Senior Couple Grows All The Food They Need from Empty Lot in 8 Months

Aloha. This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today I have another exciting episode for you. We're coming at you, once again, from Hawaii here on the big island outside Hilo and I'm here for a very special time today, to show you guys a cool garden that's happening right behind me. So, what this is is this is a 1.5 acre property and the gardeners here that are in their 50's and 60's took possession of this abut only 8 months ago, and within 6 months, they were growing enough food to sustain themselves on. So, you guys can do it to, you know. Every summer, every spring, when the weather warms up, normally you got at least 6 months of spring like conditions, you can plant some stuff and be eating out of your own garden by the end of this season. Here in beautiful Hawaii, they have yearlong spring/summer conditions so it never gets cold. So, there's some amazing crops they can grow here year-round. Now, they've been gardening for many years and they used to be vegetables gardeners and now they're getting a bit more older and they don't want to actually, you know, do all the work that vegetables gardening takes up. They want to grow enough vegetables that they can eat themselves, but not for market, so what they're doing instead is actually putting in fruit tress and keeping them dwarfed and small so that they're easily harvestable, and they have planted so many different fruit trees, I just got whole tour, and I'll share with you guys a few things. So, the first thing they did probably was put up the outside wall that looks very nice, and in the little way there, there's a little tea tree and some other edible plants planted in the ground, but you might not ever know what it is. So, let me go ahead and show you guys that 'cause that is actually one of their sustaining food sources at this time that produces relatively quick and can provide you with a lot of calories. Alright, so, this is part of the entryway off to one side of the drive and they got a little tea plant and some varieties of tea, and this is not the standard tea that you drink. This is a different kind of tree plant. They are edible, but they have another use for the tea plants here, actually. They feed the leaves to the chickens. So, you know, they're working on having a 100% self-sustainable farm, whether they're growing their food for the animals, the animals are making the poop and then they're actually suing the poop to grow more food for themselves. Totally ingenious, and more people should totally do it, but in nay case, behind me you see a nice beautiful ornamentalish looking plant. I mean, it's kind of like green with purple stems. Let me show you guys this. This stuff's really cool. It's called the sweet potato vine. So, underneath the ground, you got the sweet potatoes that you can cook that are carbohydrate rich and also very anti-oxidant rich. So, these are sweet potatoes, not your standard white potatoes or russets or anything like that. It's a different kind, different variety that I like actually a lot more. In addition, many cultures do actually use the sweet potato greens and cook them up and eat them and when I was last in Houston, actually, I found a really cool variety of sweet potato that doesn't actually make the tubers, but it's grown specifically for the greens. So, sweet potato's definitely one of their sustaining food, and well show a nice large patch in just a little bit. Anyways, let's go ahead and enter this farm and show you guys around, some of the areas of the farm and share with you guys some of the ways that they're growing, but before we do that what I want to show you first is actually the soil on the land here, and you guys are going to be amazed that they're actually growing in this concrete-like substance. Alright, so, what we're looking at now is how most of the ground here actually looks. It looks like this. Like, 'John, what is that? Asphalt?' Don't make fun of the 'phault 'cause you might get called an ***. Anyways, no, this is not asphalt, man. This is like real earth right here. This is not a man-made substance. This is nature-made substance. It's actually dried lava called apahoyhoy. Say that 5 times. It's kind of a funny word. Apahoyhoy. If you have kids they're going to run around now saying apahoyhoy, but that's a smooth kind of lava and it dries kind of looking this, man. It's almost like really artistic. I'd love to actually just take this off in sheet and like hang this on my wall. It'd be really cool, but in any case, this is hat the ground looks like. You're literally, and you just can't plant on this stuff. I mean, many of you guys might be having and asphalt lot you wan tot grow off of and it's kind of like this. At least you could jackhammer the asphalt. This stuff goes pretty deep, man, because what happens is the volcano blew, the lava came and it flowed towards the ocean and it dried. It just dried like this. Of course, in the lava, there was cracks when it formed and whatnot and, you know, dirt and soil gets in the cracks and then plants grow up it. So, yea, you kind of dig out some of these cracks and start planting in there, but the problem arises is that because this stuff is black, right? And it gets like 80 degrees in days in Hawaii, it's beautiful weather, don't be too jealous of me. I know many of you guys are still in the snow. It gets really hot, actually. Because this stuff if black, it absorbs the heat and that heat transfers into the cracks and it evaporates the moisture really fast in anything in there. The roots can literally fry if it's not kept cool enough. So, you know, some of the weeds and things that're coming up are very hardy plants, but other kinds of vegetables plants might not make it. So, let me go ahead and show you guys what they're doing so that it enables them to grow over this apahoyhoy. Alright, right now my butt is sitting on some nice apahoyhoy. Good things it's a cool day today, otherwise my butt would be on fire. I don't like that. Anyways, so we're sitting here and as you guys can see, we got the apahoyhoy right here, and as you guys can see behind me there's big pile of something, and I know you guys that are long-term viewers know what that stuff is. Woodchips and mulch, baby. This is what it takes to convert, you know, lava rock or an asphalt, you know, lot or a concrete sidewalk area or your driveway, if you want to grow over it, you need to bring in the woodchips and the mulch, and what they do literally is kind of like this is the lava rock. Underneath that pile, you know, that's about, I don't know, 2.5 feet tall, is the lava rock, and they bring on the mulch and luckily because I'm in this climate it's nice and rainy and wet and moist, but you also get the blaring sun every day. I mean, this is the tropics. This is paradise, and what happens is all that mulch actually breaks down fairly quickly and it turns into that black gold, the soil that they're growing in. So, they actually get truckloads and truckloads of the mulch dumped on their property and slowly but surely they're spreading it over all the 1/5 acres to make their ground fertile, because you literally can't grow on top of apahoyhoy. So, yes. So, it really is taking mulch. So, you know, I've been to places, my friends in Portland, Oregon, that are using the woodchips, they're using it here, and I believe it can definitely work for you, you know, in the right conditions. So, I think it's amazing and great what they're doing. Let me go ahead and show you guys a few plants that's planted in a mulch pile like this. So, as you guys can see, they got some bananas planted in a fairly fresh mulch pile. Some things, they'll plant in a pretty much straight, fresh mulch pile that has not been sitting for so long. I normally actually do not recommend this. You can do this with certain crops, however. You know, most of the time, for best results and the heist level of success, I recommend getting the woodchips or the mulch dumped and letting it break down for a while in to that black gold into the soil before you plant in it, but what they're doing here is working, as it look lie. They have some really healthy looking banana plants, or banana, some people call it a tree, but it's an herb plant. It's an herb versus a tree because it doesn't actually have the wood like a regular tree would, and they're doing really great. In addition, in the front of the lot, they actually have a ginger, the edible ginger planted in a similar fashion, you know, and those 2 do just fine. Other than that, what they do is they basically let this stuff break down and mature. They also actually add some additional nutrition to it. So, let me go ahead and show you where they get they're additional nutrition for the mulch piles from. So, this is where the additional nutrition comes from, her eon the property. They have, as you guys can see behind me, chickens. Don't be a chicken. Raise some chickens! So, they have chickens, not only for the meat, and actually as I was talking to them, they were telling me that actually the meat is actually much more valuable to them not to just kill and eat because then they're gone, but to raise them for the eggs, but also raise them for the manure to get organic matter and bring organic matter and convert, you know, some of the things on property like the leaves and these are free-range chickens. So, they just come out and find bugs and eat stuff and eat just some of the leaves on the property of the wild weeds growing, into useful fertilizer that they can then enrich their beds with. Now, the chicken fertilizer is what's called the hot fertilizer and, in my opinion, should be composted before you use it and it makes a great addition to your compost pile, but if you're inpatient like I am, there's another really good maneuver you can use to just literally plant directly in, although if you wanted, although I would personally still compost it, and let me go ahead and show you guys, you know, how that's stuff is made. So, the other resources they have are rabbits. I saw a stinkin' rabbit, and they have 2 little bunnies here and they have a whole bunch of different cages here, and, once again, they feed the rabbits the tea leaves, for example, and then the rabbits make their little poop balls out of the leaves, basically, and the rabbits absorb what they need and then they poop and they set this up actually with pallets, so they have little a fencing made out of pallets here to keep the animals in and plus they have it sitting on pallets above the ground. What they'll do is they'll remove that cage and remove the pallet, hey little guy, and then they'll be able to actually scoop up all the rabbit poop. They might do this every couple weeks, and I guess lately they just got like one big 55-gallon drum of rabbit poop. So, that's a lot of fertilizer. SO, once again, you know, instead of eating the rabbits, 'cause you could eat one rabbit and maybe have a meal or maybe 2, they're using the rabbit poop as a nutrient to cycle back into their system to feed they're coffee plants, to feed they're trees, to feed they're vegetables, so that they could eat and actually grow more food for the rabbits here. So, I think that's a much better use of the resources than, you know, eating your rabbits and having them disappear, especially when you're just starting your flock. So, let's get the flock out of here. Alright, here's a nice area that we're looking at here. It's pretty developed area. I know their living structure that you guys can see has, you know, thing like coconut palms right there in front of me. In addition, they have a lot of things in containers, which we'll touch on in a minute, but they also have all their fruit trees planted in this area including actually a lot of coffee. So, they're literally growing their own coffee. Many of you guys can do that and as you guys know, Hawaiian coffee is famous coffee. No, I'm not from the east coast. I'm a California guy that says coffee, but anyways, they got a lot of coffee plants here in some unique varieties that actually I haven't heard of before. Let's see, they also have a couple few more plants, including tropical apricots that's actually producing right now. These trees are pretty young still, but they're just starting to produce. I saw like an orange over there and they got some pineapple plants back there and I saw ripe pineapple over there, which maybe I'll want to show in a minute, and let's check out that tropical apricot next, man. It's totally cool. Alright, so here's that tropical apricot tree that I've been talking about. Now, they're keeping these guys pruned down low, like 5 feet tall, and allowing them to branch out. So, because they have and acre and half, they have space to plant and they're planting their trees a little but farther apart than normal because they want to keep them low and spread out instead of high and tall like many orchards actually would and as you guys can see here's some of the nice delicious tropical apricots, still ripening up. If you try to eat them right now, not going to taste good, so you need to let them full ripen up. There's some here. I mean, they're pretty much all over this tree and this tree as only planted like 8 months ago. So, that grows really fast here with the sun and plentiful water. Shh, don't tell anybody. They got a pot garden here. Not that kind of pot, you pot heads! They got things in pot growing in a garden. So, once again, because their soil is like the lava rock, they can't grow in the ground, right? Very simple and easy to get some pots and grow them in and they got, you know, a lot of plants in pots. Not only to have them in pots now to let them, you know, grow and full mature in the pots, but as they figured out where they're going to be planting different things, they're gin got take these guys and actually put them in the ground to continue their life cycle and be more productive than just staying in a pot your whole life, and I don't want you guys just being in a pot your whole life either. Alright, I'm so glad I get to share this plant with you. This is a rare one that many of you guys may not know about it if you watch my other episodes. If you've been on my show recently in Hawaii, you've learned about this, but I'm actually getting to show you guys what it looks like in real life. This is actually called the miracle berry. It's kind of bush, not quite a tree. I've seen some really old 25 year old miracle berry bushes, and they kind of look like a tree but they're still kind of a bush 'cause they don't get really tall, but this produces these little red berries here and these berries are kind of trippy, and it's not like going to be like a viable food source, but it is good for some party fun, actually. So, what you do is you take one of these miracle berries, you eat it, chew it on up, and pretty much has a nondescript flavor, and then what you can do is you can go over to your lemon tree that's producing abundant lemons, right? And you're going to eat your lemons, you're like, 'oh, they're so sour,' but you come over and eat one of these first and then eat one of your lemons, it tastes like the sweetest lemonade ever. It kind of messes with your taste buds. So, definitely a good thing to plant by your lemon tree and impress visitors and guess by saying, 'here, try one of these. Oh, try these lemons,' and everyone's going to walk away from your property thinking, 'man, they grew the best lemons I ever tasted.' Alright, so where we're sitting now is actually one of the major cow resources for the couple that lives here. We're sitting on basically the lava rock and on top of that they piled up the mulch that was added in with some of that manures, it broke down, they have a nice fertile soil here, and they planted all the sweet potato vine, as you guys can see. I mean, this whole area is just encompassed. This makes and excellent ground cover, but also a really excellent food source. So, what they'll do is they'll come over to this area, and they'll just kind of dig this guy up and every day they can come out and they'll find little sweet potatoes that they can eat for dinner. They can cook them on up. Also, they have dogs on the property. They could cook these up for the dogs so they don't have to buy fog food, 'cause actually dogs love sweet potatoes, and you can mix it in with some of the greens for the dogs. Dogs love greens and sweet potatoes and its good calorie source for them as well, especially if you're trying to get away form things like rice and grain and stuff like that. I definitely like sweet potatoes a lot more, but it grows like a weed here in Hawaii. If you live in Hawaii and have some extra space, grow some sweet potatoes. It'll fill in, look really lush, like an ornamental, I mean, look at that, it looks really pretty, but also provide you with hidden food under the ground, should you need it. Alright, guys. It wouldn't fly without seeing some Hawaiian pineapples. As you guys can see here, here's a little pineapple starting to form here, and they have a lot of different pineapple plants spread throughout the property. I mean, it takes like a year and half for pineapple to fully mature and develop, so if you plant like one pineapple every month, like a plant every month, in a year and half you'll have one pineapple to harvest every month. So, if it was me, I'd probably plant like 5 pineapples plants or 1 pineapple plant every week and then a year and a half later, I'll have a continual harvest to one pineapple every single week and get the party with some pineapple, and as you guys can see, what happens is it grows out of this plant here in the middle, and then it makes the little fruit, and then it makes the little top here. So, once the pineapple is done, you can just spin off the top, take some bottom leaves off, and let it dry out first, and then stick it back in the ground, and then this'll actually grow into a new plant and make it another pineapple, yet another never-ending sources of food here on the big island. So, as you guys can see over in this area, they have a fenced off area, and this is their very delicate and fragile vegetables garden. It's actually kind of fenced off 'cause they're chickens are free reign and if they didn't have the fences, the chickens would get in there and eat everything because guess what? A vegetables garden to chickens is like being Las Vegas at one of those buffet grommet things where you can just all you can eat, right? They get bored of all the field stuff. They want some of the grommet greens, and these are the greens that I believe we should eat as well, and so they got all these fenced off and protected form the chickens and other creatures in the area. So, they're growing a variety of things, once again, in the pots, because some of the land, as I'm looking at it, is just lava rock, so they have a lot of things growing in pots, including some plants starch that will soon actually go in the ground. I mean, they got some amazing plants for this place. I took a tour with one of the gardeners here, and they're going to make a fresh water pond, a salt water pond, and use the rabbit poop to feed the fish and then use the fish poop and fish emulsion to feed the plants and they're going to basically be self-sustaining one day. So, I really look forward in the future to come back and update you guys on how this place is going and also see how it's going myself 'cause I'm actually quite excited about it. So, the last thing I want to share with you guys is one of those no-brainer food that if you live in Hawaii, you should definitely plant. What they got planted is right behind me and I know you're saying, 'John, John, I know what it is!' Well, shout it out so everyone in your house and hear you. Bananas. We love bananas. They got bananas planted. They're an amazing food source. You can use them when there green as a starch source if you like cook them up. They often cook plantains in many different cultures, although I prefer and encourage you guys to harvest all your bananas ripe. So, what you're going to do is you're going to wait until the bananas tree, 'cause it's not really a tree, grows up, then it makes a flower, then it makes a fruit, and then what's going to happen is the fruit slowly is going to start to turn yellow. As soon as like one bananas turns yellow, then you're going to cut the rack off, put it in a protected environment like a screen room so that the fruit flies can't get in there, and then it's going to slowly ripen up. It's during this slow ripening process when the bananas emit their own ethylene gas that then the full flavor and full sweetness comes out in the bananas, and I know some of you guys are thinking, 'John, but I've tasted the bananas at the store. They taste horrible.' Well, that's 'cause imported bananas for many of you guys that live on the mainland are picked far too green, and then they're ethylene gassed. So, they're artificially ripened up, they're picked to early, they're artificially ripened up, and then they peak too quickly so that all of those complex flavors and the high levels of sugar do not develop. So, if you want some real bananas, you got to come to Hawaii and get some slowly ripened tree ripened bananas and actually they have a number of varieties, over a half dozen varieties here. So, let me tell you, my meal today for lunch was meal full of exotic heirloom different varieties of bananas that had a flavor like no there, I mean, the bananas that I was just tasting today kind of taste between bananas and berries, and this is just one little small bananas. They're so good. Well, the sun's going down, I need to get back home and eat my dinner tonight. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode and it really shares with you guys what is truly possible. I mean the older couple that moved in here moved in about 8 months ago. Slowly, but with they're hands, not even any heavy equipment yet, building this property, growing they're own food, have enough food to eat off of each and every day in just, you know, the small area that they have worked. I can't wait until they get the other acre and half developed into a full on food forest with salt water, freshwater pond and all these systems in place, vertical gardening systems to grow an immense amount of food. They'll even have extra to sell at farmers market and hopefully they'll be some of the healthiest people around 'cause they'll be eating some of the healthiest greens off they're land, and greens are especially important. Once again, my show's called growing your greens and I want to encourage you guys to grow your greens and eat them each and every day. Once again, my name is John Kohler saying aloha from Hawaii. We'll see you next time, and remember, keep on growing. Aloha. This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. I have another exciting episode for you today and today I'm on a field trip and this will be a fun on at that. I'm all the way here on-