Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com!
Today we have another exciting episode for you.
And what we’re looking at today is that pepper bed that you guys saw me install, and
also I showed you guys how to enrich the soil before I plant for the season.
Now I’ve planted all the peppers and then in between I planted radishes, you know, to
actually do companion planting and also to grow more food in less space.
As you guys could see it’s worked wonderfully.
So wonderfully in fact that I haven’t been able to keep up on the radish harvests and
eating them because they’ve been growing so fast and because I have been traveling
a little bit too much lately.
Anyways, as you guys could see, the peppers some of them are getting buried, some of the
peppers, you know, are nice and tall and the radishes are still short.
But some of the radishes are overtaking the peppers.
So what I’m doing to do in this episode is show you guys what I do when I got extra
radishes like today.
So first let’s go ahead and harvest a few radishes, show you guys the kinds I grew,
what kind did best, and actually what I’m going to do with them.
Alright!
So as you guys could see, I got some peppers here, kind of hidden amongst my radishes.
We’re going to go ahead and harvest them.
And, you know, if your radishes are flowering, that means you already should have harvested
them.
So let’s start pulling these guys up that are flowering first, also they’re the tallest.
And let’s see, I think there’s maybe two in one hole, so I’m going to pull this largest
one out first.
Right.
So here it is, the tags that I made, tags that I made to tag these, the ink wore off
so I don’t know what kind this is.
But I do know the kind next door, let’s see here, which are these guys.
These guys are the cherry belles, and I don’t know maybe this is some kind of like daikon
thing.
Here’s another Cherry Belle.
Look at these guys!
These guys are huge for radishes!
And look at this.
I kind of like like these guys stayed relatively short whereas these other guys did really
tall.
So I think, you know, I grew like 5 or 6 kinds.
Definitely the best kind was the, the Cherry Belles overall.
Sometimes I planted like 3 per hole and they did alright.
So we’re going to go ahead and harvest more radishes.
I’m going to go ahead and clean them up.
And I’ll come back and show you guys how I’m going to process these so I could save
them for the whole summer.
So now I’m going to go ahead and share with you guys how I pickle my radishes.
I love fermenting foods.
What I do is called lactic acid fermentation.
So here’s a batch actually I made probably in the winter time with my bok choy or paleo
napa cabbage with some carrots and other things.
This is like a sauerkraut basically or maybe this is like a kimchi.
I mean, to me they’re all the same.
They’re basically lactic acid fermented vegetables.
Now I do this instead of the traditional canning, because I am using the canning jars, because
when you can things you have to actually heat it.
And when you heat the foods you lose a 100% of the enzymes and many other nutrients, specially
the delicate phytochemicals can be lost.
That being said, it’s always better to even can your food than eat the packaged processed
canned food from the store.
But instead of canning your own food at home, I would encourage you guys to lactic acid
ferment that, ferment them because actually you’re going to have higher levels of nutrition
and they actually even it’s going to create even compounds that are even not actually
even in the foods.
So for example, you’re multiplying the beneficial probiotics.
So the beneficial bacteria specifically the lactobacillus, which is a beneficial bacteria
that is actually present in nature but also lives in our gut.
And it actually helps us digest our food and the microbium in our gut, which is in a lot
of new books been researched about is actually part of our immune system.
So that’s why I do it this way instead of any other way.
So let’s see, so the only things you’re going to need to do this, super simple, super
easy, you’re going to need one quart of filtered water.
We got a canning jar.
This is one of those ones with that little lid with the rubber ring that latches down,
so it’s like airtight, water-tight seal.
You’re going to need the appropriate amount of salt which I’ll go over in a second.
And then you’re going to need your vegetables.
In this case we have radishes, you know.
In this mixture here I did basically carrots and bok choy and cabbage.
You could also do any other cruciferous vegetables, you know.
They work very well.
I’ve done okra in the past, I’ve done hot peppers in the past.
I mean, many things can be pickled.
But of course, your standard cucumbers could also be pickled as well.
I really recommend a book by Sandor Katz called The Art of Fermentation.
That’s one of the books that I read and have learned about this.
But I’ve been doing fermentation for many years now.
So in any case, to do this first step is you want to go ahead and wash all your radishes.
So I’ve washed them and cut off any kind of like spots that are kind of like black
and may have been like damaged by insects or something else was going on.
Then the next step is you’re just going to go ahead and simply cut them up into little
slices.
So I got lots of cutting to do here.
Now when you’re cutting them, I like to cut them into smaller pieces.
This creates more surface area for the bacteria to work.
And once you cut them, then you’re going to want to try to lay them to the best of
your ability single file on the bottom.
So this way you kind of get more.
So like on the bottom of this jar I’m kind of like putting maybe four up, and then I’m
going to repeat the patterns maybe with some of the smaller ones so that I could like fit
as many as possible in there.
Alright!
So as you guys could see, I’ve been busy at work and my jar is almost all full of the
sliced up radishes.
I think, I think I have maybe like one or two more to do.
I think for the top I’m going to try to get maybe some of the larger radishes to cut
up.
Now another one of my favorite ways to eat radishes is actually with guacamole.
So I’ll make some guacamole and I’ll just take these radishes and I’ll just slice
them into little chips like I’m doing now.
Now the size of my slices, they’re probably between an eighth and a quarter inch, it’s
not exact.
You could use a mandolin but I’m just using a ceramic knife.
I really like the ceramic knives because they tend to be sharper than the steel knives and
they don’t need cutting plus you’re not you know touching your food with stainless
steel which may have stainless steel ion transfer.
Kind of like we know not to drink out of aluminum cans because you get Alzheimers.
Well, even stainless steel, as hard as it is could transfer some ions.
So anyways, I’m going to go ahead and layer these guys up a little bit more.
And oh, another thing you could do with your radishes is I spiralize them.
So you could spiralize them into noodles with the spiralizing tool.
That’s pretty cool.
And then what I do is I take those noodles and then I soak them in water maybe like in
cold water overnight and then drain the water the next day.
And then you lose a lot of the radish bite if you don’t like the radish bite.
I actually don’t mind the radish bite myself.
Now radishes are in the cruciferous family plants.
So much like broccoli, they also have anti-cancer compounds within them.
So it’s very important to, you know, eat them raw because if you cook them you’re
going to lose the anti-cancer compounds unless you process them properly.
Alright, we’re almost to the top.
So I really don’t want to put too many more.
I think we’ll maybe do this last radish.
And then we’re going to move on to the next step.
I think that’s pretty good.
Maybe a couple more here.
Alright, I think that’s pretty good there.
Let’s get the, get those shoved in there.
Stay down!
Alright.
Maybe I’ll eat that one.
Mmmm, nothing better than a home grown radish.
This reminds me of when I go to my, my dad would take us to our, my grandparents house,
we’d walk down the street to Mr Blakely’s, and we’d pick strawberries and radishes
right out the field, right out the ground, grown organically, pick them and eat them.
Now radishes, it’s best if you guys are beginner gardeners, one of the easiest things
to grow.
Mainly because they’re done so quickly, you know.
In as short as 15 to 25 days you could have radishes to eat.
Now I am eating the radish roots.
But the greens are also edible.
They have a strong flavor but you could eat them just as you would, you know, eat beet
greens for example.
Even carrot greens.
They’re all edible.
It’s just kind of strong so people don’t generally eat them.
Now if I was in a famine situation and that was the only food available, I’d eat them
but I’d rather eat the radishes and eat my kale greens instead.
Alright, so once we got that, we’re going to go ahead and take our quart of water here,
and we’re going to add in the salt.
It’s very important that you add the appropriate amount of salt.
So I’m, in one quart of water, that’s a good standard amount, I’m putting twenty
five grams of salt.
This will give us approximately a 2.5 salt brine, saltwater brine solution.
And I’m using the Seasons 90 sea salt.
And that’s the salt I like to use.
That’s the same salt such as the Sea 90 that you could actually, and I have put on
my garden.
I like this salt because it has a lower sodium content than other salts.
And so that means it has higher levels of other trace minerals.
We’re going to make sure we fully stir this in to the mixture here to get all the salt
dissolved.
And then we’re going to go ahead and pour this in the radishes.
Alright!
So looks like I got about, I don’t know, at least 98% of the salt crystals dissolved.
So that’s pretty good.
So what we’re going to do next is actually just pour this baby in there.
And you don’t want to go exactly to the top because what’s going to happen is the
radishes are going to like rise up.
So what I got is I got a fermentation weight here.
This is made out of ceramic.
You could also use like a clean piece of maybe like glass to fit in there.
I’ve used also like small mason jars, like something glass.
I wouldn’t put any kind of metal in there.
This is ceramic, it’s from fermentn.com.
I’ve also used like things like carrots and other radishes like I could take this
radish, slice it in half and if it was long enough like wedge it in between to keep everything
under the level.
But we have this weight so we’re just going to go ahead and put the weight on to keep
it weighted down.
We’re going to go ahead and press that in there.
And then we’re going to go ahead and add some more water.
And so like now we got all the radishes submerged, very important.
Then only then what we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and, oh! forgot
one step.
We’re going to take my old sauerkraut stuff here and then I’m just going to go ahead
and dribble in a little bit of the liquid in there.
Now what this is going to do, this is kind of , this is an optional step really, you
don’t really need to do this for it to work properly.
But I like to do this to get a good ferment.
Because you’re basically inoculating your current mixture with some lactic acid bacteria,
the lactobacillus, to get the fermentation process started, you know.
If you don’t already make your own fermented foods, you could buy a raw fermented food,
you know, from the store like a raw sauerkraut.
Now if you’re buying a raw sauerkraut from the store, don’t get the one in the bottle
that’s sitting on a shelf or in a jar sitting on a shelf, you got to get one that’s in
the refrigerated section and it has to say “Raw”.
If it doesn’t say Raw, and it’s just in a glass jar, and specially if it makes that
little click noise when you unpop it, that means it’s been heat processed, it’s not
going to have the lactic acid bacteria.
Many times you’re going to have to go to a Health food store to find one of these Raw
products to add in little bit as a starter culture.
And once you start fermenting them, like I got about 8 of these jars hanging out with
different mixtures, you know, I always got some starter culture to use.
I really like to do that.
But as I said it’s not necessary.
Oops, I think I filled this up a little bit too much.
So we’ll pour out a little bit, and crank this down.
So the reason why I like using these old style canning jars with the little rubber ring is
because this is basically an easy automatic airlock system without using one of those
like air lock contraptions or pickle its or whatever you want to call it, that you got
to keep refilling.
Because trust me, I got so many things to do, I often forget to refill those things
and it doesn’t work.
Or if you’re using a big ceramic crock, you got to keep refilling the little, you
know, gully with water or else you’re going to defeat the purpose.
But these are like those no, it’s like a no brainer.
You fill it up and basically inside you’re creating an anaerobic conditions for the lactic
acid bacteria.
And what’s going to happen is you don’t, because you don’t want the oxygen there,
they’re going to basically make the CO2.
It’s going to bubble up and then as it bubbles up there’s going to be pressure in here.
And the pressure’s not enough to break the glass.
But what will happen is the, when, when there’s a certain amount of pressure and it builds
up so much, it will actually cause the gasket to move out of place and let some of the gas
out of the gasket.
At the same time some water may escape.
So that’s why you should put this in like on a counter top or, you know, in a cool dark
dry place, like out of direct sun, you know, and not too hot, you know.
You don’t want to put this in direct sun.
If you put it in like at a window sill, the fermentations going to happen faster.
I like to have a nice controlled ferment, I don’t know, 70 to 80 degrees, that’s
the temperature in the house right now.
And leave it out about 2 weeks.
After about 2 weeks, open it up.
And you'll probably let some gas out when it opens up.
And then you could eat it and you’ll taste like classic fermented pickled flavor in the
radishes.
And, yeah, I think that’s pretty much it.
If you see any kind of white stuff growing at the top which there shouldn’t be because
this is an airlock, it’s not really letting stuff in, and as long as you cut off all the
bad rotten moulded parts off you know, any damaged parts of the radishes, you shouldn’t
have any problems specially because we inoculated it.
And, but if you see anything white stuff on the top, just kind of like skim that stuff
off, throw a couple layers of radishes off on the top.
The stuff submerged on the bottom, that’s, that’s still alright.
And then once you ferment it out of the fridge for like about 2 weeks, then what you’re
going to do is taste it.
If it tastes fermented to your liking then you’re going to put it in the fridge.
And then it’s going to save 6 months, a year, or even longer.
I’m going to start working on this one probably in the next couple days because I still got
my previous batch that I’m working and then I got like 5 more batches, you know, of my
winter vegetables still to eat.
And that’s how I like to preserve my food, you know.
The fermented foods are the best foods for you.
And now you guys learn how simply you could preserve your radishes when you have an abundance
like I do.
I think the rest of these radishes, which we have a lot more actually, maybe I’ll
do another jar full later.
I’m also going to probably eat a lot for dinner myself tonight.
Yeah, eat some radishes, they’re good foods and they’re super easy to grow.
If you guys enjoyed this food demo presentation, hey please give me a thumbs up!
I’ll share with you guys more food prep demos.
Besides growing food I also have been preparing my own food for the last 20 years from scratch
based out of fruits and vegetables.
Now I just happen to grow them too, which they’re even higher quality than the stuff
I would make before I started growing, which is over 10 years ago.
And yeah I just have fun playing in the kitchen.
So I kind of like grow, prepare, make, eat.
And I do it all.
Anyways.
Yeah, if you enjoyed this, thumbs up, I’ll do more presentations on how I use my food
because I think that’s a big part that I really haven’t been covering for you guys.
I mean, as much as I’ve been showing you guys how to grow it, I need to show you guys
how to eat it so you guys you get more of this stuff into you instead of the crap stuff
at the grocery store.
So anyways, also be sure to check my past episodes.
I have over 1100 episodes now showing you guys how to grow your food.
And there’s a bunch actually already videos on how I prepare my food which I do have a
playlist on the growingyourgreens.com home page.
And also be sure to click the Subscribe button right down below so you don’t miss any of
my future and upcoming episodes that I have coming out about every 3 to 4 days, because
you never know where I’m going to show up or what you’ll be learning on my YouTube
channel.
So once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We’ll see you next time and until then remember- keep on growing.