alright this is john kohler at growingyourgreens.com. we've got another very exciting episode foryou. what we're going to do today in this episodeis answer you guys' questions. and so i answer a few questions sometimesin the comments when i can, but i don't want to make a life out of answering your guys'questions. i do have a way you guys can get your questionsanswered. if you go to the discussion tab on youtubeon my growingyourgreens page, you can actually put your question there or you could clickon the about tab and you could actually send me a message on youtube.
i pulled those questions then they'll go intoan episode like this. the other way that you can ask me a questionpersonally, is... i have a fiverr campaign, so for just $5,of which i get $4, you get to talk to me for 10 minutes and i will answer any questionsi can on the phone with you. i know a lot of things. i don't know a lot of things also, but it'llbe fun just chatting nonetheless. i've been having a challenge keeping up withgiving everybody a call back since i've been so busy and have so many things going on,but i try to call people back when i have some time available.
so without further....i'll put a link downbelow to that so you guys can do that if you want...without further ado, let's get intothese questions. treva barns asked, "hi john i live in westernmaryland downtown fredric and i'm looking for rock dust. the quarries in this area have limestone,is that good for my garden? i have red clay soil in my attached flowerboxes and most of my yard and want to prepare them for growing edibles, herbs, flowers andothers that will still look nice for the front of my house. what items to you recommend to maximize mygrowing potential?
i make compost tea planted by works to introduceto the boxes and covered with fabric and mulch to protect it from the birds. any other tips you can give are appreciated." alright treva, so, i just recommend what ido in my videos basically. making a really rich soil blend to put inyour boxes, especially in containers or raised beds. you need to make sure you have really goodsoil so i do recommend getting some kind of compost mixture. try to seek out some really good fungal dominatedcompost.
it's very important. if you're going to have boxes, like raisedbeds, then it's not as critical, but if you're having smaller container boxes, then it'simportant to have. make sure the soil drains well. a potting soil mix because it basically isan over-sized, large, pot. other than that i would say watch my videosfor my tips. i would recommend, also adding some worm castingsin there as well. of course the rock dust. to get rock dust near you, i recommend everybodycheck out the website asamite.com, and there's
a little tab that says, "where to buy." click that tab and you could see where inyour area rock dust is available. for you i think a feed store called southernstates in fredric, and they should have it there. if they don't have it in stock they shouldbe able to special order from their warehouse. so that's really cool. check out my videos and good luck. next question b.t. "hey john, i love watching your videos you'rean inspiration and really charismatic."
thank you, "i live in alabama and wonderingif you could do a video on growing organically in the south east us. i've had a veggie garden for about three years,but every single time my handful of squashes, cucumbers, beans, etc. get decimated by insects. squash vine borer, cucumber worms, cucumberbeetles, and fungal diseases. how do i avoid these issues without usingpesticides? i use neem plus seltzer for past fungal infections,burma compost, and even my own mix of poke leaf tea. none of it seems to work for more than a fewdays, to combat the problem.
the only thing i've had luck growing is quinoa,l-o-l. thanks for any help you can give me." i need to say it. i've never grown anything in the south eastunited states. i'm from the south west. maybe things are a lot easier to grow outhere. my cucumbers, i mean i get a few bugs, buthardly anything. it's a lot easier to grow. nonetheless there is a solution for you guyswithout moving.
i would recommend and encourage you guys tofind people in your area that's growing successfully. these are probably some of the practices icould imagine they do, because i have traveled to florida and seen how other places growfood among my travels in the us. there’s always something you could do toprevent damage that you're getting. number one thing i would do is, grow propervarieties. there's certain varieties of squash that arenot affected by the bore squash vine, or whatever, vine squash bore. that's really cool. you could try that.
also grow different varieties to outsmartthem. if you keep growing cucumbers every time andit's not working you could try to figure out how to make it work, or you could grow anotherkind of crop that's similar that, you know, they're not going to attack. so, i would maybe, likely try this one called,hachacha, or bolivian cucumbers. they may be resistant to those guys. the thing i would do, is i would enclose them. you know, put coop houses over your raisedbed and put like a remit fabric cloth so it kind helps keep it cool.
maybe even some shade cloth like i'm sittingunder right now. make sure it's completely enclosed, like youwouldn't leave the front door of your house open so a burglar could come in and rob you. you don't want to leave your plants exposed. you know, so the bugs could get them. build some kind of structure around them,to keep them out. that's probably what i would do, you couldsit there and try to find organic things to spray on them and get rid of them, and youcould try to use traps and all this kind of stuff.
i don't know that, can be an uphill battle. i haven't had to, you know, go to battle withthose particular insects myself. it would be interesting if i did to see whatspecifically i would do. i know there's a way to do it. you know, just remain, passionate about findingan answer and you'll find it, but just keep trying new and different things. and try new and different crops. so pick up, like, you know, a bakers creakseat catalog. and besides quinoa, start ordering differentseeds and just start planting them out and
see what the heck happens. also, you know, check with other local organicgrowers in your area and see how they're combating it. that's probably my best answers that i cangive, having never grown in your area before. alright, let's see, next question is fromjohn prez, "man, great videos! i can always find one of your videos thatis helpful and relevant to what i'm looking for, but i'm stumped and would like any newinput on this. i planted some swiss chard, well that's whatit said on the seed packet. i know swiss chard is salty and purple.
mine is salty but not purple. from what i understand it's supposed to bepurple, so is this chard or something else." alright john if they came in a packet of swisschard seeds and it's from a reputable seller or dealer, and had a picture of swiss chardon it then it's probably swiss chard. swiss chard comes in many colors. there's like a rainbow swiss chard. the main leaves are always like, you know,green and then stalk and the stems could be different colors. i've seen like, pink, green, yellow, red,i don't know if i've ever seen purple so...
but yeah....i mean the other thing you coulddo is, you know, look up pictures of swiss chard on google and click images and thenyou'll see all the pictures of swiss chard in the world. then hopefully one of those will look likeyours. alright. if it's not swiss chard then post down below,the seed company because then they put the wrong seeds in the pack. which is... possible. it'd be asinine but possible.
sevenmonky. "hi john i love your videos. i've been subscribed for a year or so now. i've a question about blossom end-rot. mostly heirloom tomatoes and occasionallymy peppers will suffer blossom end-rot. from what i understand is it's a calcium deficiency. i was going to treat them with milk, but thecost of milk makes it painful. i do however have some powdered milk i boughtfor camping. would that be okay to use?
it may even help the thirsty insects go away. will come feed on the fats in the milk?" alright yes, blossom end-rot is a calciumdeficiency. now there's reasons for the calcium deficiency. it could mean a calcium deficiency in thesoil, or for example it could mean you're not watering evenly, so that the plants can'ttake up the calcium from the soil. so yeah, i want you to be aware of that andnot just, you know, always spreading milk around and other calcium sources on your tomatoes. if you have uneven watering this may causethe problem.
so, be aware of that. so, if you've got the watering situation correctedyes, i mean, regular milk works, powdered milk would work as well. so i would do that and see what the heck happens. alright, joshua betell, "so, i'm fairly newto the whole organic, sustainable, and self-sufficient scene and i'm really glad i found a wealthof knowledge and passion on this channel. i've a bit of a history of gardening but itwas always just the chemical, commercial fertilizer, pesticide, and miracle-grow crap." he said that i didn't.
"i recently taken to tending to my parent'smassive yard for them and i don't have one of my own, and they are unable to manage theirscurrently. we are really struggling to get anything stableto grow and i'm realizing just how badly the yard has been damaged by years of chemicalsand general mismanagement. i've pretty much got the hang of soil restorationand permaculture plotting, but one thing i'm really struggling with is removing pollutants,especially the weed-lining. they have pretty huge backyard. i have already accepted it will be a good2+ years of work before the garden can be considered healthy.
i know things like certain plants, worms,and composts will speed up diluting and breaking down the chemicals and crap but is there abetter way to remove hundreds of square feet of weed-lining. i've been using shovels and rakes and goodold-fashioned elbow-grease, but there's so many pieces that are shredding off and it'spretty much impossible. right now i'm not even going to try to growanything because nothing will. once i've done all i can manually is theresomething, like citric acid or something i could spray to hasten the breakdown and decompositionof all the tiny remnants left over or would that be more harm than good?
i scraped off the top level of soil, but justkeep finding bits and pieces here and there. i just want to be done with the clean up soi can start with the healing process and produce healthy quality and safe food for my familyand i." alright, joshua, so yeah, the lining, the plastic lining. you know, sometimes actually, in this yardhere they laid down sod and then they had all that, it's like a mesh, mesh, it's likea plastic mesh that basically the sod gets grown on and then they put that in. so i've dug up so much of that stuff and ihaven't even got it all yet. in my other yard, i basically have the blackplastic underneath areas of the yard.
so, what i recommend is, good old-fashionedelbow-grease, right. get as much as you can out and if you don'tget every last, iota, bit, chunk, piece of plastic don't worry about it, you know. just be happy that your yard is not like thepacific gyre in the ocean where it's tons of plastic in small little bits, right. i mean i wish there wasn't any plastic andnobody had ever used that kind of stuff in the garden or the yards, but the fact is thatit's there and you know, it's not the worst thing for your garden. i've heard before that plastic, particlescannot be absorbed by plants because they're
too large. i don't know if this is true or not, but weneed to not worry about this right. we need to just steam right over it and moveon right. if you take up an area of plastic in the gardengreat. build a raised bed over it. throw on some good soil you know, and startgrowing in that and start restoring the soil in the backyard on small bit at a time. one small area at a time and just move onfrom area to area. as you finish an area plant that out and thenmove on to the next area.
if you don't move on that's all right. of course if there's other pesticides andchemicals in the yard, you know, mitigation for those can vary widely. what i would recommend is bacteria, microbes,and fungi. these guys will break down, i'm not goingto say everything, but a lot of different things. so one of the things i would spray, it's notgoing to break down the plastic though, is the em-1 product. it's effective microbes or essential microbes,i forget what it is.
the em-1 product right. another compost tease, but i'd like to usesomething kind of stronger, like the em-1 for you know, heavy, heavy doses of, you know,not the best soil. to bring back the soil biology, you know,and add things like compost and rock dust and the worm castings, and all the thingsi recommend and slowly but surely you'll recover that into a more organic and natural backyard. so, yeah. i'm glad you're doing this for you and yourparents and i hope more people jump on the bandwagon like you.
alright, next question is from, jen grezza,"hi john, i've been watching your videos for a while and i've hardly ever missed one. i wanted to ask your opinion on raising ironlevels while eating raw. i have always suffered from anemia or a lowiron. i can only take iron supplements and incorporatelots of spinach, kale, swiss chard in my diet. do you have any ideas on other raw ways toraise iron levels? thank you and good luck finding your new place." so, number one, i would recommend greens. greens are probably one of the best sourcesof iron.
of course things like, the spinach, whichyou may want to definitely rotate because it has oxalic so you may not absorb the ironthat's in there. swiss chard, turner greens, turnip greens,even things like batchoy, they all have the iron in there. so, eat those guys. now in my opinion i wouldn't just eat those. what i would do, what i would personally do,is i would juice them because if you try to eat a pound of spinach, that's kind of hard,but if you juice a pound of spinach, turning it into one cup of juice it's easily eatenand absorbed.
especially if you're not chewing your foodinto a mush and swallowing big chunks of spinach, despite you eating them, they're not goingto get, you know, the ideal amount of vitamins, minerals, and fiber nutrients out of them. so i recommend juicing them to take away thefiber in there so that you could have a greater uptake. also i would encourage you to juice them withsomething high in vitamin c. like bell peppers, high in vitamin c, or oranges, classing, highin vitamin c. and so it's said that if you eat iron foodswith vitamin c your uptake will be increased. another way that i would do it is eat lentils.
so i would do sprouted lentils. many beans are toxic if you eat them raw,but if you can sprout lentils and eat those raw they're actually quite good and i wouldrotate the different kinds of lentils. there's all different kinds of lentils. and then the final thing i would do is, inyour garden, i would encourage you, especially where you grow your greens to make sure youhave iron sufficiency in your soil because if you think you're growing greens and youdon't have enough iron in your soil, if there's not enough iron in your soil the plants aren'tgoing to take up the iron and when you eat the plants you're not going to get the ironconsequently.
this may be a huge problem in modern agriculture. where they may not be supplementing the ironand there are reliable declines in food grown in the commercial system. whether that's organic or conventionally grownproduce items because the soils are getting poorer and poorer because they're not beingbuilt. and that's what i teach you guys in my episodes. it's how to build the soils so you guys havethe highest, you know, quality food. so you guys can be the healthiest becauseit all comes down to the quality of the food you eat and i want you guys to eat high qualityfood to be a high quality person.
alright? so yeah, minimally check to make sure youhave proper iron levels and then add iron as needed, accordingly. alright, so those are my tips, i hope it helpsyou out. alright, getting down to the last couple ofquestions. chelsea tolentino, "do you sell ashitaba seeds? can i buy some?" yes. so currently i'm currently offering ashitabaseeds i'll put a link down below.
it's basically growingyourgreens.ecwid.com. that'll take you to my seeds shop where i'mselling, well actually i'm not selling them. my girlfriend's selling because now she'shandling all the seeds sales. she currently is looking for a job and needswork, so i'm having her sell all the seeds. so that frees me from doing it because i dida terrible job shipping seeds out because i'm so busy doing stuff. so she's dedicated to doing that. we currently have available the ashitaba,some malabar spinach, we just put up some tree collards on there, and maybe if i findsome other things we'll get those packed up.
all the seeds that we're offering there, isactually grown by me. so i'm not offering seeds like, grown by anybodyelse. they're all my seeds that i hand harvestedwith my own two hands and are offering to you guys. so you guys can get some of these rare varieties. so, yeah, check it out. let's see here. next question is from saurov mancrew. "hi john, i am a beginner gardener.
i've never done gardening in my life before. at my local nursery they have two types ofsoils. one, premium garden mix, is a blend of soil,sand, ash, vine barks, and duck manure. number two, veggie mix, is a mix of soil,sand, ash, bark vines, mushroom compost, cow manure, and duck manure. i have inherited and established garden fromthe previous owner. now what i am trying to do is to top off thesoil throughout the garden. which can also benefit from various manuresin each soil listed above. my garden contains stuff like citrus, arecapalm, lavender, mango, and a veggie patch.
which one can i use to work throughout thegarden?" alright, so, you know. on test i always like to have, like, there'soption a and b. i like to think option c. or you, know, neither of the two. i mean, those sound all right. of the two i'd get the veggie mix and justput that everywhere, but don't just go to your local nursery to find the best soil,right? the best soil may be at a different nursery. so, i would investigate all the nurseries,or all the places that sell soil in a, i don't
know, twenty, thirty, mile radius around you. whatever you feel comfortable with. this is what i've done every time i go tobuy, like a load of compost, or soil. i'll go to all the different places and inspectall the bagged products and more importantly bulk products that are a lot cheaper and seewhich one makes the most sense for me. which one has a nice range of nutrients? which one has more microbial action, provenby food-soil web testing. if they have it. which one looks, feels, and smells more rich,deep and black to me.
instead of like, you know, light and sandylike many composts in this area are like. then i go with that. so yeah, that'd be my recommendation for you. i would also recommend checking my other videos,and besides just adding a soil mix, you know, add some extra things to that soil mix. like i talked about earlier, the rock dust,one of my favorite things to add. i mean you could add soil hamates. you could add worm castings. lots of different things.
i've used a lot of different things here,but yeah, the main thing is get a good, high-quality compost and try to source a fungal dominatedcompost if you can. that's quite rare. that would help, especially your trees andpalms more than a standard bacterial compost, but that may be hard to find. but if you have a lot of garden space andarea also start mulching with wood-chips and let that break down over time and you'll createyour own fungal dominated compost. alright, we're down to the last question today,good thing, it's getting dark. christopher schiakur, "hi mr. culler, i keephearing that we need vitamin b12 and that
the only source is meat and dairy products. how do you and other raw food vegans get yourb12? regards from norway, christopher" alright. so christopher, the thing is this, like, basedon my research and what i've learned, vitamin b12 deficiency is not just a vegan problem,it's an entire world problem at this point. meat eaters, vegans, vegetarians. whatever you eat, you know, a good percentageof people now-a-days, no matter their diet, are b12 deficient. this is a very big, huge problem and, youknow, people selling supplements would say,
"supplements are the answer!" and so, right, you know. supplements are a modern answer to an ageold problem, and so i do take a supplement. i encourage all of you guys out there, nomatter your diet to take a b12 supplement. do not depend that, your meat will have b12,unless you're testing it and checking it. you don't know, so i would take a supplement. it's a very cheap insurance policy and i'dtake a supplement with 3 different forms of b12 in it. which is quite good, because some people don'tabsorb certain kinds of b12.
there's a greater, bigger, more sinister pictureinvolved right. the way we would have naturally got b12, likehundreds of years ago, before all this pollution, contamination, soil degradation, is waterholes. in water, in naturally occurring areas inwater that has been unpolluted, there is naturally occurring b12 in the water. there's no place in the cow, the pig, themeat, the goats that make the cheese. there's no place cow's body that actuallymakes b12. the b12 is produced by what? it’s bacteria.
it's bacteria that get in the water, and theybasically, for lack of a better word poop out b12. that's a simplified version of course andso then you drink the contaminated water, and then we get it. or the cow and the sheep drink the water that'scontaminated with b12 and they get it, right. then it just stays inside them and then whenwe eat them the meat, or the cheese, or the eggs, or the dairy, or whatever we're gettingthe b12 second-hand. so that's not where it actually came from,but the problem today is that, you know there's all these, you know, cafo.
you know. confined animal feeding operations that arefeeding animals corn and soy. these corn and soy are grown on geneticallymodified crops and conventional fertilized crops that don't have the bacteria becausebig industrial farmers, they don't want any bacteria they want sterile soil. they're just, you know, drip feeding the specificnutrients they want. so, the huger problem is because the soilsterilization, and because we're getting rid of microbes at alarming rates and degradingthe soil and we're losing soil fertility. we're also losing the vitamin b12 that wouldbe created by the bacteria in the soil.
so, in pasture for example, if cows are eatinggrass and there's good bacterial activity in the soil, cows are eating, not just thegrass, because they're not very perfect. they don't have knives to slice off the grassand not eat any dirt. they're eating the dirt, the roots, and allthis kind of stuff and they're getting some of that b12 contamination when they eat theirfood. so that's how they get b12 in an ideal situation. but just because a cow is pasture raised,doesn't mean it's going to necessarily have b12 in it, because it might also, you know,finish it with grass but start it with corn and soy.
which may mess up your get. which may mean that they're not up-takingcertain vitamins and minerals properly. anyways, to make a long story short, thisis like all my research that i've done over the years and all this. i'm really passionate about this topic, butbasically we need to bring back the micro-flora in the garden. we need to replace, and make sure we have,you know, huge populations of bacteria because it's the bacteria that make b12. some people would say, like, vegans mightsay, "oh hey john just don't wash your produce
and you're going to get some b12." well okay, if it's not naturally grown produce,you're probably not going to get b12 because it's probably not in there. and then when they harvest and pick it andsterilize it five times before it gets to you because they want to kill all the e. colibacteria, it may not have b12 and then even if you grow something in your garden it doesn'tmean it's going to have high b12 levels if you don't wash it right. there's chem-trail pollution and all kindsof different chemicals raining on us all the time.
the thing is this, i think it's right at thispoint in time, no matter who you are, vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, you know, omnivore,whatever you eat, take a b12 supplement. that's like cheap insurance right. the better way, which is the way i've beenworking on for years, is to increase the soil microbiome and feed the soil with proper mineralsthat b12 might need, like cobalt. which is also missing. there are so many pieces to this puzzle. like if cobalt's missing, if bacteria aremissing, b12 won't be made right. so anyways, long story short, i talked witha manufacturer of bacterial inoculants and
they have specific bacteria that actuallybreak down, cobalt, and also i had them look up to see which bacteria actually produceb12. i have a nice little list of the bacteriathat do that .my goal is to have them manufacture, basically a soil supplement, with all thebacteria, the tough strains of bacteria that produce b12, and then inoculate my gardenwith that. hopefully if i can keep them alive, and justkeep them growing. they'll do what they do. they'll make the b12, they'll put it in mygarden. they'll put it in my plants, and then i'llget to eat it.
so yeah, that's the long and short of it. i mean, certain plants will take up more b12than others. like i've ashitaba grown over there. ashitaba is said to take up b12 as is somepalms. so there's some certain palm sugars that mayhave b12 in it as a plant base source. although a lot of products, like seaweeds,or spirulina, that people could say, "oh, it has b12." they have b12 analogues which register asb12 when they do the testing, but then when you take it actually doesn't convert to b12in us.
and actually may block the absorption sites. so that's a-whole-nother topic. yeah, i've gone too far on this. basically the answer is soil fertility inthe end. we want to make sure we have the bacterial,the proper minerals, in the soil. that's why i'm so into bacterials and mineralsand stress those and different, you know micro-life in the soil. microbes, fungi, all these arthropods, andall these things in the soil. it's really important to create a system likewe would've in nature, because we've gotten
so far away from that. so hopefully that answers a little bit morethan your questions. i kind of feel like my dad. when i was kid my dad, would just like, giveme an answer and like, tell me more than i wanted to know. hopefully i didn't tell you guys more thanyou want to know but i told you guys the information you need to enhance and better your life. so anyways, it's getting dark, i'm gettinghungry. i've got to go and eat some dinner.
if you guys enjoy this episode, hey, pleasebe sure to give me a thumbs up. it'll encourage me to do more q&a's in thefuture. haven't' done a whole lot lately. also be sure to click that subscribe button,right down below to be notified of my new and upcoming episodes that are coming outevery three to four days. also be sure to check out my past episodes. my past episodes are a wealth of knowledge. i have over twelve hundred episodes to teachyou guys all aspects of gardening at this so once again my name is john kohler withgrowingyourgreens.com.
we'll see you next time, and until then remember,keep on growing.