- The price of produce at the grocery store
is getting crazy.
So in today's video,
I'm gonna come out to my own personal grocery store,
harvest some produce,
and see how much money I just grew.
So while you cultivate that like button
for epic grocery store savings,
I'm gonna hit the garden shed
and grab some tools.
Welcome to my humble abode.
This is pretty much
where I spend a lot of my time,
and it's practically its own little mini store.
So what I need today is a harvest basket.
So we've got this one here from botanical interests.
I want some snips.
These bad boys right here.
And we probably need some actual pruning shears as well.
I'll take these.
Off we go to the front yard.
Let's kick it off
with one of my favorite greens,
which would be spinach.
This is kolibri spinach here,
so a cool variety.
Bloomsdale is probably the one
most of you are familiar with.
On this, I'm just gonna harvest it
all the way at the bottom.
Take the whole thing.
I've got a couple more here, still sizing up.
So in we go with spinach.
And now it's on to lettuce.
I like growing my lettuce in a vertical system
like this green stock,
because as you can see,
this nice fluffy lettuce
perfectly takes up one little cell here
and you could grow like 50 of them if you wanted to.
So this ruffled lettuce is what I'm gonna take.
In this case it's sizeable enough that, again,
I'm just gonna take the entire thing,
so I'll snip it off at the base.
It is so light and delicious.
And yes, we are gonna compare this
to the grocery store cost,
but to me I'd add a couple bucks
for the homegrown flavor.
Next up we have broccoli
which I've had a lot of success with this year.
So with broccoli,
you actually don't wanna pull the whole plant
unlike the spinach or the lettuce.
Just come down and grab the head only,
just like that,
because you'll get some offshoots
which is a little bit more bang for your buck.
Okay, we've got our broccoli,
and I've got my eye on one of my favorite
root crops to grow these days,
and that would be golden beets.
Accidentally pulled out one extra, that's fine.
But take a look at that.
I mean, beats, not only can you eat
this part right here of course,
but you can also eat the greens,
which most people at the grocery store don't know.
Cauliflower is next.
I've got a few beautiful specimens right here.
This is the snowball variety,
but I'm actually gonna be harvesting
what's called the cheddar variety right here.
It's a little bit sweeter,
a little bit less bitter sometimes,
and it has that beautiful sort of creamy yellow texture.
Again, these cauliflower leaves are edible.
I tend not to eat them.
I'll give 'em to my hens,
but I still have a beautiful head
of less common cauliflower.
Now it's over to the orchard,
and there's this slogan you hear all the time,
money doesn't grow in trees.
As a gardener
that really kind of gets me going
because it is so false.
I have Washington naval orange right here,
beautiful specimen.
This costs money.
This is growing on a tree.
Money does grow on trees, my friends.
So I'm gonna take two navals,
and then go down the citrus orchard.
Over here I have my most prolific citrus of the season.
This is a lime tree.
The variety is bearss lime.
Some of them have gone yellow and dropped.
I'm gonna compost those.
But I'm gonna grab a few here.
It is so prolific,
and it's, I dunno about you,
but I use limes in just about everything,
from drinks to all sorts of sauces and vinegarettes,
to straight up dishes.
So I grabbed three limes.
Capping off the citrus is my favorite,
my pride and joy,
which would be the Japanese yuzo.
This one has been incredibly prolific,
and it's kind of prized at restaurants for chefs,
for drinks, and cocktails, and sauces.
So I'm gonna take three yuzo.
It wouldn't be an epic gardening video
if I didn't try to juice the numbers
with a rare dragon fruit.
This is Ecuador palora.
It's one of the few yellow dragon fruit,
prized, extremely sweet, and honestly,
one of the harder dragon fruit to grow.
It takes twice as long to ripen this
as it does in normal dragon fruit.
So I've got my glove on.
These spikes actually still go through the glove.
So I'm doing this for the love of the craft for you guys.
So it's kind of gnarly.
You just wanna make a 45 degree cut on one side,
and then another 45 degree cut on the other side.
But you can find this at the grocery store.
So we're gonna see how much this guy costs right now.
Okay, we have the produce.
I have to say it is an epic looking basket
if I do say so myself.
Little pat on the back for this harvest.
But we've already gone to the store
and we have priced this produce out.
So one by one, let's figure out how much we grew.
First off, we have our cheddar cauliflower.
Next up our head of broccoli.
Now we have our beets,
and I'm honestly going to count the beet greens,
'cause they're fully edible.
Now we have to fish out our lettuce,
and I have two heads of lettuce.
Next up we have our kolibri spinach,
and just for good measure,
looks like I pulled out a baby.
So we have a baby spinach.
Onto our citrus.
I have my three little limes here.
Then our Washington naval oranges.
Our rare, delicious, if not perfectly aesthetic,
but quite delicious yuzo.
And finally delicately,
our Ecuador polora yellow dragonfruit.
And our grand total comes to $47 and 40 cents.
Now is this perfect?
No.
If you go to a farmer's market, it's more.
If you go to a Whole Foods, it's whole paycheck.
If you go to 99 Ranch or a dollar store,
it's gonna be a lot cheaper.
But we tried to take an average
of what you might find around the country.
And to be honest with you,
I did not price in the following.
The fact that this is beyond organic produce,
this is not even organic.
It is well beyond that, no pesticides,
nothing like that has been doused on this crop here.
Not only that, the satisfaction of growing it yourself.
The fact that, by far the freshest food
you're ever going to get.
I harvest this today.
I can eat this today.
Everything is intact within the plant.
Not only that, the psychological benefits,
the health benefits, the mental health benefits
of being out in the garden.
So to me, I double it baby.
I'm going.
This is a hundred dollars of produce at a minimum.
So this year is the perfect year
to dip your toes in the pond of growing your own food.
We're here to help at Epic Gardening.
You can check out all of our videos,
and if you need something to help you get started
check our store out as well.
We ship and stock
the best gardening products on the market
that we've tested in our own gardens.
'Til next time, good luck in the garden,
and keep on growing.