. but what it will make are these cilantro flowers. and i've often shown that you can eat the cilantro flowers and they actually have an amazing flavour. on some levels, i like the cilantro flowers when they're in this stage much more than actually the cilantro itself. it's so good. after the cilantro flowers are formed,
they get pollinated and then you can see here that it starts producing these little seeds. and these are seed pods that are green at this point and are very immature. but after that stage we can go over here to another stage, and these are when the seeds get bigger. and over on this side, these seeds are actually dried up. so i'm glad they're actually saving the seeds here, and now these seeds actually can be harvested, right here, and now they can grow these for next year or actually you could use these seeds as a coriander spice. because the leaves of the cilantro plant or the cilantro and the seeds are actually called the coriander. maybe i'll go ahead and snack on one of these guys and... nice and spicy. i always want to encourage my viewers actually to grow edible flowers, so we saw some cilantro that they're growing here. the flowers are edible and it'll makes great garnishes on dishes, you know, make things look pretty, and they'll also give people a flavour kick. because people generally haven't had cilantro flowers, so i'd encourage them to use a lot of the different crops here
in the meals they serve every night to make things look cool but also give new taste sensations. plus they'd be able to use more of the food that they're actually growing on site. maybe if the kitchen manager came out every day and just took a walk and picked some certain herbs to put in tonights dish, that would be a great, effective use of some of the food here. besides that, we're going to talk about the flowers. and, you know, here's another flower that's really great to grow in your garden. these are just the standard garden stersha. maybe you guys are maybe growing these now; you may not know that they're completely edible, they look cool, and besides from the flowers being edible, they give you a peppery kick. the leafy greens are also edible, too. they're just a lot more stronger. so, you know, if i was adding this to a salad, i'd add maybe one leaf to the whole salad and chop it up really small, so i'd get small bits, and then it'd add some nice fire to your mouth when you're eating your salad. in addition, next door here, we've got some more flowers. these are probably my favourite edible flowers; some johnny jump ups, or violas.
now, the johnny jump up flowers are edible and many people don't know that you can eat the leaves of the violas as well; they're quite good. moving down they've got somemore edible flowers here. and these are the standard marigolds. they are rich in lutein and zeaxanthin. if you go to the health food store, they'll have little supplments and pills that they actually take the extract from the flower petals for the lutein and zero xanthium and they'll sell these in little pills to for your eyes; to help you eyes. but, you know, i say "why buy pills when you don't have to; when you've got nature?" nature in my opinion is much better than a pill bottle or things made in a factory. you'll be able to go out and pick your own flowers and sprinkle them in your salads. the reason why, in my opinion, people need supplements is because they're not eating a healthy balanced diet, including flowers like the marigolds. they had one half of the containers on that side and now have even more containers here. and you know, in my opinion, containers are an excellent way to grow. because literally, we're sitting on a whole bunch of sand; there's really not much nutrients in the sand. and if you do try and enrich the sand, i mean, it's almost like a never ending battle. you'd pretty much have to bring in compost to grow on top of the sand, instead of in the sand here.
so, by growing in containers, you're going to save your soil: s.o.s - save our soil. you can keep the soil and keep the nutrition in there and keep growing in it year after year. i like to cycle what i'm growing in each container and keep changing it up, so i'm never growing the same thing twice unless it's some kind of perennial vegetable like they're growing many of them here. so, what we're going to do next is actually we're going to show you guys some of the crops they're growing in containers here. we'll start out with this one. these are actually some royal burgundy bush beans that are actually growing up some bamboo sticks, that looks like they probably grew on site. they look like they're doing alright. in general, what i've learned is that the asian beans, not the standard green beans, but the asian variety of beans will tend to do better in high heat areas. in addition, they've got some lemon balm. and i want to talk a second about herbs. herbs are excellent things to grow in hot climates. herbs are the number one thing; the easiest things to grow. and one of the cool things about the herbs is that you could grow herbs and you're not using a whole salad's worth, you're just going to use a few leaves of herbs to spice things up. so, you could easily grow your herbs every season to, you know, meet your needs because you don't have to grow it as much as you would some lettuce
to have a salad because you're just using a small amount. plus, in addition, you could dry your herbs and even use them for tea. so let's go ahead and show you guys some more plants that are growing in containers. we have the cranbury hibiscus here, they've got the sunchokes; they grew some artichokes right here, coming up in the middle along with some other weeds in here and some parsley. but they grew some artichokes, and as you can see here these are some sunchokes that are starting to sprout. and actually, in my opinion, they should be covered up with a bit more soil right there. but these guys should also do really well. these are native american crops; they were native to the americas when the white man came. in addition, it looks like they maybe have some lemongrass over in here and they've got a whole bunch of different peppers. now peppers are probably some of the best crops you could grow in south florida.they really love the heat. and this probably some kind of pepper from maybe trinidad; probebly a hot style small variety. and one of the things they're doing here in these containers is they're only filling them up...you know, the containers are maybe 2ft tall,
approximately, and they're only filling them up with about a foot of soil. now, there's pros and cons to that. i mean, the pro is that you're not going to use as much soil. the con is that there won't be as much soil in there for the roots to spread out in. so if it was my container and i was growing the pepper plant, i'd probebly fill the soil almost to the top to allow for the most soil and microbial action in the soil, and have a lot space for the roots to grow out. because the larger the root bulk can get, the healthier the plant could be and the more it could produce, and the more solid it's going to be. let's continue to move on. right here, what they had in here before was more of the cilantro. so the cilantro, in my opinion, is maybe not the best crop to be growing here in south florida, because it is a fast turn crop, especially when it gets warm. i personally grow the cilantro in the cool winter, or the spring or fall; not the middle of the summer. it does tend to bolt very fast, but if you want the cilantro flavour without growing cilantro,
all you need to do is grow this other herb called culantro. culantro is a tropical plant that tastes just like cilantro. i actually had that in a past episode when i was doing houston. i planted out two different varieties of cilantro and a culantro. it would be interesting to go back there in a few months and see that the cilantros are done and the culantro are growing strong; still providing food for my friend that i helped set up his crate raised bed garden there. let's continue moving. in this garden it looks like they have some more peppers. this is one bountiful pepper plant. i don't know the variety, but these all look like little cherry type tomatoes, but these are little small peppers. and i'm sure they're quite hot at that. but i mean, even in a container you can grow a significant amount of peppers. hot peppers are another cool thing to grow, because you don't need a whole lot of hot peppers unless you're of latin decent and you really like hot spicy stuff. i mean, just one hot pepper in like one whole bowl of food would probably spice it up. so you'll probably easily have enough hot peppers for you to eat fresh and then dry for the winter.
in addition, another crop that's going to do really well here are the basils. there's so many different varieties of basil. they've just got a standard sweet basell here. and the sweet basils and the basils here in south florida can grow as whole shrubs and trees and be pretty much like perennials. and man, wow, that smells really good and tonight i'm actually going to eat dinner here, and maybe i'll even have some pesto for dinner. but if you do want to come you can eat dinner or lunch here pretty much any day of the week. it costs $20 for all you can eat. but, you know, you can't get a tour of the place you can just come in for dinner. but i definitly think that for $20 all you can eat organic food is definitely a good deal. let's see. if we keep moving, they've got peppers, they've got some onions here growing, oh here's some carrots in the containers; they've got some nice large carrots in there. and, oh, some beets. man, look at how these beets are growing. these are some crazy large beets. so here's just some of the beet here in the container here. and it's just basically just half out of the ground and half in the ground. and besides just harvesting the beet root, i want to remind you guys that you can harvest the little beet greens. let me see if i can find just a little, small beet green here. so these little small beet greens...
you know, the baby greens are my favourite greens to eat because they're more delicate, not as tough. if you do want to harvest the larger ones, i would definitely juice them or put them into a green smoothie. and you want to remember that beets are basically in the same family as a spinach. quite good; i can say definitely that the stuff grown here is quite sweet. let's see. they've got more peppers here, and i think that pretty much rounds it out for the container garden. next we're actually going to go into the section where they're growing in the raised beds. before we get to the raised beds, i was just walking by this section here, and what they have here is probebly one of the most useful trees you can grow in south florida. this is actually called the moringa tree. so the moringa tree's a fast growing tree. if you go to the health store, once again, you can buy moringa leaf powder that's powdered up. and it's like $20 a pound, but if you live in south florida you could literally plant one of these trees that'll pretty much grow
and grow and grow, and you could just harvest the leaves any time to eat. these are really nutritious leafy greens that are a low maintenance crop. in addition, these are really easy to propagate. all you do is once they get established, you hack it back, you can take that hack back cutting, stick in the ground and it'll grow into a new tree and then the hacked back part will grow again. so this is really cool, i really like moringa a lot and i'm glad they're growing a lot of starts here. hopefully they're just going to start including these all around the landscape here at hippocrates so that any guest can come up to the moringa tree and start eating their lunch if they don't want to go into the lunch hall. now we're going to look at the raised beds, so besides growing in containers which i like for the south florida area, growing in raised beds are another good way because now you're bringing in the soil. you're not going to plant in the native soil, which is pretty much just sand here. i mean, after all, this is called west palm beach; we're on a beach and this is sand. so, by raising up the level of the soil and bringing in your own organic compost, you're going to have much
greater levels of success than just trying to grow in some sand that probably doesn't have a whole lot of nutrition in there. as you can see here, they have two different raised bed styles. they have these guys here, which are basically like 2x10s with some 2x2s holding the corners up. and they basically only fill these up half way. so, one of my pet peeves is when you build high raised beds and you only fill them up half way. now i'm not familiar with growing, specifically here in south florida, they may do this to provide more shade and keep some of the crops cool. that might be the valid reason for doing that. i, personally, if i had raised beds this tall, i would fill them up to the top. or, if i wasn't going to use a full way, i'd actually cut them down in half and make double the amount of raised beds. over here, you can see they're starting to build some new raised bed designs. and how they're doing this is that they're basically just taking some 2x6 and they're cutting it out , and this is where the joints are going to go into. and they're just taking some...you know, like, rebar to put in there. so this is almost like a little lincoln log set where they can just put these together like this, and then they need no additional support. these are actually going to be very sturdy and very stable; to last and be quite durable. so i'm sure they're going to be building
this and finishing this real soon and filling it up with some good compost and a good soil mix and growing more food. now we're sitting in between two of the raised beds, and they're growing many different crops in the raised beds. things like carrots and cilantro and parsley, and they've got some radishes, and it looks like they're doing very well. they're actually quite densely planted and there's a lot of little radishes down here that they can harvest. they pretty much serve radishes in like every meal on the salad bar, because they have a nice big salad bar that you get to choose from. i mean, they could easily fulfil their radish needs by growing just a few beds of radishes. and radishes are what i call quick turn crops because they can be ready in as few as like 20 days for some varieties. in addition, i want to encourage you guys to eat the radish greens. the radish greens are a nice edible leafy green, although i wouldn't make a whole salad out of them. i would add a few leaves to a salad with other mixed greens.
over on this side they're growing a lot of carrots. carrots, in my opinion, take a bit longer to grow than radishes. i personally tend to buy my carrots because i don't want to waste space in my garden for the carrots. that being said, you can not only harvest the carrot roots that we're all used to, but the carrot greens are also edible. and maybe people don't know that. that being said, they don't quite have the best flavour, but they're edible. yeah, i don't like the carrot greens too much. i'd rather go for the radish greens first; more spicy and peppery. now we're going to look at the compost facility here at hippocrates. they're doing composting on a big scale because to feed all the people a plant based diet, they grow basically flats and flats and trays and trays of the wheat grass, the sunflower greens, the buckwheat greens and the pea sprouts. and they cut the trays off and they've got to do something with the soil at the bottom and the root mass. so what better thing to do with that stuff and the food scraps from the kitchen than to compost it and make their own soil here so they can stop being dependant on buying soil.
so you can see here some of the flats. some of them are continuing to grow in the compost, and also the juice pulp, they create lots of juice every day. and here is where they're mixing in some food scraps with the leaves, because it's very important to get a mixture of browns and greens, or carbon and nitrogen, to make sure you have a compost pile that's actually working instead of just rotting. one of my mottos is is "compost happens". but i always encourage you guys to make it happen as fast as possible so you can be creating more soil for your garden instead of importing it and buying it from someone else. be sure to check my past videos where i have a few good episodes on composting and how i've really dialled it in to make it work really efficiently in like a joraform compost or using my food scraps plus also some standard pine pellets that are available at a feed supply store near you, normally used for horse bedding. so, you know, besides the composting here; the regular composting, they're also doing worm composting, so let's take a look at that next. besides the standard compositing they're doing here at hippocrates, they also have worm compositing. you might be thinking "john, what's better, man: regular compositing or worm compositing?' well, i think they're both great
and you should do whatever draws you to it. i mean, if you want to do static composting in a hot pile, or a spinning compost or like i do, that's great. if you want to do worms, that's great. so, if i had to choose one, i'd choose a spinning composter myself because then you don't have to take care of your worms and worry about your worms, because these are live creatures that you do need to pay some attention to. you've got to remember to keep feeding them because they'll eat around a pound of food for one pound of worms a day. plus you've got to keep the temperature just right. it can't be too hot or too cold. plus the moisture level is also very important. so, you know, instead of some fancy worm bin like in many places, or some worm box just made out of wood, they're using something really simple; more standard nursery pots. so this is a standard feed trough, or like a big nursery pot. and all they have in here is a big, old sheet. and then under here you can see.. wow. you can see all these crazy worms and creatures. some of them are some centipedes actually, that i don't know about. but i'm sure under the ground are some worms, and i'm not necessarily going to dig in there today. so this is how they use some of the food scraps that is created here at hippocrates. they feed it to the worms
and make the worm castings so they can actually enrich their garden with some of the worm castings. but besides the worm castings, i'm also really happy that they're making compost tea here. so let me show you their rudimentary composite tea set up, because it really isn't that hard to make. this is their simple compost tea set up that they have. it's nothing more than a 5 gallon bucket with a stick and a bag hanging... that's splashing everywhere. but this bag was pretty much suspended on this stick here, and this is basically the bag where they put the worm castings and the compost in. then they've got an air bubbler. so where's the air bubbler? here's the air bubbler - oh man, they've got a small air bubbler. i highly encourage them to get a larger air bubbler. the more you can oxygenate your water, the better. and check it out, man. they've just got a standard petco aquarium pump. now while this pump is good, i definitely recommend like an active aqua pump, which is an industrial pump that's going to pump a lot more air into the water. and also a nice larger air stone from like a hydroponics store. i mean, the more air you can get in there, the better, because then the microbes are going to go nuts.
now the reason for the compost tea is not because of nutrition, but it's for the microbes. the beneficial bacteria and the microbes in there are basically going to proliferate, so when they get into your soils, they're actually going to create more nutrients for your plants so that your plants can thrive. so i'm really glad they're doing the compost tea here. oh, another additive to the compost tea is molasses because this is what keeps the bacteria happy and multiplying. you know, there's many different recipes for compost teas, and i recommend the boogie brew compost tea because it's an all in one solution; a one stop shop. it's a really good compost tea that's already made so you don't have to come up with your own recipe and go through these trials and tribulations to get the recipe just right, to get maximum results. i'm talking about saving time, saving money and letting somebody else do all the leg work and you just reap the benefits. and that's why i like the boogie brew compost tea. and stay tuned for an upcoming episode where we're going to have an open source compost tea episode. where i'm going to get together with the boogie brew compost tea company, and he's going to share his secrets on what's in his compost tea, and how you can start formulating your own. so, it's going to be a really good episode, hopefully within the next few months. besides from the compost tea that they're creating here, besides the standard compost, worm castings and compost tea... one of the things that i really like a lot is the rock dust, of course.
and i'm glad they're using rock dust supplementation here on their organic farm. it's very important. in my opinion, it's one of the most important things you can add to your garden. and actually, i'm learning something new today. like, when i visit every farm i always learn something new at every farm. it's really cool to expand my knowledge but also share it with you guys. so what i'm finding today is called "dragonite". now who wants to add some dragonite to their garden? this is actually called the "premier quality rock dust for robust soil fertility. the secrets of the ancients for rejuvenating soil." 2.2lbs, so that's actually 1 kilo. this is 1 kilo of the dragonite rock dust that i haven't heard about, so i'm actually going to have to contact this company and see if i can get some samples to try and share with you guys. now, the way this is sold... and i know premier research labs is like a company that sells a lot of supplements... so 2.2lbs of this stuff is probably pretty spendy so i'd rather get a larger coin of the azomite, but i definitely want to try this. so you might be thinking "john, what's better, man: the azomite or the dragonite, or the gaia green glacier rock dust?' you know what i say?
i say you add all the different kinds of rock dust because every kind of rock dust will have different levels of nutrition and different levels of minerals in there. and through adding all the different kinds of minerals, you're going to get the most beneficial effect of all the different kinds of minerals in there because one kind of rock dust may not have all the minerals as another kind. and if you can't get the horticultural grade rock dust like you are here, you can get some river silt, or some crushed up powdered rocks from a local stone quarry because that's probably going to be better in most cases than not adding them. in addition, real quick while we're over here, i want to show you guys this. i mean, this is what many of you guys can do. it's really simple. this is a standard 2 litre bottle. they took it, they cut off the top, they inverted it upside down, they stuck a straw in here, the bottom has a water reservoir; it probably has a couple of holes in there. and this is literally a self watering container made of a 2 gallon pot.
now, how many of you guys can take some 2 gallon drink containers, cut them in half and fill up your patio outside with these little containers to start your plants or grow some small plants in. i mean, i'd probably feel fine with growing something like herbs or even some lettuce in here. i probably wouldn't grow any pepper or tomato plants in here unless they're just little seedlings. but this is a great way to reuse the plastic that's probably not getting recycled and will probably end up in the pacific jar anyways, to grow more food in so you can eat healthier. i guess the last part of the tour i want to give you guys today is the field crops that they're growing. and they definitely have a lot of them because that's where they're probably growing the majority of the food here at the hippocrates organic farm. now we're in the standard row crop garden, and pretty much while these are in rows, they basically just raise the soil, enrich the soil and they're growing in little raised beds without sides. and that's why they call them row crops because they have them in rows. they have many different kinds of irrigation systems they're probably experimenting with. this whole area is actually irrigated with over head irrigation and it looks like it's doing amazingly. here we have some bok choy. and bok choy an amazing crop to grow in the heat, although you do have to use it before you lose it. because this stuff pretty soon is going to bolt an they're going to lose it.
so hopefully they'll be serving this at one of the dinners or meals here at hippocrates. besides the bok choy, they've got different things like beans, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, char, tomatoes and all kinds of different things growing in different row crops. they have a whole bunch of different things growing here in south florida. i mean, here it is in late april and they've got the celery growing, they've got some peppers growing, they've got some lima beans growing, and they've got some corn growing. now if you like corn, i highly encourage you guys to plant your own corn or get organic seeds because corn these days is being genetically modified, and i'm not in favour of any genetically modified foods. personally, i wouldn't buy non-organic corn seeds to plant unless they're tested and for sure genetic modification free. so that's why i recommend organic seeds. that being said, corn is not a vegetable. did you know that? corn is actually a grain. corn is derived from this grain called teocinte, which is basically non-edible and has been hybridized over the years into the corn we know. now, i love eating corn whenever i can get some good organic corn, but corn does not make up any large portion of my diet at all. and if you want to eat your corn, i definitely recommend that you grow it yourself. now we're in another part of the field, and they have many different rows planted out in different kinds of crops.
right here they have the peppers, these are actually called serrano peppers, and they do make a hot sauce here in the kitchen to serve to the guests. and since growing their garden here, they probably haven't had to buy any hot peppers because they have a whole field of them. now, they do feed a lot of sweet peppers to people here, so it may not be economical to grow all their sweet peppers. but they can easily meet their needs of the hot peppers because you don't need to grow as many hot peppers because you're not eating them like sweet peppers. you're just adding a few for that hot spiciness that's in the pepper. one of the things i want to point out here is that these guys are producing very well, these plants are nice and large with lots of peppers on each one. and when i harvest my peppers, and i would encourage you guys also, to wait until they're fully ripe. although you can buy the green peppers in the stores, you know, for use in your kitchen... you know, these green peppers on this plant here will turn red, and i only encourage you guys to harvest your solanaceae family plants including tomatoes, egg plants and peppers when they're fully ripe so they have the least amount of toxins within them. in addition, the flavour will be much more, you know, vibrant and taste much better.
the other thing that they're doing here is spacing their plants appropriately. so, they space these plants about, you know, 12 inches apart which is a really good spacing. because as you can see, once the plants grow out and create their canopy, they're just about touching each other. so, by this way; by maximizing your spacing, you're going to be able to fit the most crops in to create the most amount of food. but one of the crops that i'm really happy to see that they're growing here at hippocrates, in my opinion, they should have a lot more of this stuff, is the malabar spinach. the malabar spinach; they've definitely been grown right, they put up the trellis in advance because this is a viner. this is a climber. it's going to actually vine up this, which might make it even taller because this thing will easily devour this trellis really easily. this guy's going to grow up and all these nice, large, succulent leaves are nice and edible. and most people have never tasted malabar spinach leaves. they're actually a nice succulent leaf with a really neutral flavour and it would be a great addition to any salad. and once again, this is a tropical vegetable. you can't grow it in northern climates in the summer time for a short season.
but here in south florida if you have a mild winter, it'll grow throughout the winter and it just keeps putting on leaves. and i've seen some malabar spinach leaves like that big, they can get really huge and then you can use them for even wraps. really cool. and then there are two varieties of the malabar spinach. they have a red variety, which has a red stem, and a green variety. they are only growing the red variety here, so i guess they discriminated against green plants. well, i think actually everything else here is green. but hopefully they'll start including the green malabar spinach to have a variation. and they could grow like a green, a red, a green, a red. and... hey wait! those are christmas colours. and they'll maybe even have malabar spinach in december if the weather is mild enough and doesn't get too cold. so now we're in the brussels sprout forest. and you may be thinking: "john, how come these don't look like brussels sprouts in the store with those little stalks and those mini cabbage heads?" well, you know, in my garden sometimes the brussels sprouts don't head up right and they don't look like the store. but you know what?
that's alright because the brussels sprouts leaves are also edible, and while maybe the things like the colored greens and swiss char are like harvested to the hilt here, they're not harvesting these guys yet. i think is a terrible waste. so, if you guys grow these, don't let them get this many greens on them because if you do they're going to go to waste. if they start turning yellow just like this, then they're going to have to go in your compost pile, instead of getting the nutrition into you. i'm sure they could use these to make something like wraps, a salad, you know, or even juice them to get the nutrition into the guests here. because i think it's very important that, you know, they're growing the food here, they need to feed it to the guests and hopefully one day they'll expand this garden so much that they can feed all the food to the guests. so, i hope you guys enjoyed this episode. once again my name is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com. we'll see you next time, and remember: keep on growing.
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