You Can Grow Food in the Snow - A Visit to Will Allen's Growing Power

This is John Kohler from growingyourgreens.com Today I'm on another field trip as you can see here I'm in the snow today So once and for all I'm going to prove to you Guys and girls that are my viewers That you can grow in the snow year round Certain crops if you do it right Because I'm here in the snow I'm here in Milwaukee Wisconsin at Growing Power This is Will Allen's place you may have seen it in other videos on YouTube He's been featured a lot, here are his greenhouses These were originally used in the 1920's to grow flowers Then Will got a hold of them and started growing food in them And he does some really amazing work Unfortunately I was told today that I'm not able to film inside On the tour because I'm going to do a tour today So what I have done is take many still photos Inside on the tour and I will be able to narrate that tour If I get permission So I'm going to narrate that tour And hopefully we're good to see and learn about growing power Alright so here is growing power After going into the growing power shop You're going to go through a door to your right And this is greenhouse number one Where you're going to meet your tour guide Here's Nick, our tour guide He's going to introduce us to growing power And talk about growing power and Will Allen How it was started and why it was started Tours are conducted every day I think at 1 o'clock Nick is getting into explaining what growing power grows Those are sugar-snap pea sprouts You can grow those at home in your kitchen These are sunflower green sprouts Nick incorrectly said they contain vitamin-D or B12 I forget which one now because it has been two weeks since my tour I got into nutrition and health long before I was into gardening The next picture here is their aquaponics setup This is basically a three layer set up In the bottom there are the fish And the two top players have plants they are growing The people are most interested when they fed the fish the fish food So here is Nick feeding the tilapia the fish food There is a tilapia in the tank Basically you can do one tilapia for every gallon of water approximately They do heat the water to keep the tilapia happy Here's another picture of the aquaponics system Once again at three levels They grow in lots of pots This is something you could really pick up on Growing pots or growing containers Lined up in your greenhouse or the hallways at your house Provided you give them enough light All of the greenhouses are heated except the two in the back Now Nick is going to be talking about what they grow in This is very critical and very important I encourage everyone to grow What he's going to show next is some compost This is vermi compost or Worm castings from the worms This is primarily what they use And it's definitely very good stuff Next is showing us how he can make some worm compost tea Or worm tea Get the warm compost in a bag there and dump it into the 5 gallon bucket And make some worm Tea to feed your plants Next is showing us the coconut core They mixed the coconut core and the coconut husks With the vermi compost to grow in as a growing medium The coconut core is much much much better than Peat moss or sphagnum peat Because sphagnum peat is a nonrenewable resource Whereas coconut core is a renewable resource Here are the worm composting bins They have 40 or so bins, they make a lot of compost This is basically them growing some duckweed on top This is actually the water holder The barrel that holds the water to basically Feed out all the plants in their system You can see the barrels here It basically pumps up the water to the top Which is above the worm compost bins to feed them It's basically like a hydroponics style system With nutrients in the water We go through this area next Where volunteers are basically sifting the compost Here's one volunteer sifting the compost This organization runs a lot on volunteer help So there are many volunteers here It's really great to see people getting involved growing their own foods This is a really cool Invention It's basically a dryer Whether it's electric or gas doesn't really matter They're not using it for the dryer capabilities They took this and basically modified it To be a Compost sifter This is the back this is where the compost gets sifted And it comes out the back let's do a close up there On the inside, so this is the barrel Actually it still coming out the back there That's a close up as it comes out of the back You can see the drum and the compost through the Quarter inch wire mesh He is another close-up of the drum as it is spinning around They basically cut a section of the drum out in the back This is at an angle As the drum spins the compost gets sifted And comes out the back of the previous picture that you saw So this is a low-tech way of sifting compost with an ordinary dryer I thought that was really cool I guess somebody came up with that after they'd been Sifting for a while and thought there's going to be a better way One of the volunteers actually Here once again are the worm composting bins They cover it with burlap and then Water to keep a nice moisture level for the worms Here's one with the burlap off This is the most amazing thing about growing power There is so many things growing at the growing power greenhouse I felt like I was at home almost It was really cool to just see all the greenery And how they're maximizing space They have hanging pots they have things along the walkways They have things at all different levels As you will see in the next picture growing That's really amazing and I encourage you all to Maximize the use of all your space that you have To grow as much food as possible Once again here's another picture of the worm compost bins below And some pots hanging up above the top Also some parts hanging down below So if you're container gardening, very important Is another way they're growing food They're growing oyster mushrooms Basically off of some straw And you can see them coming out there They're hanging those in a greenhouse above the top And that's on the top even on lower levels you can see Just all the massive amounts of pots hanging As you can see, there's another picture here As we're walking through the greenhouses it says Raze Organic Grown Products and I would definitely agree with that This next concept is a really cool concept I don't know what the meaning was for them But this was the meaning I got from it Basically they had all these 1 gallon pots Growing with things in them Some edible vegetables in the pots And you could basically use the pots Line them up and make the bed around them And fill in the middle of the pots with more soil to grow more food in The parts that you are using can literally be a raised bed edging That is really cool Here we are going through the greenhouse and seeing All the different things growing in pots mainly There is the back of the tour guide as I was following up at the end of the tour They are also growing shiitake mushrooms So shiitake mushrooms are put into these logs here Which they seal off with some wax Then they dunk them into water to basically force them to fruit out Actually the water is the aquaponics system that is right below them They actually dip these in, it's all in a pulley system which is really cool Here's another far away shot to get them in come out And then they start to fruit They were just in the beginning stages there, not yet fruiting This is another aquaponics system that's even taller You actually need a ladder to harvest those greens up the top It was interesting just to see that, to see how tall they get this I don't know if it needed to be that tall Here's another picture showing the Aquaponics set up And how tall it is in relation to people walking Once again I'm at the end of the tour This is kind of cool these are some LED lights And you can put them into a fluorescent fixture to use LEDs They're using the red and blue spectrum Which the plants absorb better than the white light This is once again showing more pots growing Lots and lots of pots and that's how they mainly Grown in the whole farm: in containers This place is run on volunteers and this is where all the Volunteers get their galoshes to stomp around in the mud at growing power These are the sprouts of some avocado seeds I don't know if you know that avocados aren't true to seed This is growing in the greenhouse, maybe they'll sprout, up maybe they won't These are some of the tropicals they are growing They have some sugar cane growing, some bananas growing And that was really cool for me Bananas growing, oh they also had a fig tree too That was just stuff they were playing around with, it was all experimental stuff Once again they are really into the aquaponics stuff you know I don't know if I'm that into it but they're really into it so that's really cool Hey anybody want to go fishing They had fishing reels and fishing nets You know they've got to harvest their fish after all So the next picture is once again the aquaponics set up And you know they had several of these setups throughout many of the greenhouses You know most of the greenhouses have the aquaponics And you know they seem to be really into that stuff And you know once again on the tilapia, they heat the water And if the power goes out out they have pumps I guess that'll continue to pump the water to keep it Circulating, to keep the fish alive But if the heaters go out I don't know what's up with that Here's some nasturtiums so I'm glad that they had some nasturtiums Growing hopefully they already harvesting the leaves and all the flowers This next picture here once again they just have more chars growing and other things in pots Here is a close-up of some of the things growing in the pots that are hanging The char looks like a mixed green salad And you know the tour, I'm bringing up the rear Had to get a picture of me in there So there is a picture of me I was really at Growing power Even though I only got still pictures, I would much rather do a video You know I should have got advanced permission At least I got permission to do this talking narrative Here is some watercress growing in water And watercress is actually very powerful and is a nutrition dense food It is rated 1000 on the ANDI list nutrients density scale Now once again the people loved seeing the fish getting fed In this one they are doing both tilapia and perch And so they are feeding the fish, these are the smaller fish in the big tank They put this big siding on you can see extended from the top Some of the fish would actually jump out so that wasn't too good They solved that by building this up maybe about a foot Here once again you know growing power just about growing food and lots of food growing Again containers containers containers This is one thing I really want to mention And you can grow in containers to look at all these containers are going lots I think this is a rubella They are growing lots of things in containers I mean everywhere has containers and that is so amazing They are even next to the aquaponics system There is more containers and containers are easier to grow in In my opinion than aquaponics because there's just so many other variables involved Once again hanging containers I love this shot One of these days my greenhouse is just going to be hanging containers Once I build some reinforcements to hang all the containers from Because the containers can get heavy So once again growing in containers All these greenhouses we have been in thus far have been heated greenhouses Mainly for heating the water, you know They have a solar hot water system which we will take a look at it later Plus also they use regular hot water heaters to heat the water Basically the water is heated and that actually releases the warmth into the air So it's better to heat the water than the air There is another aquaponics system really quick Oh, and they still even got problems with slugs Even in the Milwaukee winters there's still slugs in the greenhouse Thought that was funny Once again another aquaponics system showing the water trickling out It is a quite soothing sound as the water's trickling out and once again this is the watercress Now we're going outside, it gets a bit cold outside And they're showing us the storm water collection system The rain gutter collection, they're using the water off the Rain gutter and using that in their system And yes it was a cold day in Milwaukee let me tell you When I went out I was pretty dang chilly So here's showing their greenhouses and off the greenhouses They catch the water off the roofs of the greenhouses That then goes into this pipe and then goes into this Collection container that you are seeing here A long collection container and I hear they have basketballs on top To basically have that floating around in the winter times So that the waters doesn't get to form ice crystals Once again the main component of what they are doing at growing power The main livestock actually is the worms The red wigglers they have to make the compost And one of the big jobs they have for the volunteers Sifting compost I think they are using maybe a half inch mesh box Here to basically, you know screen out all of the compost Most of the volunteers I saw weren't doing too much growing They were doing a lot of compost sifting Let's see here this is once again another greenhouse Here where there is compost sifting going on Also they have the oyster mushrooms at the top In those hanging things They had also built a compost sifter So as well as that laundry one we saw out of a laundry dryer They built these I guess from scratch as compost sifters And there is a close up on it Basically they put the compost in this big cylinder And it spins and the cylinder basically is a wire mesh All the compost, you know, basically comes out the bottom And all that stuff and wood chips and the big stuff stays inside And this gets re-put back in the system So here is a picture of all of the compost coming out of the Screen on to the bottom and that's all that good Really rich vermi compost that you want to use Now this is a picture, the next picture here is a picture of an anaerobic digester This is basically, they are using this for testing and experimental purposes This is how they store at tools you know and I Encourage you to store all of your tools in an orderly fashion This is a nice setup basically they made hangers with pieces of wood to hold all of the tools up And this is just another picture that is small square shovels This is what it's labelled here and real easy, real nice To have all your tools stored here This one is called Odour Ban, eliminates odours and I think they say they're organic But not approved organic but I don't know, I have seen that the Odour Ban is you know, on the organic certified list So I thought that was interesting Going to go outside to see the coop houses, so these coop houses, Two of which are non-heated but the rest Are all heated some way or another Another outside shot and now it was freaking cold going In between the hooped houses and going out there and stuff. It was definitely a cool day, definitely a frosty day This is their big red barn I didn't really get to see in there but it looks like it's just used to store They have a lot of containers once again you never can have too many containers This is again just looking over some of the houses And how they are growing in all these hoop houses All the hoop houses have some kind of use in the wintertime Once again I want to encourage everybody, even if you have snow on the ground I'm going to show you in a little bit how you can grow in Unheated hoop houses in the winter time where you live So once again they have more worm compost and composting just out outside This is one of their bins here basically made with blocks And they put in mixture of compost said they use things like Brewer's waste from the beer industry I guess Milwaukee Is known for its beer I didn't really know that I'm not a beer drinker Some woodchips in there and food scraps As well also coffee grounds Now we are going to go into one of the hoop houses So this is a heated house and once again this heated house has more Aquaponics because they are really into their aquaponics One thing I have probably about the aquaponics is you know the power went out you know I guess they have some power for pumps But they didn't have a significant amount of PV on the roof You know it is really sustainable, I mean I wouldn't really say it is This heater is how they heat this hoop house It looks like that is a heated there and this was just one of the heaters in there It looks like they had that heater there and then they had another Heater furnace thing then I guess that it went out and then they had A small portable plug in going on I wasn't exactly sure what was Going on with that but I took a picture of it to show you you guys Alright so they also had goats here and the goats basically lived Without any protection, they had their pens and yeah they had Their houses with some burlap sacks covering the doors and stuff And here was a real cutie, look at that one So basically they are using the goats primarily for the milk, for the females And all the males actually get sent away to get harvested for their meat Which I thought was kind of sad but that is just the order of things I believe that we don't really need to be eating meat You know we can eat a lot of vegetables and still be healthy and need very little meat Once again there, there are turkeys, they weren't really farming turkeys as of yet Switch back to the goats, they are kind of like butting heads I thought that was kind of cool to watch the goats play, I mean goats have feelings too, just like our dogs and other animals that we may have Even turkeys, they have feelings too, you know they feel things just like us That is the turkeys, they weren't farming these for the Meat yet they were just kind of having them I guess for a farming experiment These are the hives, they were keeping bees which is very important They had your standard hives and they also had some hex hives which I guess are more like they are in nature so I guess that's pretty good This is some of our tour group walking outside and People were all bundled up, it was kind of funny We are going into, this one right here was growing all spinach On raised beds and also in containers So say this one was a hoop house that had no supplemental heating whatsoever It had no supplemental heating you could see Nick here next to a pile of wood chips with brewer's waste and compost And basically you know that compost pile was warm and hot And that is a hot compost pile and that gives off enough heat plus the Hoop house to keep it warm enough for this spinach Now they said this spinach this year they plan a bit late And if they planned it early it would have had much more growth spurts They did have leeks along the side you can see the leeks along the side And they talked about how you can make a hoop house You can make a jig out of wood, a jig is basically anything You make to basically bend the hoops so you can make them really inexpensively With straight bar instead of buying this curved bar Which then costs a lot more money Here they also had spinach in the raised bed, with the leeks going on They also had these little wire loops that they put this additional plastic over to keep it warm for the spinach Once again you know the main source of heat in this hoop house was the compost That is generating its own heat so it's really important To have an active compost pile Once again here there is all leeks growing and here is the plastic they Can put over these wire hoops to give the spinach some extra layers of protection This is after all the people filed out you can kind of see the door here And you can see on either side of the door they basically have also More compost piled up on the sides of the house So more thermal insulation also that compost stayed warm which would then Heat up, you know, and keep the greenhouse or the hoop house warmer inside Once again I am looking at the plastic that can be put over the spinach To keep it a little bit warmer if need be because that is really important You know this is an extra layer of protection or warmth you know Because it is really cold outside and here is the snow outside There is the door to enter the hoop house that we went into And you can see both sides have snow but underneath Both of those snowbanks had that compost up to the certain level This is a side shot showing you the hoop house with you know the compost keeping it warm Plus the snow on top of that, very important if you want to grow in the wintertime Here is just another overview shot now on the tour we got to go into the one growing the spinach and leeks They didn't take us into this here and I snuck in This one is growing kale so this is the one that I think you know they should Have had a lot more of these hoop houses that are unheated Because it is more sustainable and that's grown a lot of kale in there And once again this house that is growing the kale has the compost in one corner To keep the hoop house warmer I mean as long as you can keep it around 25 to 30� Your kale is going to grow and look at all that kale You can harvest one leaf off all those kale plants and I mean that's just regular curly kale You can grow you know, dino kale, Russian kale, white Siberian kale So many different kinds of kale you can grow and they are focusing on the green curly kale Even tree collards in that environment would probably do really well And so you know hey I'll send you some tree collards If you tell me you're going to do that you have to pay the price it costs me to ship them I will set you up with some cuttings at least Anyways a lot of the hoop houses are also use propane for the heat source Next we are going to get into the chickens Here are the chickens and you know I personally thought that there is a lot of chickens For a small hoop house that they had I mean you could just see them packed in there In any case we can move on They have basically some solar heating panels up on the roof And that is what we are looking at the hallway underneath the Solar heating panels between two of their greenhouses Here is another shot of the overhead Solar heating panels that actually warm the water To heat some of the water up and once again here is a another shot of the custom built Wood framing they used to support their solar panels up on the roof And then we're going to go into the store so into the little store There they sold their worm fertilizer and you know that stuff was Super expensive for the worm fertilizer I have seen it a lot less expensive but it is produced there on site In addition in the store they have a produce market Basket of all programs where they basically give you a Regular basket that feeds a family of four for a week For $16 of fresh fruits and vegetables so I really like that a lot And if you are a senior in the area you can get it for half price So that is actually truly amazing Now that is using all conventional growing stuff Quite a lot of it in fact is actually imported Here are their coolers and they have some imported produce But they also had some stuff they produced there on site Bo let's take a look at that next And here is what they grew on site you know they produce some of these greens Now I did buy some of these greens and they are quite expensive They are basically a dollar per ounce or $16 per pound So I don't know who can afford that I mean I did because I want to support them with some money But you know people in the inner city where They are teaching they can they really afford $16 per pound of produce I mean personally I don't think that's sustainable maybe an expensive High-class restaurant in the area and in Chicago can afford those but you know normal People can't so that was an issue I did have The other issue I did have was with the growing power was Man they got candy machines in their freaking store! What's up man? I mean Will's supposed to be promoting Healthy food systems and teaching people about health And you know they have candy machines and not only candy machines But soda machines too! Man come on! They should have juicers or something to juice up Those fresh greens and feed people some fresh green juices Instead of soda and you know Gatorades and whatever And there's a poster advertising and Mrs Obama you know next to the machine And I guess health in moderation So I just got done with the tour in their little store there And bought some produce that was grown here in the winter time In Milwaukee Wisconsin so what I got over here to show you guys What I got was this This is what was grown here they were growing some spinach here And I got some salad mix, all harvested 3-5 Sunflower micro greens and some zesty micro greens And these are all 4 ounce packages so these were four dollars each That's basically these were all 4 ounces so this was a pound of produce for $16 And you know that's how they make this financially viable here $16 a pound selling their produce to mostly restaurants Probably and business customers because you know Normal people can't afford buying $16 A pound of produce and normally I wouldn't either but I want to try and see the quality of their produce So once again hopefully you've enjoyed this episode Learning more about Growing Power This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com I will see you next time and keep on growing! And you can do it in the Winter!