The Most Powerful Soil Improver I ve Ever Used Organic Gardening Q A

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for you. In this episode we'll be answering your guys' questions. If you have a question that you would like me to answer, post it on my community tab or post tab on YouTube and it may appear in next month's Q&A. Today I'm actually sitting in my alley on one side of the compost with all my composters that are a mess. And on the other side I have this wall where I'm growing in 15-gallon pots. The bottom 15-gallon pot has basically wood chips and unbroken down compost and the top pot has my amazing organic soil mix and I'm growing basically 2 purple sweet potato plants in each one. As you guys can see, this wall is just vined up with just purple sweet potato plants. This is the plant that actually has purple leaves, so it's purple leaf sweet potato. You can see the vines here growing crazy. And then they basically make the orange tubers. So I'm growing them specifically for the leaves because the leaves are an edible leafy green. You can eat raw in salads or steam them up, cook them up, however you want. They are simply amazing and they thrive in 100 plus degree heat in the summer time. And these guys get full sun in the afternoon and that's why I'm here filming in the morning before I get the full sun for the video. Alright, so let's get into today's questions. First question is from Xavier Cruz, 4763. Most impactful soil improver you have seen, a type of crop, compost, extract, etc. Alright man, so this is very difficult because it really depends on your starting conditions. If your starting conditions are this, then you need this. That being said, if I had to say only one impactful soil improver I've ever seen, it would have to be Boogie Brew Compost Tea, right? Boogie Brew Compost Tea starts out with a base of worm castings as well as things like rock dust, humates, and other kind of additives because Josh goes over the top, right? When using the Boogie Brew Compost Tea, I've seen more gardens turn around and testimonials from a lot of you guys out there on how impactful just adding the Boogie Brew Compost Tea, even after you're already growing organically, guys. So I mean, yeah, me and Josh have argued over compost tea and rock dust, and I have to agree with him. The compost tea is one of the most impactful. I mean, the other one is probably pure protein, but I would say the compost tea because that really helps get the whole organic system and microbes moving in your garden. Alright, next question is from Tanya Kilbane, 7636. Will you sell seeds for all your exotic greens you featured, or do a long episode on all weird and exotic greens recipes too? Alright, alright Tanya, so I mean, here's another one of my exotic greens I grow, and you know, a lot of the exotic greens I grow actually aren't propagated from seed. Some of them are, but most of them are actually propagated by cuttings, right? So you just need to take cuttings of the plant. I'm not set up to sell cuttings. Maybe one day if I had a partner who wanted to do that, I'm glad to help her do that. I did have a partner in the past, before we broke up, she would sell all my exotic seeds, but we broke up, and now I don't have anybody doing that, and I just don't have the time to do that, although I do still have a collection of seeds that I use myself. So yeah, so I'd recommend places like Etsy and eBay, looking for good cuttings and seeds, and always look for good reviews. I will have another upcoming episode on all my weird greens and exotic greens I like to grow here that survive easily in the 100 plus degree weather. I always find new ones to grow and experiment and all this stuff. So yeah, and I love my greens, and I want to encourage you guys to eat greens every single day. My goal every day is to eat two pounds of greens. You know, maybe you guys won't hit that, but you know, easily you could hit one pound, right? Because you're growing them, they're the healthiest foods on the planet, and whether you want to juice them, vacuum blend them, even just steam them up, they are delicious. And they're going to improve your health. And they're so easy to grow. Think about it, man. You've got to grow a tomato or a pepper plant. I've got a bunch of pepper plants in front of me. One pepper plant is like three feet tall, it has a bunch of flowers on it, but it hasn't even made a pepper yet, right? Meanwhile, all these sweet potato vines, I mean, I'm sure there's some tubers underneath there. Every one of these greens is edible. So, I mean, it's just a much better, oh, and then when you go to buy greens, right, they're also very expensive. And they wilt fast. So, yeah. Greens for the win. All right, next question is from G. Jones, 5258, do you like a different mix for seed starting? So, I mean, to be honest with you guys, I don't really do a lot of seed starting myself. Me seed starting, actually I did some this morning. My lettuce bolted and it was dried up, I took it and I just shook out the lettuce all over my garden bed where I want the lettuce to come up next year. That's me seed starting. It's a rare day that I actually start seeds, like, in something. I mean, I did have a video where I do, like, a seed starting mix of, like, a coconut coir mixture or the jiffy seed starting mixture along with half worm castings, which works pretty good. But, honestly, I use whatever I got, really, right. I basically get, like, a potting soil, we use that sometimes. I'll have my own custom mix, then I'll throw together some perlite and some organic compost. Like, I'm really not picky, like, I'm just, like, nature will figure it out and half the time I just throw seeds out in my garden and they just come up. So, I don't really have to worry about, like, yeah, like, these guys here, I don't know if you guys can see, you guys probably can't see these guys, but, basically, I ate a papaya, there's a bunch of seeds, so I just basically dunk, I just put them in the front of the pot with all my sweet potatoes and I just buried them right in there with the soil. Like, I don't really do anything special, but then I buy a lot of my transplants and I transplant them or, yeah, that's what's up. Alright, the next question is from The Real Mel B. I'm growing in the desert just like you, John. A bit higher in altitude, I'm struggling with my trees, I have pistachios, nectarines, figs and pomegranate. How much do you water during the summer, drip or bubble, thanks in advance. Alright. So, Mel B, so, like, my fruit trees are actually not in the ground, which is actually, I don't recommend that. They're in 15-gallon pots, tall and long pots, because I don't have a lot of space and so, they're all in, I have basically all fig trees, I have, like, one goji berry in a pot and then I have, like, two kumquats and I think I have, like, maybe still one apple or something or nectarine alive. So, number one, I'll say you chose well, because pomegranates and figs should do pretty good, the pistachios should be pretty good, you know, tomato lady had one here and the nectarines should also do well in the desert, especially when they're small, they are going to struggle, right. So, especially in the desert, you need to get the stuff called IV organics, especially if they're small trees, you need to paint them, right, paint the stems so they don't burn. That'll cause them to really lose their life sooner rather than later, I have an upcoming episode on that, if I did not yet post it already. You want to prevent the sun scald at higher altitude, so, you know, that's one issue, just the sun beating on it, especially when they're younger, you may want to provide a little bit of shade over them and harden them off. My trees are in 15 gallon pots and they're just on a drip emitter, so I drip them, which is actually probably not what I would necessarily recommend, because it's on one of the lines that are along with my vegetable plants. So, I think my trees, for the most part, I like to water once a day and I like to water them very deep, so I put them on maybe for like, I don't know, five minutes or so, so like the dripper gets in there and it basically wets the whole thing and then they have the whole course of the day to dry out and then they get dripped again. So, we want to water our fruit trees deep, we don't want to water them shallow, I will say on some of my vegetable plants I do water them shallow, especially during the middle of the day so they can suck up the water and cool themselves down, but my fruit trees I like to water them deep, you know. This year I wasn't able to get by and mulch all my fruit trees, so I'm supposed to like clean up each pot and then like re-top it off and then mulch it again, I like to use the coconut, the cocoa husk mulch, which I haven't been able to do yet, so it's still on my list, so what I would say for you is I would say that you want to water deeply so that, you know, it depends where you live and your soil type too, I mean, I'm growing in compost, right, and I'm in pots above ground that are black, right, not optimal. So, you know, I would find out other people that grow fruit trees near you, like if there's master gardeners in your area or other people that are successful with fruit trees, like visit farms in your area and find out how much they water so you could use that as a gauge, because using me as a gauge I would say is not as helpful. The other thing I would recommend, like Jake Mace did down in Phoenix, I would say you want to mulch heavy, if your tree's on the ground you also want to mulch heavy around the trees to kind of keep the moisture in the soil so you don't have the evaporation loss, keep the ground a bit cooler for them as well. So that's pretty much what I'd tell you. I would say, oh, the other thing with trees is, you know, depending, you want to like put rings, like concentric rings around the trees to water like out so that the roots stretch out. You don't want to water just by the base. Maybe when they're young you could water by the base, but you want to basically have rings to go out, you know, so that the roots end up going kind of wide and not just stay in the center, so you have a more steady tree in the end. Alright, next question is from Xavier Cruz, 4763, can potatoes be planted and fruit with the heat of summer 90 degrees Fahrenheit? Alright, so Xavier, so what I'll say is, you can plant them, will you get a fruit is another question, right. If we think about it, where are standard traditional potatoes from, not sweet potatoes, but standard potatoes, they're from like the Andes, you know, or maybe you think of them from like Ireland or something, you know, where the weathers are not quite as hot as the 90s, maybe they get in the 80s, you know, so potatoes like it more mild, like plant them right after frost and they're kind of like the early harvest tuber crop, I'm growing them in my California garden, they should almost get to be ready to harvest right now, but yeah, 90 degrees, too hot for potatoes. That being said, I did have some potatoes that I bought to eat, some purple potatoes that were starting to sprout in the bag that I was storing them in, because I forgot about them, and I ended up planting them when it was 90 degrees, and they're growing fine, they're not in direct sun, because I want to keep them cool, so they're like in the shade, and then I water them every day, they get maybe a little bit of afternoon sun, that's about it, but otherwise they're shady, and then I'm just watering them. I don't know if they're going to produce a lot, but basically the potatoes were going bad, because they're kind of sprouted and getting all messed up, and the sprouts were like this long when I planted them, so I buried them really deep, and they're growing. That being said, why try to pull out your hair with potatoes when it's 90 degrees out, instead grow some other kind of potatoes that will grow really well, such as where I'm sitting today with my sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes love 90 degrees, they love 100 degrees, they will just go nuts, go crazy, and you know, I prefer sweet potatoes actually over regular potatoes anyways, they store a little bit better, they don't tend to sprout as quickly, and yeah, I always encourage you guys to grow the purple sweet potatoes as well. Alright, next question is from Blue Streaker, why is it when I bought a ripe Gak fruit it is tasteless? Well, Blue Streaker, when I bought Gak fruit also on several occasions, even harvested a fresh one from my friend's place, you know, compared to modern fruits that are hybridized for their sugar content or for their sweetness content, the Gak fruit definitely was a bland fruit. It's highly nutritious, and it's bland. That being said, I want you guys to realize when you guys are, you know, eating things from nature, from the wild, right, that are not improved versions like Gak fruit, these things are not going to be as sweet, you know, man has hybridized fruits to select the sweetest ones so that we always think, you know, fruits taste sweet when fruits in nature come in all different kinds of flavors, sweetnesses, nutrition, and otherwise. So yeah, that's what I'm going to tell you, I think as human beings we need to get more adapted to more wild fruits that are not that sweet, right, and stop eating all the grocery store stuff and grow your own and try to get some heirloom varieties, like one of my friends actually was going to cut down his blood red Indian peach, which is an heirloom variety peach, he's like, I'm going to cut this down John because it doesn't taste sweet. Like dude, that's like my favorite peach in the entire world, it has like such a flavor, and if you don't like how it's not sweet, and it's also deep red, and it's like going, and it's like so tolerant of the heat and the weather and stuff, right, I'm like just cut up a regular peach and eat like half and half, make a peach salad with blood Indian peaches and then the standard peaches, right. So I want you guys to have an appreciation for all different kinds of, you know, cultivars or varieties, especially more of the wild or heirloom varieties that may not be as sweet or as fun or desirable to eat as the modern day ones, all right. All right, Capone grows, what happened to TD? No more TD huge cannabis updates, all right, yeah, so TD is still happening, he's growing again this year, I've gotten many updates from him, that being said my channel was demonetized for the cannabis content, and I'm in the state of a limbo right now, I need to move all my cannabis content to another channel, and then once I get that channel up and going then I'll probably have some more TD updates on that channel, but this whole thing with YouTube it's just kind of gotten me down on YouTube in general, especially when I'm trying to teach you how to grow organic herbs, vegetables and fruits, including cannabis, all right, so yep. Next question is from Bob K. Yon 975, did the evil overlords at ScrewTube remonetize you? No, they did not, they will not remonetize me until I am literally forcibly removed, in my opinion, forcibly removed my cannabis content and moved it to another channel, I think this is a travesty, and that has not changed, if you guys want to support me, because YouTube has not been putting ads in my videos, which is good for you guys, because you guys don't have to watch ads, but also that means my income went down, and also that was like a way I felt rewarded for my hard work of making all my videos. You can join my Patreon at patreon.com slash growingyourgreens. All right, next question is from Mr. YoYoYo, oh my God, so happy to see one of your videos on my feed, been following you for years, and I live in Florida, hope all is well, hope you had a great rest of the year, which variety mango did you enjoy the most? All right, so I'll tell you that when I was in Florida, South Florida for mango season this year, the mango I enjoyed the most was the lemon zest mango, I heard that that can be problematic, because it gets some diseases, but the lemon zest is basically the child of a lemon meringue, which is still one of my favorite all-time mangoes, of course the other mango that I really liked when I was in South Florida was the PSM mango, Ping Sing Mun, basically it's one of the Indo-Chinese mangoes you can eat when they're green, or when they are ripe, it was amazing, if I didn't already, I have a video where I taste test all the mangoes, or a lot of the mangoes at Laura Farms, as well as you can check the link down below to my video that was made at my friend Paul Nissan's place, or Fruitful Trees, where we taste test 17 different types of mangoes in one sitting, and that day we got to, Paul's later in the evening, early in the day we were at Julie and Laura's, and we had like 25 different kinds of mangoes, I probably had close to 50 different kinds of mangoes that day, and I was just stuffed, it was not, it was fun, but not fun, all right. Next question is from Italian BC1, where do you recommend to live in Florida? All right, so I don't know that I've ever recommended to live actually in Florida, I personally, I considered living in Florida at various times, but then just like, I don't know, to me, Florida's like a fun place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there, I mean no offense to you guys that live in Florida, I'm just a West Coast guy, okay, so we'll just say that, I was born in California, raised on the West Coast, and Florida people, and people on the East Coast just have a little bit different mentality than those of us on the West Coast. That being said, some of the weather out there is amazing, although now the hurricane issues and all these things are crazy, but when I was looking at Florida, like where I would purchase if I was to purchase something, I would look in the Tampa area, right, that's the Treasure Coast, it's not the standard coast, you know, with Miami and Homestead where most people go that are wanting to buy, you know, grow fruit trees and stuff, it's the other coast, there's some amazing resources over in, you know, that area, Tampa and whatnot, including Echo, which is one of my favorite places to visit, the land is cheaper there, and you can pretty much grow similar things as the East Coast of Florida, it's just the West Coast of Florida. That being said, I personally chose to buy property in Puerto Rico where the land cost is even less, of course I also have a best friend that lives there, I like the weather more, it's not as extreme, although we also do get hurricanes, alright. Alright, next question is from Tom Sanfilippo6333, how is a melon and cucumber plant planted inches from each other going to work? Well, should work great provided you don't get any bugs, pests, or diseases, like I plant things super close, well my water spinach is probably planted like three inches apart but they're the same plant, but you know, I have plants, I have like, my cucumbers this year like came up and I planted my like tomatoes and peppers like three inches away from them, they're all growing in great harmony, so they're going to find their vines to grow, and you know, I would, you know, if they're growing so close, I would just make sure that one goes this direction, one goes that direction, so the vines could like, you know, not intermix, but they should do great, so I wouldn't even worry about it, like, all these planting spacings and stuff, man, just, like, I have some garden beds that are just planted so close it's insane, but like, you know, that's what I like, I like, because important for me is also having like a living mulch, so like growing things so close that the sun does not actually hit the ground, I know some people will say, that's not a good thing to do, John, don't plant things so close, you can't get enough air flow, that would mean more pests and disease, you know, so yeah, ultimately I would like to prefer to grow, you know, those kinds of plants at least, you know, six to twelve inches apart, but you know, that's what you got, and gardening is an experiment, it's a big experiment, I mean, it's going to like work great for you, you do it next year, you plant them a foot apart, they don't do as good, right, you never know what's going to happen until you try it, so I just say have fun gardening. Alright next question from Nicole Lam, W4D, water spinach grows here in Las Vegas, what variety does that? Alright, so, you know, I'm familiar with, like, two water spinach, there's a water spinach that kind of has lighter green leaves, that grows, like, in water, and the kind that can grow in soil, I grow the kind that grows in soil here, and it does great here in Las Vegas, the ones this year I bought actually at a farmer's market in California, put them in a vase and rooted them, and then planted them out, but I've also bought them at the local Asian markets, including 168 market here, but actually the market that has the cheapest water spinach in town is H Mart, where you could buy just the water spinach to eat, but then, you know, strip off all the leaves except a few on the top, and put them in a vase, they should grow roots, and then you could plant them in your garden, links down below to my video on that, water spinach does great, Ipomoea aquatica is the water spinach I grow, and then we have the Ipomoea baptis, which is closely related, the sweet potatoes, which you could also, of course, eat the leaves of as well, these ones both love the heat. Alright, we're down to the last question from Mr. Chandrana, is it a bad idea to use containers in the desert? Is it bad to use mulch with containers, particularly using moss for strawberries? Is the front yard south-facing or east-facing, no suncloth, how do? I'm new to gardening, and have similar climate to this, had three strawberry plants, a potato and a sweet potato, all died but the sweet potato, that's doing good, but I don't know why the rest failed. Alright, so I don't know specifically what desert you live in, but, you know, number one, containers in the desert, so containers in the desert are not my first choice, number one, the desert is a very dry place, also the sun is very hot in the desert, the sun hits the containers, which are normally black, then it basically dries out the containers more fast, also because the desert is so arid, the water evaporates out of the containers more quickly, so if you are growing in containers, it makes growing that much harder, I tend to grow things in containers that are easy to grow, root trees are easier to grow, because they don't mind a little bit of water loss, or when they're dry a little bit, especially things like big trees that I'm growing. Sweet potatoes also, that's a very easier crop to grow in the desert, although if they don't get enough water, they will wilt out as well, but, you know, I wouldn't grow other things in the containers. So is it a bad idea to use containers? I would say it's not the best idea, you can do it, you're just going to have to work a little bit harder, so for that reason I would recommend building raised beds that are attached to the ground, that have a lot more surface area, can hold a lot more water, so you'll be more successful. Is it bad to use mulch with containers? So actually mulch in containers is a really good idea, at present time my mulch wore down, so I need to re-mulch them, there's pros and cons to mulch, mulch can help evaporation loss, but also mulch can provide a good breeding ground for bugs and insects, you know, usually snails like to hide in mulch, like these little like bugs that basically will like eat things and they like to live and eat the mulch as well as your baby plant stems, so it's like, it's a pro and a con, so you have to figure out, you know, if it's a pro or a con for you, generally mulch can help with evaporation loss off the top, but you're still getting evaporation loss off the sides of your containers. And then let's see, particularly using moss for strawberries, so like I don't really grow strawberries myself, like it's just easier to buy them, they don't really produce a lot, and you know, I don't want to waste the space, maybe I've got like acreage, I would mess around with strawberries, but in a small space environment, I just don't find it that productive of a plant, I'd rather grow something like raspberries, which I do grow, or blackberries, you know, the thornless ones, you know, I find to be much more productive plants that are less maintenance than strawberries, and easier to grow personally. Is the front yard south facing or east facing, well you'd have to check out where the sun comes up and where it goes down in your yard, so I don't know, no sun cloth, so like I don't use a shade cloth in my desert for the crops I grow, I will say that for some crops, shade cloth may improve the growth of some of your crops, if you're trying to grow crops that aren't going to do well in the desert, right, that like a little bit cooler, like strawberries would probably benefit from some shade cloth instead of not having shade cloth, if that's very important to you, like my goal is to not have to use shade cloth and to find the plants that are going to do well without it, because I don't want to be bothered with shade cloth, tearing up, sending all these stupid pieces of plastic into my garden, taking it down, taking it off, and all these things, right, it's too much hassle for me personally. So yeah, so and then I could say that if your strawberry plants didn't make it, your potato plant didn't make it, but your sweet potato did, focus on what you are successful with, grow more sweet potatoes, get different varieties of sweet potatoes and grow them, so you could feel yes, I'm growing them, I'm successful, once you do that for a couple of years, then go and try potatoes, maybe you didn't plant the potatoes at the right time, potatoes like it in the cool season, you want to plant it right after the first frost and then hopefully get your harvest in before it gets too hot, whereas sweet potatoes, you want to plant, you know, you want to probably wait a little bit, maybe a month after your last frost, because they don't like it when it's too cold, right. And then these things grow like gangbusters, they're insane. So I would encourage you to focus on plants that other farmers and other gardeners in your area grow, check out local community gardening groups, or if you have a master gardener near you, ask them for suggestions, especially if you're new, to find out the techniques and proven strategies and cultivars that you can grow in your specific climate zone, because I'm not an expert in every single climate, although I definitely am an expert growing here in the desert of Las Vegas, and getting to learn more about how to grow in the tropics, as well as a pretty good gardener in Northern California, where things are just a lot easier to grow. I really hope you guys enjoyed this episode today, answering your guys' questions, if you did, please be sure to give this video a big thumbs up, also more importantly, share this with other gardeners that can benefit from the answers that I've shared with you guys today. Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss my new and upcoming episodes every 5-7 days, you'll know where I'll show up, what new farm I'll be stopping at to share with you guys all the insights that they can share, or what new garden knowledge bombs I'll be dropping on you from my backyard garden here in the desert. Finally, be sure to check out past episodes, past episodes are a wealth of knowledge, over 700 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to teach you guys all about how to grow your own food. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, I'll see you next time, and until then, remember, keep on growing.