Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today we have another exciting episode for you.
We’re coming at you from my front yard garden.
We’re planting out the first bed here that’s empty right now, and what we’re going to
talk about today is the second bed.
I have about eight of these beds, they’re four foot by fifteen feet in my front yard
along with other random sized beds, but I’ve dedicated one whole bed to this next crop
that I want to share with you guys today, it’s my number one favorite crop that I’m
growing right now, and in my opinion it’s the most healing and healthy plant you should
be growing right now.
So actually without further ado let’s go ahead and go over to the Ashitaba or Angelica
keiskei, and let me share some information with you about it.
So now what we’re looking at is my Ashitaba or Angelica keiskei, not to be confused with
something also called Ashitaba, which is gynura procumbens, which I actually have another
episode on, actually I’ve talked about that before.
But this is what the Ashitaba should look like.
So if your Ashitaba does not look like this, you don’t got the real Angelica keiskei.
Now, this is not your standard Angelica, you know it’s related and it looks kind of similar,
but it’s totally different.
This originated from Hashigo Island in Japan, where it was originally found and it’s grown,
and it’s been tested there and it has high levels of antioxidants.
They even say it contains B12 which is rare for something in a plant, as well as these
things called chalcones, I don’t know if you guys can see this but I’ll pull this
one up for you guys.
I was eating off this plant earlier, and these are some of the leaves there, but if you look
closely on the little stem there that’s cut, let’s see if you guys can see that,
see that?
It’s yellow sap, if I cut myself I’m bleeding red, and you cut this it’s bleeding yellow,
and these are the chalcones.
It’s a very powerful antioxidants that some say and some of the research that I’ve read
online says can help with preventing and healing cancer and all this kind of stuff, and I don’t
know if that’s true or not, but all I know is that it’s very high in antioxidants,
has a lot of nutrition in it, and the other thing is that it’s quite rare and quite
expensive.
So it’s rare you could ever find Ashitaba fresh to buy, I’ve never seen it at a market,
at a store or anything.
So you’ve literally got to grow it yourself if you want to be able to eat it fresh.
However I have seen this stuff sold for sale in powder form, in pill form and tablet form
at health food stores.
But check it out, it’s about 250 dollars per pound dried.
So man, I’ve got pretty much all I can eat by dedicating one raised bed to it because
I really believe it is that important, and my tip for you guys is to grow some Ashitaba,
eat it every day so you can have the highest level of health and live the longest, and
be around to garden more.
Mmmm.
To me it kind of tastes like, whooo, that’ strong.
It tastes kind of mediciney – kind of tastes like you’re eating a lettuce stalk, you
know that white sap that it oozes, combined with a celery.
Now if you are harvesting your Ashitaba, the best part of the plant I want you guys to
harvest is right here.
You could see we’re going to flower right now, right here.
These are the flowers that are emerging, and we’re just going to go ahead and pull out
this little stem here, and what’s going to happen on this stem is that I believe the
stem is going to pop out into a flower.
So you want to eat the un-popped open flowers.
Mmmm, that’s where the plant is putting its energy, and also probably more of the
healthy nutrition contained within the Ashitaba.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this quick episode learning about my whole bed of Ashitaba, encouraging
you guys to grow it too.
If you’re looking for it, it can be very difficult and hard to find, so check out horizonherbs.com,
I’ll put a link down below so you can buy some Ashitaba seeds that also can be very
challenging to start.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this quick episode, once again my name is Joh Kohler with growingyourgreens.com,
we’ll see you next time, and remember, keep on growing.