Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com ! I have another exciting episode for you,
coming at you from my winter garden.
We’re well into December here, and I’m planting stuff for my winter garden now.
I mean winter starts in just a few days or maybe it’s already winter by the time you
guys are seeing this episode.
But I’m going to be planting out my winter garden now.
And, you know, I just recently I have been traveling a bunch and I saw people, you know,
all over the place.
And I saw a guy at the farmers market yesterday and he’s like John I grew my first garden
this year because of you, and all this stuff.
And I’m like well what are you growing now?
He’s like oh I’ve taken the winter off, can’t grow in the winter.
I’m like no, this is the best time to plant stuff man.
You get less pests pressures and stuff because it’s so cold.
Like you freeze outside, guess what?
So do the bugs.
This is the best time to grow.
Now you can’t grow the cool summer stuff, peppers, you know, cucumbers, tomatoes, but
you could grow the leafy greens.
And after all my channel is called Growing Your Greens.
And it’s called Growing Your Greens for a reason.
Because I want you guys to eat your leafy green vegetables.
They are probably one of the most important foods on the entire planet.
Most Americans are simply just not eating enough of it.
The per capita consumption of kale is like how much kale a person eats in a whole year.
It’s like 6 ounces, you know.
My goal is to eat 2 pounds every day of greens.
Now I don’t always do that, you know, a lot of days I hit 1 pound.
But none the less, have a goal and strive to reach it.
Eat more greens and you’re currently growing.
And besides just planting all these guys out, which I’m not even going to tell you guys
what they are yet.
I’m going to come back at that.
You know, because if you got to buy plants starts, its a hassle.
But I want to share with you guys some seeds that you could literally just throw out in
your garden, in your yard, and they’ll grow in the winter time.
Because that’s what’s happening here.
I’ve grown crops in the past and they’ve reseeded and they’re coming up on their
own without me having to have intervention and bring in plant starts.
So I could literally have free food that I don't have to do nothing for.
And this to me is like the smartest kind of foods to grow.
So let me go ahead and give you guys a tour of my garden, what’s kind of coming up,
sprouting in seedling form right now even in December, you know.
And show you guys, so if you live like California and a climate where it doesn’t like get
snow, all these things will work.
Now even if you guys, but John I live in the snow man I can’t grow stuff.
No, you can grow stuff.
Inside you could grow sprouts and micrograms and outside if you get like a hoop house,
double hoop house, you could grow, you know, more cold tolerant crops like cold crops,
you know, leeks and broccoli and kale and cabbage.
These things will grow great in a hoop house even if it’s snowing outside . And I have
videos on how to do that specifically.
But anyways, I’m going to give you guys a tour of what I grow here in my garden right
now.
Alright, so you guys could see I got lettuce and everything planted all over here.
And peas and stuff.
But that doesn’t count.
Of course we got some weeds that I got to pull up right there.
You could probably eat those, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.
But dandelions, I don’t know if I could find any to show you guys . Dandelions will
grow easily right now.
But I want to share with you these guys.
Over here, this guy right here is known as miner’s lettuce.
And this is what the miners came , when they came to California, and they just ate this
stuff.
Now this tuff only grows in the winter, doesn’t like to grow when it’s too hot outside.
It came up on its own.
And literally you guys could see I have like it spread all over.
So I’m going to inter plant my regular vegetables with the miner’s lettuce.
It is so delectable, so nice and tender and delicious.
So you got to grow that one.
Now if you look really closely, we got the miner’s lettuce here, like right here.
And if you look closely like this guy right here, that’s known as chickweed.
Now chickweed is not necessarily one that I might recommend you guys plant because I
think I planted it once and it kind of comes back like it’s a weed now.
So I mean it really mats 3:48 out, takes over the place, you know, fairly good.
And yeah you’ll have a lot of that stuff to eat.
And yeah I guess this chick is like it too.
Oh and then the final one I think that I really wanted to show you guys today is this stuff
right here.
Or I got maybe one more after this.
These guys.
These guys are probably my favorite winter green of them all.
This one’s known as mache or mâche.
And this one also does this reseeded on it’s own.
So I didn’t plant this.
I planted it a couple years ago and you know then kind of like I didn’t plant it and
then they like reseeded on their own.
And I got like all these little babies coming up all over the place.
And I don’t know which one of these if it’s like mâche, chickweed or the miner’s lettuce
coming up.
But I’ll know when they’re bigger.
So I’m just going to basically inter plant around these guys.
And I’m going to have a whole bunch of food growing.
Now once again, you know, I want to let you guys know these are the ones I didn’t plant.
These came up on their own as a weed.
And a weed you could eat is a good weed for sure.
Alright, so last one I want to show you guys.
Let me see, let me head over here.
There is the tripods.
Now don’t get one of these tripods man, it’s called the Dolica Proline with the
snap clips.
They suck dude.
I’ve broken them on every single tripod that I’ve had, you know.
So anyways . So anyways, another one that’s just sprouting on there, I don’t know if
you guys could see their babies right here.
Of course this is my Ashitaba.
So now is the time it’s actually starting to emerge from the ground, and they are just
little babies all spread out over here.
And, you know, they don’t germinate as high of a rate as like the other ones I shared
with you guys.
So you might want to do the other ones first.
But these guys will grow like they are biannuals.
And then, you know, at the end of that, they’re going to get tall like this and they’re
going to go to seed.
And these guys are drop seeds soon and that’s how the seeds gotten into this bed here.
Because this bed next to it, it’s the seeds they drop.
And then they come up.
So now I’m going to share with you guys actually the plant starts that I’m planting
out right about now, And even in the winter time, you know, even if it does get down to
28 degrees, 25 degrees, you know, overnight, we don’t really get snow here and it might
frost overnight.
But then it heats up in the daytime.
And so what I’m planting are some plants that have built in anti-freeze.
And all these plants that I’ve been sharing with you guys today have built in anti-freeze.
And some are more cold tolerant than others.
So for my climate here all these guys do great.
I’ve been growing them for years.
But if you live in a more, you know, climate that gets colder, you may want to just find
the varieties that work for you.
So check with your local master gardeners or other gardeners that have been growing
stuff.
And of course there are ways to protect your plants.
I have an episode using the plant protectors last year.
And it will, you know, allow you to grow things when you normally couldn’t.
So the things that I’m growing, or will be planting today.
I got some onions, so I like to grow the onions and the garlic over the winter time, you know.
They grow a little bit slower, but it’s a good use of my space because some of the
garlic and onions I grow will basically last 6 months or a year until the next harvest
I get.
So we got some I think red onions here, we got some red Russian kale.
I like the kale.
That kale, the red Russian and the dinosaur kale generally do the best for me.
We got some Portuguese kale right here, and we got some romanesco right here.
So these are all brassica family plants, other than the onions.
Over here we got a whole flat of the sugar snap peas, snow peas and shell peas.
So these guys I like to grow, I don’t know if you guys saw, but up my trellis, because
you know up in the summer I grow like cucumbers up it and beans.
And then in the winter I like to grow these guys.
So make the use of your vertical space.
And it’s hard to find good crops that grow vertically in the winter when it gets cold.
If you have any suggestions of me besides the peas that I’m growing, hey post a link
down below, and thanks for that.
And then I got another flat here , and this flat has lettuce and spinach and some arugula.
And then the next flat I think I got some more of the Portuguese kale and the bok choy.
And then finally we got, I believe we got some cauliflower, some lettuce and then more
of the peas to grow up my trellis.
So yeah I got a hundred sixty plants here.
That’s my job for today , to get these guys in the ground here.
I’ve prepared the bed.
It’s basically top off.
I just got to put them in there and then the cool thing is about the winter because it
does rain so much, I could literally almost turn off the irrigation.
And with the GreenIQ controller, it knows when it rains, so then it doesn’t water.
So that’s really cool, I’m saving water by having a smart irrigation system that’s
tapped into the internet, that knows the weather.
Yeah so check my link down below for the GreenIQ so that you could save water too in the winter
if it’s raining outside.
So yeah, that’s pretty much what I got to do today.
I want to encourage you guys to always, always, always, look the sun’s shining it’s nice
in the 50s today and I know a lot of you guys are snowed out or something, but if it’s
nice outside, if it’s comfortable for you, the plants could make it too, right.
And don’t let the weather stop you from growing food.
If you go outside and there’s grass growing, if there’s trees growing, you know it’s
not covered in snow and there’s landscape plants, you could grow a garden in the winter.
And that’s what I want every one of you guys to do that that live in California and
other places that don’t get too cold in the winter.
Yeah Arizona or these other places.
I think it’s really sad that the standard gardener model is you take the winters off.
BS.
We need to eat every day of the year, and you guys should be growing food every day
of the year.
And even if you’re inside sprouts and microgreens, I’ll post links down below to a video where
I explain how to do it, right.
So hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
If you did, hey please give me a thumbs up to let me know.
Also be sure to check my past episodes.
I have over a eleven hundred episodes now to teach you guys all aspects of growing your
own food at home.
I go on many different visits to different places and I show you guys all kinds of stuff
you will not see literally on any other YouTube channel.
I get around more than anybody else I know.
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3 to 4 days.
So once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com . We’ll see you next
time, and until then remember- keep on growing.