This is John Kohler with www.growingyourgreens.com.
The question is, does your tomato look like this?
So, yeah, this is not my house alright so I gotta get that out there.
My tomatoes would not look like this.
Or I'd probably pull them actually, if they're diseased.
This one looks like it might have some disease there, but mainly what it looks like to me
is that these tomatoes are just small, maybe not that large.
And you can take a look at some of these other tomatoes, these cherries are doing a lot better
over here.
You know they got lots of ripe cherry tomatoes.
This is my neighbor's house and I wanted to stop in because I did have an episode where
they showed, you know, they put these in.
And I think it's great that they're growing in containers in their front yard.
And I kinda wondering you know why the tomatoes aren't looking well.
So you know, I am not the gardening expert or anything.
I know a little bit, but you know we're gonna go down to my house and check out how big
my tomatoes are that were probably planted at a similar time.
They are just literally, towering over these guys.
And the only thing that I can say that makes a difference is.
Number one, the soil looks like they're just using, you know, a soil maybe from bags.
I am not exactly sure what they are using but maybe soil bags from Lowe's or Home Depot,
or a big box store.
That maybe doesn't have as much nutrition as we really need.
So getting a good organic compost, enriching with compost, and using also the rock dust
minerals make a really big difference on your plant vitality and health.
Just like we're supposed to take a mineral supplement for our health because, you know
the minerals aren't in our foods anymore.
Our plants need the minerals and when our plants have the minerals they're healthier.
Then when we eat those plants that drew in the minerals, then we get the minerals.
Thereby, we don't need a mineral supplement.
Here there's zucchini plant and I don't know if they have any off of it yet.
But you can see, it's kinda getting some kind of a, some rot here on the end.
And it's rather small, the leaves aren't that big.
It just looks like to me this has stunted growth and the reason is probably the soil
nutrition and/or the watering schedule.
I am not exactly sue of their watering schedule.
But you know what, most people put in a garden and they get really excited about it.
They get some containers like this, and some plants, they put them in, yeah then they kinda
like remember to water it here and there.
But you know if you're gonna get into gardening, you know what I'd say, you need to really
stay committed to it.
And you know, be committed to your plants.
These are other living things on earth here and we should try to, you know, take care
of it.
They're gonna produce food for us.
We have a symbiotic relationship with them, you know.
They produce food, and we eat the food.
And then we poop out the seeds and the seeds grow into new plants.
And that's why most plants are here on earth for us.
So I thought my peppers weren't growing too well and they are pretty large and have abundant
actually peppers that aren't quite ripening up yet.
But here's some peppers, you know just a few doors down.
And actually this house is for sale, so if you're interested in buying this house, I
don't wanna disclose my address to anybody.
But if you're interested in buying this house, email me privately and I will get you in contact
with the realtor who's selling this house.
He's selling for $290,000 and it's a three-bedroom house on a lot similar to mine.
But this is a sweet banana pepper heirloom and it's just really small.
The leaves you know, aren't quite as green as they could be.
We got some basil here next to us.
You know, and it's sad, it's really sad when I see people growing things and they're just
not doing well cause, guess what, people get frustrated, then they get discouraged, and
they get turned off by gardening.
And I want people to be turned on, and I want people to be excited about gardening like
I am and I mean, that's why I share what I do with you guys out there so you guys could
see, you know how to be more successful at gardening.
And how to at least produce some decent yields and decent crops and how to pack the produce
in there.
Because I mean this bed here has a nice large size but it's like they could use this space
more efficiently.
But that all depends, you know my goal is to produce a significant amount of produce
and food on my small residential property and maybe other people just wanted a garden
for decoration.
So, let's take go down and next take a look at my sweet banana peppers growing and my
zucchini and my tomatoes to compare how it's doing and we'll go over some of the soil nutrition
and some of the good practices that I use on my garden.
And now, we're in my garden and this is my pepper bed.
We planted these peppers out the earliest and you know the conditions between my neighbor's
house just a few doors down and my house are pretty much the same.
We've both planted peppers in our front yard.
So happy that we have something in common, but my peppers are doing a little bit better
you know and why is that?
Well, I don't know exactly what he's using and why, what he's growing in the soil and
his watering.
But I can tell you some of the best practices or the practices that I use to ensure a good,
you know, pepper crop and pepper success.
I don't know if I saw any peppers on his plant but you can see here, this is a banana pepper
plant and it's just loaded with peppers.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, I mean over a dozen
peppers and there's new one starting.
There is a little, oops I just pulled it off, haha, this was going to be a pepper, now it's
not.
I just pulled it off.
But anyways, yeah and the pepper is still flowering, it's still gonna make more.
And you know, there's nice large dark foliage and that's one of the signs, you know.
If your foliage isn't, you know, nice and deep green, maybe there is something going
on.
And I have to be honest with you, when I first planted these peppers, you know, my pepper
plants actually looked like his'.
And I had to figure out why that was happening.
So we actually did some soil testing.
That's another upcoming episode I'm gonna have for you guys.
What we learned is that my soil, even though I am using organic compost was, you know,
maybe not as good as it could be.
So we needed to basically, tweak it and get it into shape and then we kept growing and
then things took off.
So, you know in gardening there's always gonna be adjustments.
you can't just buy plants, put them in some soil and expect them to grow.
In some cases, that might happen.
But in a lot of cases, you might have to tweak things a little bit and you know bring in
some further fertility cause most soils are devoid of nutrition.
And so, I bring in organic compost and the rock dust.
And the other thing if you look closely down here we've got these pellets.
And all these pellets are basically, they are just chicken manure pellets.
Powderized chicken manure composted.
So, it's easier to handle than, the freshly composted chicken manure.
And that adds nitrogen, and I think the main thing this bed was lacking was the nitrogen.
And we added some of that, we added some other hydroponic, liquid, organic nutrients to this
bed and you know, it's taken off.
And it's just done really well.
So here's a similar Zucchini plant, you know that my neighbor is growing a couple doors
down and here is my plant.
And as you can see, this has really big leaves and it has started to tried to train it up
a stake and then it kinda got sideways on us.
It's still flowering, it's still producing lots of zucchinis and this is a lot healthier.
Has a lot bigger leaves, a lot darker leaves than his.
Now you know, it's probably the soil or the watering cause otherwise the sunlight and
everything else is probably fairly similar.
Maybe the varieties are a little bit different but for all practical purposes, you know zucchinis
are gonna do well in this climate here.
So you can take a look at, I have some large Zucchinis here, some small ones and then some
larger ones, and actually a really large one here on the bottom that I'm probably going
to harvest today.
And when they get this big, they're still good.
You know what I like to do with them when they're this big, is I actually like to juice
them up.
They're nice and juicy and they make a nice delicious vegetable juice mixed in with some
other, you know, cucumbers and greens.
So the main thing is you know, soil soil soil, your plants are the soil and you know, we
are the plants.
So we need to make sure our soil and what we are growing in, the growing medium is really
really nutritious for our plants.
Now, how do we create soil fertility?
Well, you know what?
Soil fertility takes millions of years, and you know that nature does this automatically.
Leaves drop, things compost, birds poop, animals poop.
It all mixes up, it gets broken down and the plants live off that broken down composted
material.
So that's how I encourage everybody to make soil fertility.
You should bring in more compost, and bring in finished compost and if you can't bring
in finished compost, bring in some unfinished compost as in manure, leaves and make your
own compost at your own home.
You could do this with worn bins, I'm gonna have an upcoming episode on worn bins, you
could do this with a compost pile.
You know many of you could do it in your kitchen, and they have this nature composter that actually
heats up and makes it in, you know, compost in a small space, an appliance to make compost.
But it doesn't have to get that fancy.
You could literally just shovel everything into a pile and compost will happen.
So I grow in a hundred percent compost.
Use compost in your garden and use the rocks dusts as minerals which we're gonna show you
in a minute to add soil fertility so you can have big zucchinis, big tomatoes, and make
sure you water right too.
You know, I have everything on a drip system, you can't really see, it's being hidden but
you know that watering is consistent watering.
The plant knows, it is like when we got to eat, we wanna eat, we wanna wake up, and have
breakfast, lunch and dinner at about same time every day.
How would you feel if you like, you know, your lunch was prolonged until like evening
and you can get really tired and cranky.
Well, you know, our plants don't get tired and cranky.
But they revolt, and then they don't grow as big, they don't like it as much when they
don't get at least enough adequate water.
And I've got other videos on adequate watering so check those out as well to find out if
you are adequately watering your plants.
So here we are next to my tomato bed.
This tomato bed is about 40 feet long, 4 feet wide of tomatoes spaced out about every 2
feet, so they're really packed in there nice and tightly.
You know, and let's see.
These are how big my tomatoes have gotten already.
These tomatoes have been growing up these cages and these cages are actually tipping
over, we had to tie it up.
This plant is probably about six feet tall and if you look closely, we did a harvest
yesterday cause I'm dehydrating tomatoes to make sundried tomatoes right now.
So we harvested a lot but there's a lot of unripe ones.
And this tomato is a lot more lush and vibrant than you know my neighbor's tomato, just a
few doors down and in the same climate conditions.
Once again, what's different?
The soil and the waterings.
So I have a regular watering schedule I think the tomatoes go on every other day.
Tomatoes like deep watering and like to dry out a little bit versus, you know, being constantly
watered.
You saw how my plants looked you know healthier and more productive than my neighbor's plants.
And you know, people that farm for a living, and you know, commercial industries.
They know about at least adding NPK and having some level of soil fertility.
Or at least, providing the plant the bare minimum of what it needs to be healthy, that's
NPK, they've done studies that show, you know if you give NPK, the plants will grow a lot
better but it doesn't mean that the plants are healthier.
So if you just want big plants and healthier plants, you could basically put things such
as miracle grow on and NPK which are basically a fast shot.
It is like giving a kid a candy bar and he gets really hyperactive but only for a little
while.
In the long run it's not really not healthy to be eating a lot of candy bars cause it
will rot out your teeth all kinds of other problems and that is why maybe you should
give a kid an apple, or a pear, or some oranges or bananas which is basically good sustained
energy.
You're gonna build you know a better and healthier child that way.
And the same thing goes with our plants, so instead of just giving miracle grow or NPK
to make things look big and lush.
It's basically a fast burning and it's not contributing to the overall health of the
planet of your plants or of you.
You should use things that are gonna be sustainable in the long run.
And what we gonna do is wanna build soil, build fertility to do this.
And the soil is the life blood of the plants.
You know, the soil makes up the plants.
Whatever is in the soil is gonna be in the plants so, what I encourage everybody to do
is grow in as much compost as they can, whether it is a mixture of good organic compost and
your regular soil or all compost like I'm doing here.
And the other main ingredient that I am using and everybody should be using this and if
you're not go out and try to find some.
It can be difficult and challenging to find, but if you don't, listen to anything else
I say, listen to this because this is the most important thing you could do to have
larger yields, healthier plants, and you know, larger plants.
That are just gonna be more resistant to bugs and diseases.
And actually the plants, the leaves and the fruits are gonna taste sweeter, are gonna
taste better.
Because when the plants have the minerals, you know we have mineral receptors on our
tongues.
That's why we think salt tastes so good, because we really like to eat minerals.
And most foods are devoid of minerals, and when you grow mineral rich foods, you gonna
be like wow!
That is really good.
It's gonna just take your tomatoes or cucumbers or whatever you're growing to that next level.
And this is what I have today to show you guys these are the two different rock dust
varieties that I personally use here.
One is called Azomite, it's actually from a company out of Kansas City, Missouri and
this is micronized rock dust, in a small particle, basically so the plants can absorb it.
The website is Azomite, www.azomite.com You could go to their website and find local distributors
or places that sell the Azomite or you could order directly from them.
It does come in a 44 pound bag.
The other kind I use is actually called Gaia green glacial rock dust and this is from a
company out of Canada.
It's www.gaiagreen.ca and this is imported to the US.
The is the glacial rocks that are basically ground up into a fine rock pattern so that
the plants could absorb them.
If you can't find these, either of these, the horticulture grades or basically for growing
foods, you could go to a regular rock quarry and get the finest particle size ground up
rocks.
Sometimes they call it rock dust or different things and make sure it has, you know, mostly
dust and as minimal gravel as possible.
I bought a load one time figuring I'd save money cause it is a lot cheaper to buy a truck
load of rock dust from the quarry than to get a bag in this stuff.
But, you know what?
The nutrition and the nutrients and the mineral levels may not be the same.
So that is why I really recommend these two guys.
These are tried and true, proven ways and they work really well.
On which one is better?
And you know what?
I use both cause they are from different sources they both have minerals and they're both good.
I tend to use more of the Gaia Green because it is a little bit less expensive than this
guy.
And the other thing you can do if you actually cannot find any rock dust in your area, you
want to get the stuff called ocean grown.
It's from sea water, I have some and I'll have a future episode on that.
It's seawater with the minerals but we gotta think where are the minerals come from originally.
Where the minerals came from the rocks, the rocks eroded and then came into the earth
and then all that runs of into the ocean.
So the ocean also has the minerals because our topsoils are demineralized and all that's
run off into the ocean house??
You can also use deep ocean water which is what the, ocean grown minerals are.
So, I hope you've learned a little bit today about soil fertility and growing healthier
and more vibrant plants than your neighbors.
Not that that's my goal but yeah, it's always fun to say yeah look at my plants they're
doing a lot better.
But maybe I should go over there and knock on his door and offer him some rock dust,
and some good compost to get him more excited about you know growing and to be more successful.
So once again this is John Kohler with www.growingyourgreens.com keep growing and grow in some rock dust your
plants will enjoy it and you will see the benefits.