This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today I have another exciting episode for you form my backyard garden.
My tree collards here.
That's the best way to eat them.
Right off the plant.
As it's still alive.
Not even picked, and I love them this time of year.
As the temperatures get cooler, these guys get sweeter because the sugars start coming
out and that's because it's in response to the cold weather.
The sugars don't freeze readily as if it didn't have the sugars so the plants won't freeze
so that it can stay alive, plus it's also sweeter for us to eat.
In any case, what we're going to talk about today is having a perfect vegetables garden,
you know, where this whole idea of perfectionism.
You know, I heard so many times, 'John, I don't know how to garden, so I'm not even
going to do it until I know how to do it perfectly.'
You know, if you wait how to do it perfectly, you're going to be waiting your whole life
and you'll probably never do it.
If I just didn't jump into gardening with 2 feet and mess up a whole bunch of times,
I would not be on the path I am today of continually learning and growing and improving what I'm
doing in my garden.
One of the points I want to make is that in my shows, I share with you guys what I'm doing
and the time, and are all my gardening practices perfect?
Is every episode always perfect?
No.
I mean, just last episode, what I did was actually I used the portable refractometer
here, and it's this right here, where I put some crop juice and looked up in it to look
at the chart and then I compared store-bought produce with my own produce, and there's a
few comments online, you know, and my point of the video is not to be like totally perfect
but to give you guys concepts and ideas.
The whole concept and idea form the last video that I put up was that if you grow your soil,
you're going to get higher quality crops based on the testing I've done.
Some of you guys pointed out that on my refractive crop list, you know, I said the numbers for
bell peppers, which may not be exactly for, you know, the peppers that I tested, whether
they're the little small peppers or the other peppers.
That was not the point of the video.
The point of the video was to show you guys that the food you're buying in the stores
are generally crap.
No, sometimes they're a little bit better, but they can be even better by growing them
yourself.
I wish there was refractometer crop indexes for every singe heirloom variety that's ever
been grown so I could compare my crops to them.
Unfortunately, at this time, this is all we got, so I don't have an index for Carmen sweet
peppers, like I'm growing because it's not even on the list.
This stuff is so new.
What I would recommend is that we need to come up with some kind of database and all
us gardeners could start logging bricks numbers, and then also besides logging our bricks numbers,
you know, we log actually how the food was grown, and then we'll actually see trends,
like, 'oh, man, John grew 18 Carmen sweet peppers,' or whatever, you know, 'I grew 14.
Maybe I could up mine,' you know, or maybe, 'Harold, in Iowa grew 20 tomatoes,' you know,
20 bricks tomatoes, 'and maybe heirloom cherry variety,' and so then you know you wan tot
strive for that number, but without a proper reference point, you know, we don't know what
to do.
So, that's why I used just the bell pepper because that's the closest thing to the peppers
that I tested.
They were sweet peppers, you know, and even on the bell peppers I tested, are those the
same kind of bell peppers the I tested that are this variety of bell peppers?
There's many varieties of bell peppers.
So, I don't want you guys to get too anal about gardening or about my videos or about
nothing because that's really going to mess you up.
If you always wait for perfection, you'll still be single like I am, you won't end up
with a girl because you're waiting for the perfect girl.
I need to just chill out in my dating life and in my gardening's a lot easier, more relaxed.
Like, you know, okay let's just plant it.
Let's try this stuff.
Let's see what works, and just go for it and see what happens and just take everything
as a learning experience.
So, hopefully you guys understood the point of my last video, which was to build your
soil to have higher bricks numbers, which correlate to sweeter food and more nutritional
dense food.
That being said, the best bricks meters of all are our taste buds.
I taste buds don't lie.
You know, we don't got to buy no tools, you know.
You guys all tasted crap you bought from the store, bell pepper your ought form the store,
tomatoes you bought from the store, and just how crappy they taste, and then you guys picked
stuff fresh from your garden, and it's like wow flavor explosion in your mouth, and think
of the stuff form that.
Your house already tastes good, but you're not using the rock dust, you're not using
the worm castings, you're not using insect frasts, you're not using the John and Bob's
products, you're not using the biologic gardening practices that I teach.
What if they could get better?
That was the other message of the video.
I always want you guys to strive to improve what you're doing and take every experience
in gardening and in life as a learning experience so that you can grow from it.
I mean, at the end of every episode, I say 'keep on growing.'
It's not just because I want you to keep on growing foods that you and your family can
eat from, but I want you to keep on growing as individuals in this country and in this
nation and the world, because, you know, I think so many times people just stagnate and
'oh, I think about gardening,' and then they just don't bother or do anything, but they're
missing out on a lot of stuff but no one can know it all.
You know, in my opinion there's no such thing as perfection, whether it's physical perfection,
whether it's perfection in gardening, whether it's perfection in bricks testing.
What it's all about and what I've learned over all these years is that we want to do
that best we can.
I mean, the number one thing for me is just taking that first step, putting my foot out
there, because, you know, without doing that, you're never going to succeed, you're never
going to achieve perfection because you didn't even start man.
So, I know there's many of you guys out there that haven't even started a garden yet, and
even if you have started growing, maybe you're thinking about expanding your garden.
I would definitely encourage you to expand your garden.
If you have one raised bed, next season, put in another raised bed.
That's like doubling your space you're growing.
If you're not yet growing.
Start by growing some sprouts.
Every body should be growing sprouts.
I have videos on growing sprouts.
You literally take seeds, you soak them in water, and you grew something and you can
eat it.
So simple to do sprouting.
Once you got sprouting and sprouting simple seeds, move on to like microgreens where you're
just growing the sprouts, you're harvesting them when they're little babies.
That's great.
Then eat those.
This is a great thing to do over the wintertime because we're coming up to it really fast
here, and then once you go the microgreens down, you know how to make microgreens really
well, right?
Next season, when it come February or march after your last frosting, plant some of those
microgreens out in your garden then have like your own garden of stuff because now you've
been starting your own seeds all this time and you're learning the skills you need to
do it successfully.
Then of course, watch some of my videos, subscribe to my channel if you're not already to learn
about the biologic garden that I'm teaching, you know, watch the videos on how to set up
a garden.
I have like hour-long videos that go from, you know, having and empty backyard to having
like 4 raised beds and I take a weekend and film my whole process.
I have videos where I go over to a friend's house and do consults with them and share
with them how to build raised beds.
I've traveled to different places to inspire you guys, to show you guys the possibilities.
I mean, I'm what you call a possibility thinker.
I like to think of what's possible, how can I push the envelope.
What can I do next?
You know, I want to encourage you guys always be possibility thinker instead of an impossibility
thinker.
Impossibility thinkers will be like, 'man, if I plant the plant, it's not going to make
it.'
Well, screw it man, if it didn't make it, that's a good thing.
You learned how to make it not work.
Then next time you do it a little bit differently so that you can get a successful garden.
Part of what I do and my teachings is also try to inspire you guys to get moving because,
you know, we live in a sedentary lifestyle these days where we're like always being reactive
to what's being thrown at us.
I want us to be proactive and go out there and go do it.
Just do it.
I think that was a commercial thing.
In any case, I hope you guys enjoyed this really short episode.
Trying to motivate you guys and let you guys know there's no such thing as a perfect garden.
You just want to start today, see what happens, and learn from it, and it just as you go.
I mean, that's what I've done these 10+ years I've been gardening, and look at it now.
Totally successful.
So, by the time you're doing it for 10 years, you're going to be at least as successful,
probably more because now you're going to be actually learning from all my mistakes
and all the teachings and what I share, which is what works for me, so that you don't have
to go through the school of hard knocks which is another reason why I do these videos, to
put out there to you guys what really works.
Another thing I often look forward to one day when I have some kids, I want them to
watch these videos and be proud of dad, and they're going to learn everything I'm learning
all these years.
In any case, I hope you guys enjoyed this quick episode.
My name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Once again, I want to encourage you guys to keep on growing.