- We all know TikTok has taken off.
In fact, Epic Gardening's over on TikTok.
We're almost at 2 million followers over there.
So check us out if you want,
but also check out some of these crazy videos.
I see them scrolling on my feed all the time.
They get sent to me.
Let's take a look at some of these viral TikToks
and see if we can explain what's going
on from a gardener's perspective.
First up, we have this one here
where it looks like this sort of cloth fabric is being spun
around a ton and then magically,
you have these beautifully cut baby greens coming
out the other side.
This is actually completely legit.
What this is is a quick cut greens harvester.
It's actually a really popular market gardening tool
that makes use of really simple implements.
So they engineered it
with just a simple hand drill that goes in the side
and then it spins a little crank
and that cranks this little cloth apparatus
that brushes the baby greens into the cutting implement,
and then as you can see on the other side,
you just get a really nice baby green
that you can take to the farmer's market
or to the restaurants.
And then they use a green's bubbler here
to wash all of the debris off.
A lot of the times,
that's just maybe some air stones in a sink.
And then the final section here,
what they'll do is they'll use a spinner.
A lot of my friends in the market gardening movement
actually take a laundry machine
and they convert it into something
that they can throw the greens in
and it spins all the water off,
like just a huge salad spinner.
So this is a very popular and effective way
to cut a lot of baby greens
at once using the quick cut greens harvester.
Next up we have what looks
like an other worldly situation here.
This guy is cutting mangoes,
it basically looks like mango heaven.
And he sort of has this weird looking mango.
It's huge.
He's got this big knife
and he cuts straight through the middle, which is weird
cause mangoes have a big seed.
It looks like this has no seed at all.
In fact, it does have a seed.
It's just that he very strategically cut the side
that didn't, making it look like it was a full seedless half
but in fact, it is a type of mango called the Mahachanok.
It is a specific cultivar grown in Thailand.
It's very, very big and it's a hybrid cultivar.
So as you can see,
they sort of have maximized the mango production
in this area of Thailand.
It's very popular.
And with that little ladle,
I'm sure that tastes absolutely delicious
because mango is, by far,
one of my favorite tropical fruits.
Here we have a dragon fruit farm
that it looks like they're sort of pumping swampy water
up right next to the farm.
Now this kind of seems weird,
but it's actually very intelligent.
This is an ancient technique,
I believe used by the Aztecs,
called Chinampas which is basically trench agriculture
or trench irrigated agriculture.
So what they'll do is they will take a bunch of trenches.
So they'll dig a trench, they'll have a hill, trench, hill
and they'll fill those up with water.
And what happens is a water pond is sort
of a natural accumulator of matter and organic matter,
which will then rot and be decomposed
and that water ends up being pretty nutrient rich.
And so what they're doing here is they're just taking a pump
and pumping up that sort of silty sludge,
which is a mixture of water
and soil right up next to the dragon fruit.
And if you look what's happening,
it's actually smothering that low lying sort of grass
or cover crop that's right next to the dragon fruit
which is likely to kill it off
or it may, over time, kill it off
which breaks that down
and eventually, it makes it back into the trench
for this sort of recycling system.
So it's a really clever way to irrigate a really long line
of crops like this.
And I have to say for dragon fruit, it seems very effective.
What do we have here?
We have another one of my favorite crops: potatoes.
This is just a very clever way to plant potatoes.
It looks like there's two people on this.
It seems like it's powered by some sort of motor
but basically,
all that they're doing is they are having the potatoes run
through a conveyor that drops them at a specific spacing.
It looks like probably about six inches, maybe a foot or so.
And then this implement in the front will open it up.
So that's the part you can't see.
It's where the guy in the front is kind
of driving that thing forward.
It opens the soil up.
The potato will drop right down in the middle.
And then the thing you can see
on the back is covering it back up.
So this is just a transplanter.
It looks like it's a two-man potato transplanter,
which I have to say, I kinda want.
Next up, we have a loofah cube.
It's kind of weird, but you guys know, I love loofah gourds.
I've grown them multiple times here at my house.
Certainly not this many, but last year we had,
I don't know, about a dozen or so.
So it was a pretty good harvest.
Now what you're seeing here is the aftermath
of the loofah grow.
So this is all the interior fiber of the loofah.
These ones have been compressed and dried
and it looks like they're just rehydrating these perhaps
to go ahead and process them up.
Sometimes you will mix them in a bar of soap
so you have a nice abrasive while you're cleaning yourself.
Or sometimes you're just going to store them
in a compressed manner, then rehydrate them for sale later.
So what we have on this one here is
just a really clever way to transplant
without breaking your back.
I mean, these farmers here are probably farmers
who have farmed for quite some time.
And I think anything you can do,
ergonomically speaking, is going to preserve your body
cause gardening does take a toll on the body
and this is really more farming than gardening.
So what you have here is just a tool
that makes a depression in the soil.
It looks like they've filled it up with water already,
maybe to just pre-irrigate it.
And then they're dropping it down the tube
and then lifting up
and at the same time kind of releasing that handle
so the soil will then fall around it.
Maybe that's also why the water's in there
so it helps fill that soil right back around it.
But it just looks like a really clever way to transplant.
You don't have to do any bending over.
The only real work here is just the slamming action
of getting it down into the soil
and just plopping that seedling right in.
So this one here
or variance of this one have been making it all
over the place on the internet, especially on TikTok.
And this I guess is what you call the chalky orange
that is way too juicy for its own good.
So already, you can see this orange has this sort
of white film on it
and that it's the juiciest orange you will ever see.
The juice just keeps pouring out of it.
Now the first thing I'll say is
what is that white chalky stuff?
Well, it turns out it's actually a calcium carbonate spray.
You can actually see it on the leaves as well.
And it's a protectant against sun scald for these oranges.
If you take a look at the actual orange itself,
the skin is very, very thin.
There's not a lot of rind
and that's just a particular feature
of this variety of orange.
It needs a little more protection
than its own rind is even giving it.
A lot of other varieties have a rind
that's maybe a quarter of an inch thick.
It's perfectly fine.
So that's a protectant.
It also helps with some pest and disease issues.
And then what you have on the inside.
It looks like a seedless hybrid orange cultivar
that has been bred clearly for its juice.
So certainly one of the more striking things you'll see
on TikTok right now as far as gardening goes.
I don't know about you, but I definitely want a pint
of that orange juice.
There are a ton of viral, crazy hacks out there.
You guys know we've done a series on this,
so I encourage you to watch our gardeners react series
and please, drop down
in the comments the next videos you want us to react to
because it is so fun looking
at all the different, creative ways
that people grow around the world
and seeing if they are fact or fiction.
Until next time, good luck in the garden,
and keep on growing.