I am here with one of my favorite trees to grow and this tree is the carob and
the reason I love to grow it is it doesn't require anything from me. It's so
easy to grow, it's tough, it's hardy, it doesn't need additional water and it
doesn't need any fertilizer. It thrives and I love it and it produces these
beautiful beans for me which are well known as carob pods, the chocolate
substitute. Now to grow a carob you do need a climate that suits it, it's native
to the Mediterranean and ideally it's going to like a climate with cool
winters and hot dry summers and this year has been a record-breaking year for
hot dry temperatures and my carob has thrived despite this. As we may be headed
to a hotter drier future the carob is a really productive plant to grow that
it's going to love a challenging climate. If you're in an area where you have
long hot summers it is really worth considering the carob and they will also
handle frost's down to minus 7 once they're well established. They need good
drainage and full sun and they are their main requirements. Now the carob is a
legume, it's a nitrogen fixer so it's excellent for your soils it's also
cauliflorous so if you look along the trunk you can see my tree is already starting
to flower for next year's crop and this particular variety is a Clifford which
is a self-fertile bisexual variety. Now when you're planting carobs it's really
important to consider the fact that most carobs are dioecious so they're either
male or female so you might need to plant quite a few trees in order to get
some of both or you need to choose a variety such as the Clifford where you only
need one and it'll be productive for you. Now they take about three years to start
to flower on their old wood and they take about six or more years to start
being productive but the fact that they live and produce for over 200 years
means that this is a really small time in the life of the tree. You also need to
plant it in the right position to start with because they have a very deep root
system and they can't be transplanted so make sure you select the correct
position before you plant your beautiful tree. Now the reason you're growing them
is for the pods, the chocolate substitute. Now they're quite different to cacao
in that naturally they're much sweeter so they have about 50% sugar they can be
described as being caramel in flavor. The pods themselves you can eat fresh
hmm straight off the tree they're full of fiber, they're really high in calcium
and potassium, they're rich in vitamins and minerals they're absolutely
delicious. So it's a little bit woody but it's very very sweet and it has that
distinctive carob flavor and the delicious chewy texture.
Quite hard seeds inside so if I can open it up and show you these are the seeds
and the seeds themselves are really interesting, they were actually used as
the first weight measure so these were used to weigh really precious stones
such as diamonds and they were called carats which is where the name carat
comes from. So how do you know when your carob beans are ready to pick? Well
firstly they change color so they go this beautiful chocolate brown, if you
look here I've got green unripe ones on the tree and they need longer, once they
turn brown and they're quite thick and a little bit soft, they're ready to eat. If
you shake them and you can hear the seeds inside and if you look at the pod
and it's dry and withered it's old and you're not going to want to eat that, so
this type of pods that you can hear it sounds like a rattle you would discard
whereas this one which is big and fat and meaty
is exactly what you're looking for and this one is ready to eat fresh off the
tree. You can also break them into smaller pieces and then dry them out and
once they're dried then you just put them in a food processor to make a
powder and that way you'll have a raw carob powder which is very nutritious
and it retains all the nutrients. You can also roast them and then make them into
carob powder, it enriches the flavor but it does take away some of the nutrients
but it really is a matter of what you prefer.
Absolutely beautiful and to harvest the pods, you just need to give your tree a
good shake, they fall when they're ripe so give it a shake, pick them up off the
ground, they're so easy to grow, so easy to harvest, what is not to love about a
carob tree. My name is Kath Kermode thank you for watching this video
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