Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we have another exciting episode for you and
actually it’s kind of a sad day for me in the growing your greens front yard garden.
I don’t know if you guys could see this, but right here, this is what is left of one
of my ashitaba plants.
My place was vandalized and you know, I guess I could be like upset and pissed about it,
and “wanna get the person and own guns and go shoot ‘em or something”, or I could
make a video to show you guys my opinions on this topic.
So if this happens to you, you know maybe share my opinion on how to react, what you
could do and more importantly how to prevent this from happening in the future.
Whether you get you know, your place vandalized and people just maliciously cut down things,
whether people come by your place to steal you fruit, the labor of your love, or your
vegetables.
What can you guys do to prevent this and should you react if somebody does this, right?
So first before I get into this episode, what I wanna do is actually show you guys some
of the damage.
So I’m gonna take the camera and show you guys what happened and explain more about
it.
This is the sidewalk and as you guys can see, you know my front raised bed is right here,
and I’ve all these Ashitabas coming out.
You guys see like any place that is basically like yellow, this plant bleeds yellow, so
this plant was basically cut at the yellow points and yeah, so.
The first plant wasn’t that badly hacked up.
You can see this is basically hacked here, and then there’s an [inaudible] [1:42] there
which is hacked.
And this plant, this poor guy, I mean, he comes out of the ground there and his main
stalk which is right here, basically is cut.
So this guy is probably not gonna be productive or do anything.
And the one behind it right here, if we go up you could see once again the main stalk
was cut right here, and it looks like they didn’t even cut all the way through.
They cut it through and then just ripped it off, and basically left it all in the ground.
So I’m gonna go ahead and throw up some pictures of what it looked like when this
was found, after this vandalism occurred.
And they came in here and they cut more off.
Doesn’t look like there’s a rhyme or reason to how they cut things.
Here’s another one where it was cut.
Here’s one, trying to figure out what kind of tool they used.
It looks like, this was a very thick Ashitaba.
They tried to cut through it, and it didn’t go all the way so they started to rip it and
you guys could see they ripped this back here.
And they basically they just dumped this all the way back in there.
And you know this is still kind of hanging on, but it looks terrible, so I’m probably
just going to cut it off.
And I mean over here, here’s stuff that they actually didn’t cut out, and I mean
there’s just, I don’t know.
Here’s some parts they cut it and I don’t know, there’s no rhyme or reason to it.
They cut some of my tree collards over here, and some of my feijoas, so yeah no rhyme or
reason to all this stuff.
Let’s go ahead and sit down and I’ll show you guys more of what I learned about this
situation, and my opinions about it, what I’m gonna do and what you guys could do
and how to potentially prevent it in the future.
SO you guys just saw the damage that occurred at the front of my property.
You know this is the first time I actually had any kind of major malicious in my opinion
vandalism, where my things were just cut down and literally left for dead.
I mean they cut ‘em and they just left a big pile on the sidewalk, just sitting there,
and then they took off.
It was funny because my housemate was home when this occurred and she was just inside
so she didn't see anything, but my neighbor saw something.
So I want you guys to be on the lookout.
Here’s the thing, a guy had like a royal blue truck, pick up truck, you know smaller,
not like the full size GMC, smaller like Toyota or something like that, Chevrolet S-10, Nissan,
smaller truck, and the blue was kind of like my shirt, like nice royal blue and it was
like I don’t know about mid sized, not big not skinny.
He was blonde, with like hair a little bit longer than mine.
My hair has gotten long, I need a haircut.
And that’s basically all I know.
And it happened about 9 am, or so.
So you know it’s just kinda sad that this happened and I thought kinda why, why would
somebody just come up and just destroy my Ashitaba plants and some other plants.
I mean, maybe they’re drunk, maybe they’re on drugs, maybe they’re high, maybe…I
have no idea why.
Maybe they’re upset that, maybe there’s just you know falling over in the sidewalk
a little bit, but there’s still plenty of room to walk by and there’s still other
plants that are actually blocking the sidewalk, so if that was the reason, I mean they would
have maybe just cut them all out, and just start [inaudible] [5:10] more maliciously
out of the ground and just hack them back.
So I’m really trying to understand why this occurred and you know, no matter the reason,
I could try to think about it all day, but I don’t wanna waste my time on thinking
about why this occurred, I wanna think about you know moving on, and getting ahead of it.
And what I wanna share with you guys is like, me right now I kinda feel like the olden days,
when there were cavemen and stuff, and if you saw a woman and you’re a guy, and you
would just grab that woman, take her and then do what you want.
And that’s kinda what I feel here.
You know some guy just came up and oh yeah, I can just go there and cut the stuff, cause
it’s my right to do that and all this stuff.
Dude, this is like my property.
It’s not your.
If you’re watching this, whoever you did it, it’s not your right to go on somebody
else’s property like that.
It’s just not right.
And I think in this age of internet which I think has many benefits it also has some
detriments, as creating more isolation, not creating community and stuff like this.
In this neighborhood we have neighborhood watch and you know a lot of the people here
are more older and they stay home during the day.
So I mean there’s a lot of eyes so I would caution anybody about doing anything on this
neighborhood or wherever you guys live.
And it’s just not right.
Don’t you guys have better things to do then cut down some of this garden and some
Ashitaba or anti-cancer plants, a plant that it may in fact save your guys’ life one
day.
I’m growing those for the weaves and for the seeds and it’s evidence that they actually
just dropped them and took off, they didn’t even take any of the leaves to use to juice.
I wouldn’t have a problem if somebody would come by, oh yeah I wanna grab one of these
leaves to juice, I’ve got plenty of leaves.
But they just cut this stuff down and left it.
They didn’t even have a use for it.
Which is to me, it makes me really sad.
What society coming to where we’re doing this you know.
People are on processed foods, junk foods and it like, all this faux foods are messing
up people’s brain chemistry in my opinion, right?
And then on the flip side, if this happened to one of you guys, what would you guys do,
how would you guys react?
I want you guys to post what you guys would do below and let me know, cause I’ve thought
about this a lot and I figured I would just make a video and share with you guys my experience.
Cause that’s what my videos are.
I just share my experience on things that I learn new, on how I grow things and just
my opinions on things.
So there’s two main ways that people would respond to this situation.
Number one, they’d be pissed off and angry, and number two they might be sad and upset
about it.
I’m going to explain what I did and my opinion on this topic.
Number one if you get pissed off and you start yelling and you’re pissed off at the person
who did.
I don’t think that’s gonna help the situation, personally, it’s gonna cause more stress
in your life, which is not good for you, and now you caused extra stress in your life,
because somebody did something to you, and you didn’t even see it, and you didn’t
even see it, you didn’t even know it happened and you’re not gonna be able to fix it,
and so what’s the point of being stressed out, right?
I don’t think it really serves any purpose.
Me, on the other hand I was actually saddened by this.
My plants that I’ve raised for like a year and a half, or longer, two years on those
guys, cause I had them in little pots in the back before I planted them out like a year
ago.
And now they’re going to seed and flower so I could actually save the seeds and distribute
those to people, so they could grow this amazing anti-cancer and anti-disease plant that bleeds
yellow chalcones, or sap, that are really beneficial, with vital chemicals and vital
nutrients that are unique to the Ashitaba.
It made me just really sad to know that all the labor and the love that I put in it’s
just now wasted because somebody had a minute of fun and enjoyment, whatever, without even
checking in with me.
If somebody has a problem with my garden, my place, they should contact me, they should
knock on the door and say hey man, you got some stuff overgrown on the sidewalk.
Could you trim back or leave a note or do something, instead of just come here and just
cut it down.
It’s not right.
It’s just somebody else’s stuff.
People should respect other people’s stuff.
So yeah, so anyway, let’s get into some of the solutions so this does not happen to
you guys.
So number one, you have borders on your property right, try to keep it trimmed neatly and this
is what I’ve tried to do all the time, I’ve tried to keep it trimmed neatly so there’s
a nice sidewalk area, so people could walk by.
If it’s out of the way people are less likely to mess with it.
Another thing I do is actually I don’t grow anything like tomatoes, or fruit that people
know what they are, near the sidewalk, because people will be more likely to just walk by
and grab something and keep walk.
So I plant Ashitaba which nobody knows what the heck it is, but they still cut it down
and not use it, which is actually sad.
Number 3, you could put fences around your property so nobody could get in there.
That might have been good to put up fences, but in this whole neighborhood, nobody has
a fence basically in their front yard, and I don’t wanna put up a fence, it kinda makes
it look like, a ghetto or something like that.
You could also plant like you know vining edibles to create a living fence or you could
plant thorny things like leachy tomatoes or cactus or roses to keep people out.
And also I encourage you guys to keep your place well maintained, neat and orderly, because
if things look neat and orderly people probably respect them more, than if it’s kind of
getting a little bit overgrown.
And I tried to do my best to keep up with my garden and all this stuff, but that’s
just one of me, and there’s a lot of you guys and videos to make, and I’ve got a
lot of other things to do besides gardening.
But you know, I’ve been spending my days, like six hours a day lately in the garden
just trying to keep up the date, and keep the past pressures down and harvest and eat
things, and make videos for you guys.
So, also I wanna encourage you guys to have a garden party, so invite your neighbors over
one day like all at the same time and just tell everybody on the block, you know what
you’re doing, and invite them over, have a party.
Show them what you’re doing, explain them, and let them know hey, if you guys want any
produce I’ve got some extra, just go ahead and ask me, so people don’t come up and
take things.
Another thing you guys can do is actually dedicate a space in the front of the house
of your property, where you could have signs, hey free, you know, pick one and enjoy, so
you could actually have a space and have a dedicated area where you generously share
your produce with other people if you have abundance.
You could also have like a little basket and put a basket out and put like free extra produce
and harvest things and put it in there.
And so people could take it instead of stealing your stuff, right?
So these are some good techniques you guys could use to help minimize people vandalizing
or stealing the produce you’re growing.
Aside from that I encourage you guys to put up cameras if it’s important to you.
I’m gonna be investing in some cameras here so I can see what’s going on, and if anything
happens I’m gonna have a picture of it and it’s gonna go to the police, and then we’re
gonna prosecute.
I’m currently trying to find this person that did this, and you know, I wanna find
out and I wanna get him on a video actually and talk to him, why did he do this, it’s
just not right why he did this.
And potentially bring up you know, I don’t know like charges cause this is against the
law to vandalize, whether you’re putting graffiti on something or chopping down rare
edible plants.
It’s not right and you know there could be I guess, criminal and civil damages for
doing this.
So another thing I want to encourage you guys to do also is put up signs.
So I mean everybody should have like, no spray signs, so people don’t spray, whether that’s
your city or otherwise spraying chemicals on your property.
Put up signs that are kind of nice.
Private garden, please do not pick.
I mean put up signs and let people know if you’re having problems.
I don’t want to have signs up.
It destroys the neighborhood when you gotta have signs for every little thing.
I really hate the signs where it’s like, you got a picture of a dog, and you’ve got,
no peeing or pooping on my lawn.
Like people should just like pick up after their dog and stuff.
And that’s why people put up signs, because they don’t want to like pick up poop.
And I mean I respect that.
You just got to pick up your dog’s poop and take responsibility for yourself right,
and your actions.
And this is pretty much what I wanted to share with you guys on this video, some tips and
techniques to help prevent this and share and vent with you guys what happened to me
and yeah post your comments down below.
What you think I should do now and in the future if people have vandalized my place,
stolen my fruit and all this stuff, and trust me, I will be instituting things that this
is not happening again, and if this does happen again somebody is going to jail, trust me.
And here’s the thing, I’m going to be taking video and if I catch something, that
video is going up on YouTube, maybe it will make them famous, and it’s gonna go to the
police.
So yeah, I encourage you guys not to mess with me, cameras are going up.
If you guys enjoyed this video please give me a thumbs up and let me know.
Also post your comments down below and let me know what you guys think.
Also make sure to check all my past episodes.
I have over 1100 episodes, usually of me not venting about, me teaching you guys on how
to grow some of the best food on the planet.
So once again my name is John Collard, with growingyourgreens.com.
I’ll see you next time and until then remember keep eating fresh fruits
and vegetables, it’s always the best.