Alright this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Have another exciting episode for you.
This episode's going to be definitely a fun one, this is for those of you guys that don't
like to do garden maintenance but want to eat out of your yard.
We're here on a field trip today in Los Angeles, California.
You can see this is what your standard front lawn looks like in Los Angeles and guess what?
Grass.
It's super high maintenance man, you've got to sit here and water it, fertilize it, mow
it, or hire a kid to do it and they're not really productive.
I'm not seeing kids playing on the yards, playing on the grass and all this kind of
stuff.
It's just, everybody has a lawn because that's what you think you got to do.
But today I'm going to share with you guys what somebody else did on this same block
instead of growing a lawn.
They started in 1989 simply growing fruit trees in their front yard instead.
What a better use of your real estate than to grow your own food, but more specifically
grow some food that money can't buy.
What we're talking about today is we're talking about rare, tropical fruits that can be grown
here in southern California that you just frankly don't see in grocery stores because
some of these fruits are not grown on a commercial scale because they're just not financially
viable because they don't travel or ship well because they can be a little bit more challenging
to grow because they won't do well in field because they do need some protected environments.
So that being said this video is specifically for people that live Southern California or
a warm climate where you don't get freezes maybe like Southern California or Hawaii.
Here's the house here, you can see instead of the lawn they got lush greenage growing
on.
These are all fruit trees and a lot of edible, even in just the front walkway check it out.
We got some passion fruit growing, this is an excellent thing to grow up a hurricane
fence.
As you see here the passion fruits growing.
I mean, hurricane fences that look this are ugly, but fill it up with a passion fruit
vine, man you're growing food, you make it look beautiful and you got some stuff to eat.
Let's go ahead and enter in this front yard fruit tree forest.
So upon entering you're going to see all different kinds of fruit trees.
Here's a mammoth fruit tree here.
One of my favorite fruits in the whole-wide world, this is persimmons.
I mean, this tree produces, look this thing is totally packed and packed with tons of
persimmons.
I mean, persimmons you could eat fresh, they're definitely good.
You could keep them cool, they'll store for many months.
You could also dry them.
If you simply cut them and hang them they'll dry.
If try to buy dried persimmon it's like twenty bucks a pound but with all these persimmons
man, you could be eating literally to the next time you get persimmons the following
year.
So many delicious fruits, they're almost in season.
They need to be a nice color before harvesting.
Now besides the persimmon tree, hiding over on this area is a little small fig tree that's
getting dwarfed by the persimmon tree.
Especially in a small, tight area growing fruit trees it's probably good to keep them
pruned down so that they'll produce for you and they won't shade out other trees.
Depending on the fruit tree that you're planting I recommend minimal ten feet, twelve feet
would be good to keep them nice and pruned down.
If you get dwarf varieties they could be planted more close together.
Going underneath over here we can see we have a couple more fruit trees here.
This is actually called a sapodilla or also known as Chicozapote, one of my favorite trees
with delicious fruit, this is known as a brown sugar fruit, literally when you cut this guy
open, it's like brown and if you get a nice ripe one it tastes like brown sugar to me.
I don't advocate brown sugar, but I advocate the brown sugar fruit or the sapodilla.
Next here's another really cool one that you have to have a tropical environment.
I tried to grow this in Northern California, it didn't do so well.
This is actually called a curry tree.
So the curry tree, yes, this is not that curry spicy, this is actually real curry and if
you just use the leaves you could actually just use the leaves and eat them.
Wow, that's some of the best curry I've ever tasted right off the tree man!
I always encourage you guys to use fresh herbs instead of dried ones.
So besides all the different fruit trees here, this is really cool.
They got a few other things that are actually edible.
You might be thinking John what's up with the roses, man.
The roses aren't edible?
Actually, the roses are edible.
People commonly use the flowers, you could use the petals in salads, it's quite delicious.
Actually knows the rosehips are edible because they have rose hip teas and what not.
Many people don't know that even the leaves of the roses are edible.
They'd be known as a famine food, it probably be my first choice to be eating my rose leaves,
but they're totally edible.
Besides the roses they also have this one which is really cool and I rarely see it.
I only know this as leaf ginseng, I don't know the other name, but this one is amazing.
In my Northern California garden it's been growing, it goes to seed, kind of like you
see here.
These seeds will drop and then just start to sprout up everywhere and I'll have a bunch
of these guys.
This is a warm season crop and I like these guys because you could just literally pick
the leaves.
They're mildly succulent, so they're kind of thick right, and then you could eat them.
Nice, mild, neutral flavor, super delicious, excellent to put in salads.
This would be a perineal in this climate here in Southern California, easily.
Before I show you guys some more fruit trees I want to give a special thanks out to Jasmine
who gave me the lead on this place, that's doing amazing by just growing fruit trees.
I mean literally, a lady planted fruit trees in like 1989 and here it is like 15 odd years
later and everything's in full production and doing really well.
I mean, I'm sure just a few years after she planted it she was already eating out of her
yard and eating some of the fruits that she was familiar with as a child that literally
money can't buy.
So let's go check out some few more fruit trees.
Over on this side we have a surinam cherry, surinam cherries are really excellent to grow.
There's multiple surinam cherries here and there's different varieties of surinam cherries.
I mean, just because you see a persimmon doesn't mean you have to get that persimmon.
There's so many different kinds and varieties of persimmons.
So before planting exotic or any fruit tree, ask experts and ask them are there other varieties
that might do better in my area than others.
So varieties may produce better in higher heat or with less water or grow bigger or
grow smaller.
surinam cherry's definitely one of my favorite fruits to be eating.
Over we have a lemon tree producing really well.
Up above here, we have one of my favorite trees, this is called the jujube tree or jujube
tree and they make apple like fruits and if you look on the ground you can see them.
We're going to go ahead and show you guys this one.
Now these guys could be eaten fresh and it's kind of like an apple when you eat them fresh.
When they dry on the tree or outside they kind of get shriveled up and they look like
a California raison.
"I heard it from the grape vine..." actually no, I heard it from the jujube tree.
The Jujube branch.
Alright, so anyways, these are my favorite fruits when they're dried.
These are also known as Chinese dates and when you bite into them on the inside it's
like a nougat it's like that milky way nougat.
It tastes like sweet, it has like a bread like consistency.
But this is just a dried fruit and you don't want it super dry.
You want it just faintly dried and that's when the flavor really comes out.
They're nice and sweet and in China these are known as a longevity food.
So eat more jujubes for a longer life.
So over here we got another tree and this is really large.
It's like it's be definitely cut back a lot.
This is another one of my favorites.
It's actually called the black zapote or this is also known as the chocolate fruit.
It makes this dark chocolate like fruit on the inside.
These are nowhere near being ripe.
It's actually related to the persimmon.
But it is not quite as cold tolerant as the persimmon, black zapote.
Oh here's one that's kind of getting eaten by the bugs.
You kind of see it's this like dark and black on the inside man.
These guys definitely need to be soft, kind of like an avocado when eating them and they're
quite good.
They're not super sweet, they have a good flavor.
I like to blend those chocolate zapotes with dates and then it's super good.
Here's yet another fruit tree or plant here just near the house.
This one is actually called monstera deliciosa.
Because it has a big monster like, phallic symbol fruit that kind of like scales like
pineapples, the scales need to actually fall off and you could eat it and it has like a
pineapple, banana flavor.
Once again this is tropical, definitely super delicious.
Over on this side we have a banana, and this is not necessarily a banana tree.
People like to call it a banana tree, but it's an herbaceous plant.
It looks like it's doing fairly well.
Over we have a cherimoya tree, another in the atemoya family, they're definitely delicious.
I think I saw one over there yonder.
Over here we have a javacatva.
This is so like a little tree that actually has little grape like fruits that grow off
the main stem.
Let's see, let's see on the ground.
I always like to check on the ground below fruit trees to kind of see what I got and
this is what they look like.
I mean, this one's kind of dried out but this is a jabatacaba fruit, these are better than
grapes man.
I love these guys a lot.
Continuing around right in the front, we gotcalamondin fruit here, it's kind of like orange, or it's
a citrus, wow, it's really fragrant you can really smell the zest there.
Now besides just growing in the yard, because this yard is fully packed with fruit trees.
They got some more in pots up near the walkways, so let's go ahead and show those to you guys.
First we have this guy and if you want to plant a tree that's going to provide you with
leafy greens to eat, this is probably the tree.
Plus you also have to live somewhere where doesn't freeze.
It's actually called the moringa tree.
This moringa tree is towering over me, so this is like over six feet tall and they amazing
thing is I want to show you guys what it's being grown in.
Check it out, it's literally just being grown in this one pot right here, and this pot is
only halfway full of soil.
The soil level only comes up to here.
So that's totally amazing, not even a lot of soil, the moringa tree will grow.
The cool thing about the moringa's if you chop it off and replant it, it should probably
grow new roots and sprout back up again off the top half.
The bottom half will just continue to put out new leaves for you to eat.
I love the moringa and it's one of my favorite leafy greens on a tree to eat.
Very nutritious actually.
Up over here you can see the citrus that we saw earlier.
Then over on this side we got a couple of cool things.
We got a little small guava tree here that's just, once again in a small little planter
on the patio.
So a lot of these trees do not need a lot of root space.
Of course, the more root space you can grow the tree, the better it's going to produce
for you.
But even in a small space the tree's going to stay smaller but still produce but not
be as productive as it could be.
Finally over here we have one of my favorite fruit trees to grow because not only can you
use the fruit, you could actually use the leaves.
So this is a citrus, this is actually called the kaffir lime.
The kaffir lime, you can see there's a whole bunch of limes just sitting right here and
these are edible, citrus edible limes.
But more importantly these leaves, these leaves you go into a store sell for a couple bucks
just for a leaf or two.
How they use they leaves is in cooking you could use these leaves as a flavoring agent.
Has a nice, citrus scent to that.
Wow, quite strong, just a little bit goes a long way.
So next what we're going to do is we're going to actually go into the backyard and share
with you guys what's growing in the backyard because there's even more fruit trees here.
So now we're going to go ahead and check out the backyard, a lot of this backyard, there's
not a lot of space in it, maybe like your backyard there's like a little driveway and
a little patch of ground where there's nothing growing, they could definitely put a vegetable
garden in there.
But vegetable gardens are high maintenance, that's why I like the fruit trees.
Check this out, here in this backyard there's a whole bunch of different fruit trees and
these are fruits literally money can't buy.
We was at the farmer's market just a couple blocks down the street, they didn't have some
of these tropical, exotic fruits at the farmers market.
But they're literally here growing in the backyard and just with the investment of some
money and some trees you plant them and nurture them and they're going to come to fruition,
literally fruition.
So what we're looking at here is a really cool one I've never seen before.
This is actually a purple guava and it has nice dark leaves, this is how they look and
then when they're ripe, they'll get, they'll turn colors.
So they will be a nice vibrant color like this nice reddish color here and it should
generally detract or come off the vine pretty easy and then you got make sure you wipe it
in the right place, give it some spice and all that jazz.
Then we're going to go ahead and break this guy open and check it out.
I mean, guava's I've never seen a guava like this.
These are like rare fruits, look at that deep rich purple in the inside and better than
how it looks, man is how it smells.
This stuff smells like the best perfume.
I wonder if you smear this over all over you if you'd smell like that.
Let me go ahead and tell you how it tastes and you can also eat the skin on these guys.
Wow, man, this guava lights me up and fresh fruit should light you up too.
Fruit, in my opinion, is one of the bests fruits on the earth to be eating.
Besides just this guava, the purple one which is really rare, I've never seen this before,
they also got a sweet and sour guava.
So this one's a little bit sweet but also then it'll hit you with some sour notes.
So when you grow trees in your backyard you get to choose, and I would highly discourage
you guys to just choose a standard apple and orange.
Grow different things, push the envelope, grow fruit trees that money can't buy that'll
give you unique flavor sensations and also unique phytochemicals and phytonutrients,
vitamins and minerals that you're not getting anywhere else.
Over on this side of the yard they got a tangerine or mandarin tree, just coming out the side
walk.
I mean, even if you have not a lot of space you could just have a hole and the roots will
go down and seek out nutrients and what not.
I always encourage you to plant your trees actually on a mound and enrich the ground
very well with some good compost, rock dust minerals, worm castings and all that jazz.
In addition another surinam cherry, these things grow like weeds here, you can see the
little surinam cherries just starting to develop.
They're green on here.
They're going to turn into probably nice deep red or purple color.
Up above here we have an atemoya, so this in the, a relative of the cherimoya.
Not currently producing but this is a nice, huge, beautiful tree.
Over here we have yet another surinam cherry and the surinam cherry is actually is used
a landscape and decorative tree in many places these days, grows really well in Southern
California.
Now I want to remind you guys that most of these trees will not survive if you get frosts.
So even in places like Northern California, not going to optimally do well unless you
live in the Bay Area, maybe Freemont where it just doesn't get too cold.
Over here we have the white sapote.
So she's got all the different sapotes covered and then finally in the back here we got a
mamey sapote which she says hasn't really produced for her.
So don't necessarily recommend that.
The white sapote will do fabulous in this area and produce really well, I definitely
love my white sapotes.
That's pretty much it for this whole backyard aside from two more trees that I don't even
know the English name because these are actually Filipino fruits that I don't know the name
of.
The thing I do want to remind you guys if you do live in Southern California or even
Northern California, you want to join the organization California Rare Fruit Growers
that's how she found out about growing all these unique tropicals and found a member
in the organization that basically held her hand, got her started with growing fruit trees
and doing this because literally growing fruit trees is the easiest thing you'll ever grow.
Unlike vegetables that you need to tend to, once you plant a fruit tree and nurture it,
give it some water, I mean it pretty much does it's own thing year after year, it'll
give you some delicious fruit to eat to feed you and your family.
Once again I always encourage you guys to eat foods out of your yard instead of the
grocery store.
It's going to save money, they're going to be heathier and the pride of growership is
just phenomenal.
I'm glad that I got to share this episode with you guys today and once again, even in
a small, tight space you could grow some fruit trees and I love my fruits and vegetables
too.
Alright, so once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time, and remember keep on growing.
How to Grow Foods with the Highest Nutrient Density & Best Taste
Alright this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today I have another exciting episode for you and what I'm going to talk about today
is something near and dear to my heart, I'm going to Briggs testing.