Alright! this is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com, today I have another exciting episode for
you and what I’m going to do today is answer a viewer’s questions. So normally I have
Q & A sessions where people would email me a question and sometimes I’ll answer that.
I apologize if I can’t answer every single question that comes in to me I get bombarded
everyday with all kinds of questions and there’s only one of me and there’s a lot of you
guys out there watching and needing to get your questions answered.
So, if you do have a question for me the best way to get it answered is to actually post
it to the YouTube email system to me, so message me directly on YouTube or post it on my discussion
page on my YouTube channel. I do call those and pull out questions once in a while and
do a Q & A video. I’ll also sometimes make a video like this, you know if you do have
a question and put it in a video format and then send me the link to my YouTube inbox
I’ll check it out and I may respond in a video like this.
Those ways are not guaranteed to get an answer, if you DO need and answer if you will support
me in my Fiverr.com campaign where you would pay Fiverr $5 US dollars, of that I get $4
US dollars which go back to the Fiverr community to basically get my videos transcribed so
that people can get the information that I’m sharing about growing food, eating fruit and
vegetables and becoming healthier. This is for the people that are hearing impaired
but more importantly people in other countries that may not understand English and it would
be better with the subtitles but more importantly that the YouTube will translate those English
subtitles into foreign languages so now people in other countries can have access to the
information that I’m sharing. So thank you for you guy’s support that have supported
me in my Fiverr campaign and that is one way you can definitely get your question answered.
I’m going to go ahead and put a link down below this video in case you want to do that.
Let’s get into today’s question without further ado. Today’s question comes from
Rick and he actually made me a video that I decided to answer and so let’s hear what
Rick has to say. Take it over Rick… (RICK) Ok Mr. Kohler, Mr. John Kohler: what’s
going on with my greens? See my holes in my greens? What do you recommend? I know these
are bunched together but I’m going to spread them out. What can I do to help my sick greens?
(JOHN) Whoa Rick dude! You got some bugs in your holes! No, you got some holes in your
bugs, you got some holes in your leaves! That’s what I was trying to say. Oh my gosh! That’s
alright man, holes in the leaves are fine. Let’s see if I can find any leaves in my
holes here. Oh yeah, look! This is my Egyptian spinach, this thing is raging behind me check
it out man it’s so huge I’ve been eating these almost every night and look: I’ve
got holes in my leaves! This is a Swiss cheese leaf, hey maybe I’ll frame it and sell it,
this is some modern artwork, natural artwork. But yeah seriously, you know for example for
me here personally I can look at my leaves in this plant here and the majority of leaves
don’t have any holes, there’s a few leaves that have a couple holes. In a situation like
this I’m not really concerned about a few bug holes, part of the way that I garden and
I grow is that I try to grow in abundance, I grow mass abundance in case there is crop
failure, in case some bugs want to eat some of them I’ve got extra and the whole thing
is as long as your pest outbreak is not extreme. You know, the plant grows fast, the plant
grows every day, as long as the bugs are not eating the plant as fast as the plant is growing
you’re totally good, right? So really I haven’t sprayed this particular
plant with anything because it’s not that bad and even if the leaves have holes I can
still eat them. [Chewing] That’s good! So yeah, but in the case of your situation you
know because your plants are young and they do have bug holes now that can be a big problem
because the plants are not mature and the plant is not yet growing fast enough to outgrow
the bugs eating it. So you know, if you came to me and said “John
I’ve got a red rash on my skin what do I do?” I wouldn’t have a clue, I’m not
a doctor and I’m not a plant expert either. But what I can tell you about your plants
is you’ve got some holes, they’re definitely caused by a pest, more than likely in my opinion
is a caterpillar or some other kind of leaf eating insect so there’s a few things you
can do, the easiest of which is go out there multiple times a day and just turn over your
leaf. When you turn over your leaf and you see the holes you might actually see and find
the creature eating your leaves and you can pick them off and smush them or feed them
to your chickens or do what you want to them and that’s the easiest thing to do.
You can even determine what’s going on, the easiest control is manual control by picking
it off if you go out there several times and you don’t ever see anything it could be
coming out at night when you’re sleeping so set your alarm for 3am in the morning and
get up out of bed and go check it at 3am to see if it’s out there. I’m just kidding
with that one, I’d prefer that you guys get a good night sleep than wake up at 3am
to see what bugs are eating your leaves. But anyways, what you want to do is some organic
control, the easiest of which, or one of the easiest ones especially when your plants are
small is the “diatomaceous earth”. I’ll soon have an episode coming on that, me spreading
the “diatomaceous earth”. That works on a lot of different insects and creatures so
that’s step number one or instead of “diatomaceous earth” you could also use like “Dr. Bronner’s”
and “Neem Oil Solution”, you would put that in a little spray bottle to spray down
your leaves at the right dilution ratio. I have a good video on this as well.
I mean, those are just two of my common all-purpose approaches that work on most things. If is
caterpillars or some other kind of creatures like that then I would use natural organic
Bt and just spread that out as needed. Actually I’ve got some holes in my cosmic kale leaves
and I put some Bt on there and hopefully I got rid of the caterpillars that were eating
those guys. And actually over in this bed here, you guys can’t see this it’s out
of the camera shot [picks leaf] but yeah I got some leaves with holes in it too so it
happens to the best of us and this is just nature at work and the thing is, on this kale,
it’s just curly kale, the leaves were getting eaten faster than the plants could make them
so then I did have to intervene and get involved and what I did was the first step is I just
sat there for a while and saw little buggers and picked them and smushed them all and that
seemed to control them a little bit but then they still came back and then I went with
the “diatomaceous earth” and I did that about a week ago and then I kind of let that
hang out for a little bit and then it rained and it washed away and then I hit it with
the Neem and Dr. Bronner’s and now where going to see what happens.
The main thing you want to remember when using any organic control is you want to give it
time to work, don’t just go like “Oh I sprayed it yesterday, they’re not all gone,
I’m spraying them again tomorrow!”. No, give your plants a chance to kind of hang
out and figure out what’s going on because definitely spraying with the Neem and Dr.
Bronner’s especially in the wrong dilution ratio you can potentially burn your plants
and that would not be a good thing. Alright, so that answers your question on
the holes on your leaves, let’s hear what else you got to say.
(RICK) These are my trays for my lentil micro greens I got growing, they haven’t sprouted
yet. I didn’t soak my seeds, one of the video tapes or YouTube videos said not to
soak them. (JOHN) OH! Lentil micro greens man! I can’t
believe it! I’ve never heard of such a thing and me personally I would never eat such a
thing either. Lentil micro greens just do not sound appetizing to me. Members of the
bean family, so the lentils are part of the bean family, mung beans, and kidney beans,
atsuki beans and garbanzo beans… basically all the members from the bean family have
small amounts of toxins known as “phytates” which in their raw state can actually get
you very sick. So in the olden days a friend actually sprouted kidney beans and ate them
and she got really really really sick that’s because in general most all beans need to
be basically soaked and cooked to be eaten to get out those toxins.
So, lentils are one of the exceptions along with the mung beans and I would soak those
and sprout those with little small tails but I’ve never heard of making actually lentil
micro greens to eat them for the greens because there may also be toxins in the leaves of
these plants as well so it would not be my choice to eat lentil micro greens personally.
That being said, when making micro greens or when growing anything I always encourage
you guys to follow the recommended procedures and in general they definitely recommend soaking
your seeds in many cases, especially with the beans.
That being said, if you do want to grow micro greens I think that little set up you got
there is great, I love re-using things whenever possible like the little containers you are
using but I would focus on more of the brassica style micro greens such as the arugula, which
is going to grow amazingly fast and give you a nice peppery flavor when they’re grown,
or such as the kale or even the broccoli there is a lot of research on the broccoli sprouts
and broccoli micro greens on how anti-cancer and truly healing they are which in my opinion
is much more valuable than the lentils. So save your lentils and sprout them and eat
them as little baby sprouts with little small tails or even cook them up. Actually I cook
them up for little Oakley, I actually buy organic rock dust grown French lentils for
Oakley my little min pin. [Dog howling] and that’s what he gets to eat for dinner many
times and he loves it actually, rock dust enhanced.
Alright, let’s see what else Rick is up to.
(RICK) And this is my celery re-birth, from grocery clippings; trying to re-do some celery.
(JOHN) Wow! It’s cool you’re definitely re-growing the celery and absolutely that
can work and, you know, it’s definitely in my opinion a novelty and I think that we
should always return to the earth what we pull out of it. So, all my celery clippings
go back in my compost and I can re-build my soil and grow more later, but if you want
to grow them out again later I think that’s totally perfectly fine if you’re kind of
doing it as a curiosity, and here’s my thinking behind that: I have a whole bed I can’t
show you today because it’s really wet, but I have a whole bed of celery and here’s
the thing, I didn’t plant the celery. I let my celery plant go to seed, set flowers,
set seed. The seeds blew across the yard or landed in one raised bed and now I got a whole
bed of celery that I didn’t plant. For me personally, I would much rather have celery
re-seed on its own and having a whole bed of celery without me having to lift an iota
or a finger, to having to re-grow celery from a cutting.
In addition, the other thing I want to say is that if you took celery from a cutting
that you got from the store versus a seed and you’re planting them at the same time,
you know I would definitely bet you money the one from the seed in the end would be
more productive. Why? Well the seed is nature’s packaging for a baby plant; it’s not an
old cutting. It’s going to grow up and be fully productive and be able to thrive if
it’s in the right conditions if it’s healthy, the soil is good and all this kind of stuff.
But if you take the celery cutting the celery is already grown to full term, full maturity,
they sliced it off, it’s an adult plant now, you then eat all the celery and then
you cut it off and like anything in life, any living creature always wants to live,
I want to live! One of my most important prime directives here. But yeah, so even if the
celery is cut off there’s life left in it and you can actually soak it in water, root
it, roots will come out and then new celery will grow out if it as well.
Now, think about this, right? While the celery can do that it’s not the most energy efficient
because now the celery is been cut off, its root zone is cut off, it really can’t absorb
a lot of nutrition from how it currently is, so then it needs to start working on setting
out roots and then it needs to start working on the growth again so that it can make and
photosynthesize more and that takes a lot of energy. Whereas, if you plant a seed, that
seed is ready sending roots down to get nutrients from the ground to send up to the greens to
be able to grow that to really focus on production because at that point in life it’s concerned
about just growing, getting big and not getting eaten by something else, you know?
So I wouldn’t have a field of celery cuttings that I’m re-growing, farmers do not do that,
they just re-plant new seeds to get it growing; but yeah, if you want to do a curiosity or
have some extra space to screw around I definitely think that’s totally cool and especially
if you got kids you should probably do that. It would probably be a good experiment with
kids it’s to actually do a cutting of celery and then grow a seed next door to compare
the growth rates and see what happens so you can just learn in this great experience known
as life. Alright so I think Rick has one more question,
let’s hear what Rick has to say. Take it over Rick!
(RICK) What am I going to do when I’m going out on a birthday celebration for my daughter
in law and they’re going to a pizza place and I’m juice fasting? Do I go ahead and
just have a vegetable pizza or do I drink a lot of juice before we go out or do I not
go to the restaurant, pizza restaurant, and stay home? New dilemma when you’re on a
juice fast. I’m feeling great I want to stay with it and so what do my… what do
people that watch my videos, what do you say? What should I do?
(JOHN) So you’re in a juice fast man, that’s awesome! I think juice fasts definitely have
a place and can help people literally “reboot”, like if you’re using your computer and it
starts getting slow you’ve got to reboot it once in a while to kind of clear all the
junk off and start up fresh. I think juice fasts are excellent to use in that way to
kind of transition you out of all the junk and processed foods and all the crap people
are eating these days to kind of help you get more on a… eating more fruits and vegetables,
I mean that’s what it’s about to me: eating fruits and vegetables and growing the highest
quality fruits and vegetables. So if you’re interested in a juice fast
and you haven’t heard about this or anything before, I would recommend a movie for all
you guys out there it’s actually “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead” it’s on Netflix,
it used to be on YouTube for free, not sure if it’s on there anymore. Really good movie,
shows a guy that was actually overweight, unhealthy, came to America from Australia;
he went on a juice fast, got healthy, turned his health around and more importantly besides
just, you know, did a juice fast, turned his diet around because besides just the fast
acting aspect of a juice fast, you don’t want to do a juice fast and then go back to
eating the crap you were eating before. You want to do the juice fast, feel better and
then you’re going to slowly incorporate some of the healthy foods like what I’m
growing around me. So yeah I think it’s great that you’re
in a juice fast, now yes there can be challenges that come up if a juice fast especially when
you’re going to a pizza place with your… daughter in law and all this kind of stuff.
So this is just my opinion on this, you can do whatever you want because I’m never going
to tell you guys how to live your lives but, if I was on a juice fast and I was going to
a pizza place with my daughter in law or which… I don’t have a daughter, I don’t have
anything right now [laugh]. I would stick to my juice fast man because what it comes
down to for me it comes down to values, what do you value? Do you value what your daughter
in law and I guess your son and their friends or whatever think about you more than your
health, right? Call me like conceited or whatever but I really
care more about my health more than anything more than anybody cares about me and I’m
going to just do what I want to do to ensure that my value and my health are the best they
could be. So, you know, I mean I’ve refused food from people and probably in cultures
that I probably shouldn’t have because I’m just not going to eat certain things and that’s
just my… my prerogative that’s what I can do I mean it’s me, I’m not putting
things in my body that I don’t want in my body and I don’t recommend you guys do that
either for peer pressure or whatever. I mean we all know the peer pressure of drinking
when we were in high school or whatever. But even now a days, you know, people expect a
certain thing and you have to eat what other people eat but what other people are eating
is in my opinion not normal and if you don’t want to do it you shouldn’t have to do it
and nobody should force you and you shouldn’t feel bad for doing something different.
So, if it was me and I was going to the pizza place I’d probably drink a bunch of juice
before I went there so I’d be pretty full and I wouldn’t want to eat and then I would
personally bring in like a nice bottle, like a nice fancy bottle that I filled up with
juice, and a nice colorful juice at that actually, and bring it in and just bring that in and
put it on the table and when everybody is eating their pizza you just casually drink
your cool… I don’t know… maroon colored juice and people are asking you what it is
and you don’t want to get in to much into it just tell them “hey I’m on this new
diet, I’m feeling great, I’m losing weight and share what all the positive benefits you’re
getting from what you’re doing because, you know, eating more fruits and vegetables
it just simply works! This is our natural diet in my opinion and it’s really sad in
this day and age that people eat just anything other than fruits and vegetables, especially
at a pizza place. Hopefully everybody is having nice large salads before their pizza. But,
yeah… so that’s what I would do and you can do whatever you want. You can eat a vegetarian
pizza I would not eat a vegetarian pizza in your situation, what I might do instead of
if I didn’t bring my juice, which is what I would do, my compromise would be maybe eating
like a salad from the pizza place but I would just stick to my guns I would drink my juice,
enjoy, tell people a little bit about it but don’t get too much into it and go into all
the crazy stuff and enjoy the company and the time you’re having with your daughter
in law and other family members and people there, right?
Because it’s really enforcing in our society today, so many different activities are focused
around food and they should be more focused on people and relationships than just the
food because people’s relationships with food in this day and age in my opinion is
very unhealthy because of the system that we live in, the system dictates what we eat
and all this stuff and unless you’re getting out of the system like by growing your own
gardens, supporting local farmers, growing heirlooms and all this kind of stuff that
I definitely advocate for you guys. So hopefully that helps you out a little bit
Rick, you guys hear a few of my opinions about conventional foods and eating out and I don’t
know… growing celery and holes in leaves and all this stuff but I’ve got to get running
actually I’ve got a trip coming up tomorrow I’m really excited for, so wish me luck
guys out there… I’m going to meet a girl. So, anyways hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
Once again my name is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com. Will see you next time and remember: Keep
on growing.