Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com ! Today we have another exciting episode for
you.
And what I’m going to do today is share with you guys what happened in my garden just
the other night actually.
So as you guys could see, my pepper plants don't look too healthy.
And that’s because we had our first frost of the year.
Now I could have tried to protect my plants, cover them, but you know, winter is upon us
know and I got to deal with it.
So luckily it wasn’t too bad of a frost.
If it gets way cold way quick, not only the leaves would be damaged but also the fruits
would be damaged.
And you know, because it didn’t get so cold, you know, the fruits have higher sugar levels
than say the leaves, so it’s a little more protected form the frosts.
That being said, because it was affected, what I’m doing today is actually clear cutting
everything down, pulling all the peppers, dehydrating them, processing them today.
So I’ll have them, you know, to eat during the winter time when I don’t have fresh
peppers.
And some of the plants actually, like this guy right here, I mean it looks kind of, you
know, like it made it.
And so that’s really cool.
One of the things when I do get the first cold frost, you know, most of my basil plants
were messed up except like the Thai Basil kind of survived, and actually another basil
that I had in a protected area, and actually another basil i had actually in a totally
unprotected area which is just kind of weird.
But these are the plants that are more cold tolerant than the others.
So I’m pulling up any peppers that are still alive and healthy and I’m going to transplant
those in the pots, bring them in the greenhouse for the winter, over winter them.
And then you know stick them back outside come next year, so I’ll have a jump on the
season.
So what I want to do next actually is I’m going to harvest one of the berries that I
grew this year that’s like no other.
And you know, I’m actually glad that it frosted, because now I can actually harvest
them.
Because I have been waiting until their peak ripeness.
And they’re not going to get any riper than after they’ve been frosted.
So I’m going to go ahead and walk over there and I’ll show you guys some of the damage
that happened to my garden due to the frost.
Alright, so as we walk down one of rows here, you could see just the massive amount of damage.
So I mean, these guys, these leaves got really jacked up.
This was donor volunteer eggplant that came up.
It was really loving life until the frost hit.
Then it really is hating life.
And yeah all these guys, you know, just not looking happy.
Some of them worse than others for sure.
Yeah the frost really did a number on my garden.
But yeah nonetheless I still have tons of peppers to harvest.
Here’s a tomato plant that got kind of jacked up, you know.
All the leaves are jacked up.
And this is going to come down.
But what I want to share with you guys is this bed.
No not the peppers that got messed up.
Not the okra that’s finished.
But these guys.
This is my red malabar spinach.
This guy also got super jacked up.
You could see the leaves are just droopy.
They got frosted, now they’re getting dehydrated.
And I like that because we’re living in a dry climate here, it’s not going to like
really mould, it will just dehydrate, like, almost like freeze drying but not quite.
But if you guys look closely, you could see there are tons of ripe berries, you know.
So yesterday I harvested a bunch of berries and juiced them up, and you know, individually,
but I’m like that takes too long.
So I’m going to go ahead and share with you guys my new way of harvesting the berries.
And then also, more importantly, how I’m going to use these berries to benefit me,
besides just saving the seeds and re-growing them.
Alright, so as you guys could see, well my malabar spinach did get jacked up.
This is Chayote, a vine actually that I planted from the fruit from the Mexican market.
And it’s actually doing quite well even after the mild frost.
So it’s not super frost tolerant.
But I want to move this back for you guys and just reveal if I can some of these little
berries here from the Malabar Spinach.
So you could see here.
I’ll cut these off for you guys so you guys could see that, these guys are like the immature
ones.
So any kind of fruit, I don’t necessarily recommend you guys harvest them when they’re
not ripe and you eat them, because there may be toxins in there.
So like tomatoes and potatoes and things, eggplants may have excess of toxins if they’re
not fully ripe.
Specially things that are in the nitrate family.
And unfortunately, you know, a lot of the research online for the malabar spinach, you
know, says that people eat the leaves and the shoots, but they never mentions the fruits.
Which in my opinion are in some cases even more valuable than the leaves, which you know,
I love.
And since I can’t enjoy the leaves anymore, I’m going to enjoy the fruits.
But yeah don’t harvest the immature fruits.
I’d encourage you guys to harvest the fully mature fruits.
So I’m going to go ahead and show you guys the differences.
This is immature fruits.
They’re all green and small.
And let me go ahead and find one right here, alright so this bunch right here, you guys
could see at the top of the stack or the top you know, there’s a purple ones.
But as we get closer to the bottom, you know, they’re kind of green . So this is one actually
I wouldn’t necessarily harvest.
You know, I might pick off some of these top purple berries to eat.
But more than likely I would save these purple berries for seed for next year.
So I’m going to put those aside.
But what I want to do when I’m harvesting is I want to get the most darkest richest
deepest color berries that are the ripest.
Because these will have the highest levels of what I am after in the fruit because there’s
not a lot of research in this.
I’m after the pigments.
That dark purple pigments in the fruit.
I mean, we all heard that blueberries are so good for you man, you should eat lots of
blueberries.Well the main reason why blueberries are so good for you is the anthocyanins.
And that’s the purple coloring in these guys.
They’re even darker purple than the blueberries, so they’re probably even more beneficial
than blueberries in my opinion.
So I’m going to harvest the extremely ripe ones.
And what I’m going to do to do that is we’re going to go over and just come back to a stem
here that have all the seeds.
And we’re just going to go ahead and cut it off.
And as you guys could see, this stem is little bit different than the last stem I had.
This stem actually is basically instead of being green, the stem, it’s actually red.
So that’s a good sign.
Plus all the berries are actually fairly large size and they’re all purple.
Then we just cut off the end.
And instead of separating out the berries individually, which I did do yesterday which
got kind of messy, stained my hands, I’m just going to go ahead and take it attached
to the vine.
Because after all the young shoots are edible.
So all this is edible.
And so why separate them.
So I’m going to go ahead and harvest a bunch of the berries here so I could use them today.
And next I’ll show you guys actually how I’m going to use these berries to get the
nutrition into me instead of just leaving them here for seed.
Alright, so as you guys could see, we got all these berries, which actually I’m pretty
much leaving alone because some of these berries are like purple and then they’re green on
the tips.
So I’m not harvesting those.
Though if I was desperate, I would harvest those guys.
But why harvest the partially ripe ones when you could get fully ripe ones.
Like I have a nice little bowl full here.
And these are basically all purple on the entire vine here, nice and deep purple.
Now, one of the things I‘m challenged with about even making this video for you guys
is because I don’t like to show things, you know, with you guys that could be potentially
dangerous and/or poisonous.
It’s well known that the leaves and the shoots and the stems on the Malabar spinach
is edible.
But through all my exhaustive google searches for you know, edible fruits or the berries
on the malabar spinach, it revealed nothing.
Now does this mean you should be scared and not eat it?
Absolutely.
You know, you may want to be concerned if you can’t find you know, data or research
or information that says traditional peoples ate these berries.
Which I’m sure they probably did.
But it’s just not, the information is just no available online.
So I’m not sure.
So I did make a whole bunch of this juice yesterday and I consumed it.
And I’m still alright.
Although I don’t know if I’d do this in any large quantities like every single day
of my life.
You know, I’m going to enjoy these now while they are in season.
Have a bunch of this now and then probably for the rest of the year I’m not going to
even eat any malabar berries.
So, you know, there’s toxins in every food including kale and spinach.
There’s anti nutrients and there’s positive nutrients.
And I always think it’s quite viable and critical that you guys, like I do, balance
the different foods you eat and always rotate your diet.
Always eat small amounts of different things so that you never build up any too much of
one toxin from one particular food.
That being said, what I’m going to do with these guys is actually juice them.
And I’m going to juice them in a very specific way for a very specific reason.
So let’s go ahead and go inside, prep these guys to get juiced.
Then we’re going to show you guys how I’m going to juice these with a special juicer
for a special reason.
So now I’m inside and we’re going to go ahead and juice the prepared berries here.
I’ve basically just washed them and rinsed them off and shook them dry a little bit.
And what we’re going to do is I’m not going to put it through a traditional fruit
and vegetable juicer.
The one on the counter here is the Omega VSJ843S, that’s the one I use regularly.
And it’s a second generation vertical single auger juicer.
The other main competitor in the world of vertical auger juicers that are the best is
the Slowstar juicer.
So if you don’t have a fruit and vegetable juicer, one of those two in my opinion are
the best all around for people that want to juice a variety of fruits and vegetables.
But I’m not going to do that today because the VSJ is so efficient that it actually would
crush up the seeds, and put some of the seed extract in the juice.
Now because I don’t know that these berries or the seeds are edible, I’m going to be
very cautious.
I mean, I do know that in some seeds there are some toxins in there, and in too high
quantities it’s not good for us.
But in other seeds there are actually beneficial nutrients such as grape seeds, you know.
There’s pycnogenol or really good antioxidant properties in grape seeds and that’s why
you should chew up your grape seeds and swallow them and don’t get seedless grapes.
Grow your own grapes that have seeds in them.
But I’m not so sure about these guys.
You know, there may be beneficial nutrients in this seed.
I just don’t know.
So I’m going to be cautious, I’m not going to grind up the seeds and get seed juice.
Plus that won’t make it taste as sweet.
So what I am going to do is I’m going to go ahead and use this baby.
And this is called the Pure Juicer.
So this is a two stage juicer, first grinding and then basically it’s a hydraulic press,
all fully automatic run by motor.
I’ve been testing this lately and it’s been working out really good.
And this is the optimal way to basically press out all the juice out of the fruits.
And this in general is the best way to juice fruits, you know, like grapes or apples, use
a press, that’s how they did it in the old fashioned days.
And even fruit and vegetable juicers, while they do do do it, in some cases, maybe in
higher quality juice, the press juicer is the way they get the pulp the driest.
So to do this we can’t just put the berries in the little press plate.
We got to put them in a little press cloth that I have here.
So we’re just going to go ahead and put all the berries down in there.
And then we’re going to go ahead and fold this press cloth into like a sandwich.
And we want to try to concentrate all the berries, you know, right in the middle of
the cloth.
So I’m going to go ahead and fold over this cloth once.
Fold this cloth over twice.
We’re going to go ahead and fold this cloth over a third and finally shove all these guys
in there the fourth time.
And so now we have like a little press bag.
A mixture of the berries that are starting to leak out, look at that nice purple pigment.
We’re going to go ahead and put it right on here.
We’re going to go ahead and turn this machine on and slowly press this baby out.
And I’m going to get in closer for you guys.
As you guys can see it’s getting squeezed out.
And check it out, look at all that deep rich purple berry juice coming out.
Oh my gosh, that’s the deepest darkest blackest juice I’ve ever seen out of anything I’ve
ever juiced in my whole life.
This is totally amazing.
Alright so the juicer’s been sitting there and it’s been dripping quite a long time.
And I mean there’s actually a lot of juice in this stuff.
And this juicer is so efficient in getting it out.
I’ve actually repositioned the bag a few times.
Let’s go ahead and drop this guy and show you guys what we’ve got.
So after doing that, we’re going to go ahead and show you guys this.
Look at that.
This thing’s like totally smashed, man.
We got all this juice and this is still dripping off there.
Let that hang out.
We’re going to go ahead and grab this guy.
And this guy is going to drip everywhere.
Look at that.
Alright let’s go ahead and open this guy up for you guys.
So like in the pressed bag here let’s see what we get.
Look at that man, that’s just like mashed seeds.
Oh man, some of these seeds still might be germinable , growable.
So I’m going to maybe try to dry these out, and then maybe I’ll plant them next year
and see if they’ll germinate.
I’m sure some of them got crushed, but there’s plenty of them that are actually not crushed
and still good.
So yeah, that’s how it was to juice that malabar spinach berries.
And look at this.
I could start my own group.
It’s called the purple man group.
Don’t worry, this stuff will wash off.
It might take some time.
So if you’ve got to look pretty, I don’t know, I’d want to wear gloves.
But I think it’s good for your skin, high antioxidants.
Uhgh it has a weird smell.
Alright, so let’s go ahead and check this out.
Here’s the juice I made.
I made about a half cup.
We’re going to go ahead and try this stuff, some of this stuff straight up.
Mmmm.
So I’ve never quite drank it like that.
I’ve put a few berries in my mouth and squeezed it and spit out the seeds, and it really had
a neutral flavor.
There’s a little bit of a sour flavor which is kind of interesting.
So because this juice was not that sweet, what I’m going to do is combine it with
a really delicious juice.
And yesterday I did actually malabar spinach berries and pineapple.
That tastes phenomenal and that’s what I’d recommend you guys do.
But I’m going to use a different juice today, that’s going to give me different taste
sensations and different nutrition as well.
I used to sugarcane juice earlier.
And I’ll pop it up to show you guys what it looks like when I’m juicing sugarcane.
And this stuff is totally delicious and , sugarcane is a grass.
I’m growing sugarcane actually in my garden.
But this is not the sugarcane I grew because it needs a long season to grow.
But this stuff contains up to 90 minerals, and that’s if, only if and only if, the
soil had good mineral reserves in there by using things like rock dust and sea minerals
and what not.
So we’re going to go ahead and take some of this juice here.
We’re going to go ahead and pour it in, maybe just a little bit in the bottom.
And we’re going to go ahead and add in one of the sweetest most delicious juices I love,
sugarcane juice.
And look at that.
Still nice and purpley even though the sugarcane juice is nice and green.
And this looks like on the top, I don’t know if you guys can see the foam, it looks
like one of those drinks like they make in like one of those disney movies with the witch.
Ah my pretty, drink a green and purple juice.
Alright, and I will.
I mean this thing is almost black.
Oh my god, that’s so insane!
That’s probably one of the best juices I have ever tasted in my life.
You just taste like the sugarcane.
That purple just gets balanced out, you don’t taste the harshness of it.
You’re getting all the phytonutrients and phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals, and
more importantly, antioxidants from that deep purple pigment.
This is probably one of my new favorite juices in the world.
And now you guys learned how to do it yourself and juice your own malabar spinach berries,
you know.
So once again, before eating any berry, anything out there that you don’t know is edible,
you know, do your research.
I’m taking this on as full responsibility upon myself if something happens to me from
juicing these guy.
Once again that’s why I didn’t juice them with the seeds.
And people ask me, “John why don’t you juice the seeds?”
Because I don’t know if they’re actually edible or what.
So yeah do your research and be willing to put your life in your hands when eating foods
that don’t have, you know, documented research on them.
But anyways, today I’m going to be enjoying my sugarcane malabar spinach berry juice.
To your health.
I encourage you guys always to drink your fresh juices.
This is one of the best ways to use the food you are growing in your garden.
If you need to get a juicer, I would encourage you guys to support me and my work by making
your purchase at discountjuicers.com , which goes directly to enable me to make the gardening
videos and the videos that I make online to share my , you know, history, my education
and my knowledge about eating a healthy lifestyle rich in fresh fruits and fresh vegetables.
So if you guys enjoyed this episode and want more on how I prepare my food, hey please
give me thumbs up.
Let me know.
I make food every day with my stuff in my garden.
It’d be different, I thought I’d just film this for you guys since, you know, I
never did a video like this before in a while.
And be sure to check my past episodes.
I have over a eleven hundred episodes on all aspects of gardening, and at least a dozen
videos on how I use my food.
And be sure to click the Subscribe button right down below to be notified of my new
and upcoming episodes.
I have new episodes coming out about every three days.
You never know exactly what I’ll be doing or where I’ll turn up.
So well, once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgrees.com . We’ll see you
next time and until then remember - keep on growing.