alright, this is john kohler from growingyourgreens.com.they’ve another exciting episode for you and aloha from beautiful big island hawaii.i have another amazing episode for you guys today. and the reason for this episode is‘cos i’m gonna visit a friend of mine who’s actually been quite popular lately.he’s actually been written up in the whole seed catalog. now the whole seed catalog isbasically one of my favorite rare seed catalogs put out by baker creek heirloom seeds. thisis the deluxe model man. this thing is like a 2015, and it’s like, it’s a 335 pageseed catalog but more than just having seeds in there, there’s a lot of informative articlesand how they get the seeds, how they secure the seeds, how they source the seeds, howto improve your soil, all this kind of stuff.
and my buddy right here is chris carter, knownas coconut chris. he has a nice write up right here. i’ll just kinda read you the firstparagraph. seeing chris carter climb a tree isn’t much different from seeing a monkeydo so. chris has been given the nickname “coconut chris†because of his tree climbing prowess.chris is a local celebrity on the big island of hawaii where he maintains a permaculturegarden that is truly a wonderland. he has dozens of variety of rare hawaiian bananas,some of which he found on hiking experiences, uh expeditions, to remote valleys of the island.there are hundreds of fruits and vegetables growing in chris’ gardens and people comefrom near and far to see them. and that’s where i am today. i’m at my buddy coconutchris’ amazing garden. i have been here
before and i’ll put a link down below tothe video where i couldn’t show you his garden, but i did show you a really uniqueand rare fruit known as the gac fruits. and, you know, why i’m standing here, i’m standingactually on the property, not looking at his garden but i’m overlooking the beautifulpacific ocean behind me. and there’s beautiful pasture land. and i mean, literally this isthe modeling clay that coconut chris had. you know, he had pasture land. actually thisis probably nicer than when he moved in. you couldn’t even walk on it barefoot. thisis almost like barefoot walkable. they keep it mowed. it’s basically just, you know,grass. and he had to start with a place that looked like this, just barren grass with nothinggrowing and he planted a beautiful fruit orchard.
so as we kinda just walk around, you can seelike there’s more pasture behind the fence there. he’s actually seeding along thisfence line the passion fruit or lilikoi. so he just takes fruits and chucks them alongthe fence and, you know, his style of gardening is hopefully one day they just actually startto sprout and grow up. up the road they have, you know, about ten acres in all of area thatthey’re growing and playing with and growing edibles. and over on this side, this is thebig difference that we’re looking at right. this is coconut chris’ amazing permaculturewonderland as described by the seed catalog. and today i have the pleasure of sharing itwith you guys, ‘cos i know a lot of you guys can’t come here, and chris unfortunatelydoesn’t really give public tours. you know,
he does have a wwoof-ing farming experiencesif you wanna come here and actually learn and, more importantly, work ‘cos, you know,chris’ll make you work whether you come here to visit like i am today or whether youcome here to really work and to learn the skills that it takes to build your own worldclass permaculture wonderland like he has done here. so anyways let’s go ahead andhead in the wonderland and show you guys what’s growing on.so now we’re gonna walk into this wonderland here. before we even enter i wanna share withyou guys like along the total edges of the food forest, i mean, he’s planted many differentthings. this is actually one of his most hated plants. it’s actually known as the chaya.so the chaya, it makes basically edible leaves
that you can eat only once cooked. they aretoxic raw. in addition, something i learnt today, is actually the sap, you know likewe cut that lettuce we’ve got that white sap. and just the other day i had a friendat my house – he cut some lettuce and he just ate the sap. that’s something you donot want to do with a chaya. this stuff is very caustic. actually, you don’t even wannaget this sap on your skin. it’d be very bad. in addition, the chaya if you just dropit on the ground it may actually just root up from cuttings like that. but, you know,so this is an edible food crop, but it’s not one of chris’ favorite food crops. anin my opinion, you know, there are far many more interesting, edible trees that you caneat its leaves as vegetables that he’s growing
besides the chaya. so, you know, you mightwanna grow it but there’s other ones that i’d prefer to grow. i mean, aside from thatwe got some whole leaf basil. these guys are taller than 6 feet and here in the tropicswhere they don’t get freezes, unless we get global colding, which i think it’s happeningthe other way, you can grow these guys, the basils, year round. they grow amazing. i mean,all different kinds of things, both you know like edible crops, which this is primarily,but there is also plenty of, you know, landscape and ornamentals mixed in as well. we got thecomprete here, you know, really good to pull nutrients up. and as you guys can see likeone of the things that chris is really into is mulching. now whether he means mulchingwith, like you know, weeds and decayed matter
or tree limbs, all that stuff that’s onekind of mulching, but the other kind of mulching is on the other side of the pathway righthere. and what you’re looking at now is another kind of mulch he likes to do. andthis is a living mulch or a living ground cover. and this is one of his favorite plantsfor the ground cover in his perennial food forest. this is actually the sweet potatovine. so this is actually will just like grow over the grass and eventually choke it out.and it grows above the grass and it makes the edible sweet potatoes underneath the groundthat are edible. and so he really likes this a lot, as you guys can see it makes a beautifulground cover and more than likely this is something that i would use. because not onlydoes it produce food, it also helps you shade
the ground, you know, to retain moisture,you know, for the trees and the things growing above. and that’s what he has here, youknow, he has like dwarf coconuts, he had some bananas growing here that he’s shaved down.he’s got some special, unique varieties of papaya. here’s a little small papaya,like this is a whole size papaya. some really rare papayas. i mean, chris gets seeds fromall over the world and grows it here on this property on the big island. i mean, he hasstuff that nobody even grows in the whole united states and hopefully i’ll show youat least one of these guys today. i mean, it’s amazing the diversity that’s outthere and coconut chris really tries to get as much diversity. and in this nice isolatedarea where he’s not getting pollen contamination,
there’s no major growers around him formiles, he’s able to grow some unique strains and keep the genetics pure because he willonly grow certain varieties of certain crops. and he won’t even allow, like you know,seeds from non-gmo papayas growing somewhere else on his property ‘cos he doesn’t wannahave a contamination. so this is awesome and i believe everybody should, you know especiallywith the gmo crops, be more concerned about growing any kind of gmo contaminated croppingand get tested and pure seeds. absolutely. i mean, we could just walk in here. he’sgot some amazingly large leaves here and all kinds of edibles. i mean, if i was chris i’dbe saying “this is this kinda fruit tree, this is this kinda fruit treeâ€, but i’lltell you this one is a papaya palm, uh plant,
not a tree, because papayas aren’t trees.here’s another tree here. and he has pretty close spacing on some of these guys. you know,part of his whole theory is he plants things a lot closer than you normally might. andthen if it’s not doing well, he might cut it down or, you know, use it for mulch. andthat’s kinda like, it’s kinda like, having an insurance policy right – the more treesyou plant, you know, the more ones that could mess up, but you’re be bound and be sureto have some good ones. this is one of my favorite areas of his garden actually righthere that we just passed. and these are known as an edible shrub and if you live anywherein hawaii these are definitely two of the plants that you should definitely grow, absolutely.this is my number one favorite perennial vegetable
for tropics of all time. it’s simply knownas the katuk. k-a-t-u-k. or in florida they spell it k-tak or they say k-tak. but whatit is it basically makes these edible leaves. so these are the leaves. i like to just comedown and just strip all the leaves off and throw that in a salad bowl and you could just,you know, eat them all. it kinda tastes like you’re eating peanut butter. it’s so goodanywhere, and anybody that lives in the tropics should definitely be growing some of thisstuff. by far most delicious green i’ve ever tasted. i guess let’s see, it has theselittle red flowers and then they turn into these little seed pods. but normally thisis propagated by cuttings. this will not do good where it gets cold, where it freezes.so don’t try to grow it unless you’re
growing it indoors. but, if you live in thetropics one you must grow for sure. going down, intermixed with the katuk, if we lookvery closely there’s another one of my favorite perennial leafy greens that actually growannually that i bring in to my greenhouse. in the winter i dig it up and bring it inthe greenhouse. this is known as the purple okinawan spinach. and it’s purple becauseif we look on the back of the leaves you’re gonna see, let me find you a good specimen,over here is a big hedge of these guys. it’s nice and purple on the back side. and theseare another thing that’s really good to grow. it’s gonna basically just grow asa nice kind of a shrubby, viney hedge. grow it next to your katuk like he’s doing here.super good, super delicious and super easy.
i mean, literally you plant the katuk or theokinawan spinach once; it grows for years and years and years and years and years. insteadof like having to plant lettuce and having to replant it every 60 days right. if youguys live in the tropics, whether that’s hawaii or puerto rico, you wanna grow someof the plants that are more, you know, climate acclimated or climatory acclimated to thetropics such as these plants that would normally have been grown in the tropics. because youdon’t wanna grow plants, in my opinion, that are not acclimated to grow in the tropicsbecause they will be significantly harder to grow. in addition, it’d be my goal tojust plant all perennials that i could just plant once and not have to do anything everagain. i mean, this is just one area of chris’
amazing permaculture wonderland. this is allhis perennial food forest with, you know, not only edible vegetables but also plentyof different exotic and rare fruit trees that i have yet to know all the names. that’sa pomegranate there, i know that. oh and here’s another leafy green that you guys definitelywanna grow. you know, as you guys know my channel is called growing your greens andas much as i love fruits, and i love fruits, don’t get me wrong we’ve had some amazingheirloom bananas while we’ve been here. maybe you’ll see some at the end of thisvideo. vegetables are super important. i wanna encourage everybody out there to eat, youknow, 2 pounds of leafy greens a day. that’s my goal everyday – to eat 2 pounds of leafygreens. and in the tropics it can be difficult
to grow vegetables, but not the kinds thati’m showing you guys – the perennial vegetables. this is yet another one. this is actuallyknown as belay or be-lei and this is an edible hibiscus. so it makes these like leaves andthis is a young, baby tender leaf. some of the older leaves get affected by bugs, buteven if it has bug leaves you can still eat them. and you can just literally pick theleaves off this tree. nice and tender. to me, this tastes better than lettuce. i wishi can grow one of these, you know, in my climate because, once again, this is a tropical. itdoes not like to get below freezing. and i’d rather have a salad made out of this stuffinstead of lettuce. and it’s easier to grow in the tropics. i mean, we’re still on themain entry way here. i think we need to get
off the entry way and show you guys some ofthe more specific things he’s growing that will do really well for you as well. showyou some of his growing practices that you may wanna emulate if you have a bunch of spaceto work with. so now we’re in just one of many of thedifferent patches here or areas at coconut chris’ permaculture wonderland and there’sso many different things growing. there’s like the cuban oregano which is also usedas a ground cover in many areas. of course there’s conifery that’s just going over,you know, just pick it up and chop it and drop it. you’ve got a nice little aloe verahere. i mean, there’s so much diversity here. another thing is this palm behind me.it’s actually called the lolu and it’s
actually indemic to hawaii - only found here.and this is rare that chris has one of these. i mean he has so many different rare and uniqueplants that he’s growing out, propagating and sharing the seeds with others to keepthe genetic diversity alive. i mean, chris is a very multi-faceted man. i mean, he’ssaving seeds, he’s growing food, i mean, and all this stuff is connected. he’s, youknow, being able to become and, you know, create a more resilient, you know, hawaiiby teaching others to grow food and teaching interns to come here and how he’s literallymade this wonderland. so i got to try some of the fruits off this palm and it was simplyamazing. they’re like these little fruits – they’re kinda like, they’re kindalike mini coconuts but they’re not. you
know, they’re not like, you know, the chileanwine palm ‘cos that’s really like a coconut. these are actually quite delicious and quiteunique but they’re not a lot of food and they’re eaten when they’re in their veryyoung stage. what i really wanted to share with you in this area besides just the palmand different papayas he has is this plant right here, which is really a staple for himto grow in his permaculture system. i mean, he’ll just grow these and plant them outand then he’ll basically just cut them down whenever he wants to. and he’ll have likeliterally instant food. and what this is, this known as the chayote squash vine. he’scurrently growing two different varieties. this is something i grew even in california.the amazing part of the chayote that can be
eaten is the edible tips. so this is likethe edible tip, the growth tip. you just basically snap it back, you can snap that off. and theseshould be eaten like tender baby greens. quite good. now what’s normally used in the chayotethough is the chayote squash or the fruit itself. and if we look on the ground, we’regonna find a nice, large fruit here. and literally the fruit is the seed. so if you guys lookat this there’s like a little opening crack that looks like some kind of other openingcrack that you may be familiar with. but there’s a like little seed in there and what happensis this little seed just basically starts to germinate and you could plant this in theground, just throw it on the ground, it’ll send out like another shoot and also the rootsand grow a whole another chayote squash vine.
so what this means is you can go to your localmexican market and try to get them when they’re sprouting. that’s the best way. and youcould take them home and just plant them and have your very own chayote squash vine. nowthese are tropical creatures or plants, so they will not grow, you know, if you get ahard freeze. but i have grown them, you know, on the side of my house for the full summerseason and if it didn’t get too cold in the winter, it might barely make it. but theyare frost tender and they are some more hardier varieties than others. like i visited gardensin berkley and south san francisco in california where these guys can grow year round. nowbesides just the big fruit that it is normally thought of as something you cook with becauseit is a squash, something you could also do
is eat it raw. and many people do not knowthis and it’s actually quite delicious. if you’ve had a hard time growing, you know,something like cucumbers in the tropics you’re gonna wanna grow the chayote because it growsso much easier than any cucumber and to me it’s even more delectable. so we’re gonnago up here and try to find a young little baby chayote, and check it out, here’s likea little small one that’s like almost too small to harvest. this is getting a bit larger.and here’s a nice little small one right here. we’re gonna break that guy off andlook at that, nice and cute. this one is at a premature stage and at this point, niceand crunchy like the cucumber. tad bit sweet – a really similar consistency, kinda likethe consistency between like a crunchy cucumber
with no seeds and a baby zucchini squash.i mean, these are, i think, my new favorite vegetable to eat.so one of the things i like about coconut chris is that he grows really unique and exoticvarieties. you know, i’ve been to so many different farms, seen people grow the samethings over and over and over and over again. i think it gets so boring but when i comehere like i’m learning all kinds of new varieties and different kinds of stuff thati actually haven’t learned about anywhere else except his place. so this i really love.i love learning and growing and hopefully you guys do too and will learn a few thingsin this video as i am. and actually this is another one that’s fairly new to me althoughi did, i was here about a year ago and made
a video with coconut chris about this. thisis actually the gac fruit. so this is the gac fruit vine – this is the female vine.and this is a flower that is very sad – this is the female flower that actually hasn’tbeen pollinated so it’s kinda droopy and it’s gonna fall off and not produce a fruit.but chris and i made an amazing video on the gac fruit, and i’ll put a link down belowso check that one out if you haven’t seen it already. and, you know, and i guess i’mgonna venture on and try to find some more unique, rare varieties that he’s grown thati haven’t found anywhere else. actually one of which i learned about earlier is anew variety of jicima that nobody else is growing. and the plant is like way down inthe north so i don’t know if i’ll get
to share with you guys that. but maybe atthe end of this video we’ll get chris to share what that is and a little more aboutsome of the unique and rare varieties of food crops that he’s growing that nobody elseis. i mean, i think it’s really important i always wanna encourage you guys to diversify.you know diversify, grow something different. if there’s a bug or an infection, a diseaseon some of your plants and you’re growing all kale and all your kale’s affected, poofthere goes your food security. you got nothing to eat man. but if you’re growing differentkinds of things, things that nobody else is growing right, you’re gonna be more resilient.you’re gonna create built in resilience into your garden and that’s one of the thingsi love about chris’ garden. i mean, he’s
got so much more resilience here than literallyany place i’ve ever seen so far in the whole united states. so let’s go on and sharewith you guys some more awesome plants growing here.alright, so this is another crop that i wanna share with you guys. i mean, i shared withyou guys one of these earlier but this is another kind of edible hibiscus or belay andthis is like a red stemmed one, so this is like much more exotic and really cool looking.if you look, you know, this tree is literally off shooting several places. i mean, thisis all one branch where it’s off shooting. you got all these different tops coming off.and the cool thing about the belay is that it’s propagated by cuttings, so literallyyou just, you know, break off a cutting, stick
it in the ground and it’ll grow a wholenew tree. and plus, you know, all these leaves are all edible and they taste better thansalad. there are so many different varieties of the edible belay hibiscus and they comein all different leaves, shapes and varieties. you know, i saw a presentation by john venezuela,california rare fruit growers’ member, and man there is all kinds of cool varieties thati saw in pictures. and hopefully one day i get to go to a place where i get to tastemany of them. this absolutely is one of my favorite leafy greens and if you live anywherein the tropics, you definitely wanna be able to grow this stuff ‘cos i mean it’s justquite delicious and edible in its raw and natural state.so one of the staple foods in this permaculture
food forest is actually the bananas, and chrishas over a hundred different banana plants planted in all, and many different uniqueand rare varieties including, you know, rare hawaiian varieties that aren’t grown anywhereelse. i’ve had just earlier today, i had a i think feyhee banana that was not justwhite on the inside, it was like a nice, dark, rich yellow colour with an amazing flavor.and, i mean, these are the bananas that we should be growing instead of like the dumbwilliams or cavendish bananas you get at the grocery store, ‘cos those have no flavor,they’re picked prematurely and then gassed to ripen. guaranteed all chris’ bananasthat he grows here are never gassed and they’re only harvested when they start to turn ripe.they’re cut off the plant and taken and
covered, so that the bugs can’t get themor the rats can’t get them, to slowly ripen and then he gets full flavor out of his bananasand that’s something that can’t happen when they’re shipping bananas green. inaddition, bananas are a very good crop or fruit to grow because they grow relativelyfast and they continue to produce, you know, multiple times a year because he has so manydifferent, you know, plantings of them. for example, some fruit trees may produce justonce a year or some maybe even twice a year, but it’s rare that a fruit tree will continueto produce year round. so when designing your own permaculture fruit forest or food forest,definitely have some of these plants like the banana that you’ll be able to eat yearround from, when some of your other, you know,
fruiting trees are not in season.so to some people, coconut chris’ permaculture wonderland may look like a jumbled mess andalmost like a forest. well, after all what he’s trying to emulate is a food forestwhere there’s just all kinds of different, you know, fruit trees growing up above, smallerfruit trees growing like down below. like he has many cacao trees. he has vanilla orchidvines, maybe we’ll show you in a minute that are climbing up trees. i mean, he’smaking really good use of his small amount of real estate here to grow many differentthings. and even for him, like even if there is some weeds or some, you know, grasses growing,he’ll basically just use them to his advantage. he’ll cut those down and mulch them in becausethat is a source of green manure or fertilizer
for his land. he hasn’t actually got, wentout and bought any kinda fertilizer at the store. he’s built in, built all the fertilityon his property from the ground up, you know, with free resources and by growing greens,chopping them and dropping them. one of the best plants to do that with is this guy righthere, it’s known as the pigeon pea and it’s nft or nitrogen fixing tree. basically youjust pick them up and then you just drop them on the ground. they break down and returnnutrients into the earth. he also has done cover cropping as a method of, you know, buildingnutrients and putting them back in to the soil.so besides the bananas, another tree style crop that he grows a lot of is the papaya.this is also something that fruits year round.
i mean, actually he has some trees that havebeen producing non-stop for 4 years, year round not just like one season, it just producesyear round. the problem with papayas is that, you know, you usually got a lot of like greenfruits on the tree and only the bottom ones ripen up and they ripen up very slowly. butif you got enough trees, you could always walk around the orchard or your food forestand find one that’s ripe, like i did today, and literally once they’re ripe you justspit them off and you ,you know, you’re just gonna let this ripen a little bit moreoff the trees. it’s actually getting kinda soft because if you leave it on the tree toolong, there’ll be bugs, rats and other vermin that’ll eat your papaya instead of you eatingit.
so here’s one of my favorite edible plantsthat chris also loves to grow up fences and to create fences out of maybe a space of hisgarden where, you know, where he wants to overtake something that’s growing that maynot be desirable. and what this simply is, this is simply known as the passion fruitor lilikoi. here are some of the fruits here. and actually here’s one of the beautifulflowers. i don’t know if you guys can see that there. right there, look at that, lookat how beautiful that flower is. oh my god, it smells heavenly. but yeah, the lilikoior passion flower, passion fruit, something that’s amazing to grow up any kind of hurricanefencing to filling the fence, but also create an edible, delicious fruit. hey, be sure tocheck the link down below where i actually
visited a passion fruit farm here in the islandsto show you guys how i like to use the passion fruits.so coconut chris is growing one of my favorite grasses in the entire world. and you’relike, john i don’t see no grass! well, it’s not regular grass that i like. it’s thisstuff – it’s sugar cane. and sugar cane is a kind of grass. it’s in the grass family.sugar cane takes a very long time to grow. i’ve grown this, you know, myself in lasvegas, but it didn’t have the time to fully mature and fully develop the sweetness thatit should. but here in hawaii and other tropical locations where it doesn’t freeze, it easilygrows and, you know, creates that nice, delicious, sweet, you know, flavor inside the fibers.last visit actually to coconut chris’ actually
did juice his very own sugar cane and it wascompletely amazing, especially added in with some lilikoi and some turmeric i believe.the other thing about the grass is and the sugar cane is that chris grows many differentvarieties, including some of the more rare and unique sugar cane varieties. here’sjust one here, like a green kind, he has like a red kind here. he also has a kind with actuallylike a soft stock that’s much better for eating. and in some countries before theyactually had toothbrushes, they would just chew on the sugar cane for all the fiber toclean your teeth. and i know, you know, some of you guys are thinking, john sugar canemust be bad man, it’s just sugar! well, whole sugar cane is not the same as white,refined sugar. that’s why it’s called
white, refined sugar – they refine it! sugarcane in the sugar cane plant itself has a lot of fiber and you have to literally chewup all that fiber to extract out the delicious, sweet goodness. you know, now when you dojuice sugar cane, you are getting some sugar in the water that comes out but, you know,once again nature every plant filters water. and nature brings up the water to the sugarcane, it creates the sweetness through the photosynthesis and then we get to enjoy. andeven so when you juice sugar cane, sugar cane juice, believe it or not, has less sugar thaneven orange juice. plus, the grass family of plants absorb up to 90 minerals and putit in to its tissues so that when you eat that plant, you’re gonna get it into you.and that’s one of the reasons why i love
the fresh sugar cane juice, not only for thesweetness, you know, and low sugar compared to orange juice but also the nice shot ofthe trace minerals that i’m getting directly from the earth.so here’s another rare, unusual soleransay plant that christopher’s growing. it’sactually these guys right here, and i grew these guys actually in california and, youknow, in like the bay area or la area, you know, southern california they do quite well.they can handle some light, light, light, light frost or when it gets too cold, butthey don’t like it too, too cold, you know. so, it’s tropical but much more tolerantthan many others. this is known as the tree tomato or tamarillo fruit. and actually thisis the orange kind. there’s also a red kind,
or deep purple kind that i grew. and theseshould be optimally really, really, really, really dark color when you harvest them. andeven then the flavor, i mean it’s not sweet and it doesn’t really taste like tomatothat you know and love, but it’s quite unique. i really like it a lot and my old gardenersays when you scratch the back of the leaves and sniff, kinda smells like hot butteredpopcorn. now you’re not gonna wanna eat any other part of this plant aside from thefruit itself, because it is in the solanansay family and it’s not a good thing to eat.but the fruits they’re definitely delicious and i had bumper crops for a few years untili lost my plants. actually, i think i still have one plant growing in my greenhouse butit gets really affected bad with some of the
aphids and some scale as well. so that’skinda sad but glad to see that christopher’s growing it here and you can too. i think rareseeds.comoffer the seeds if you’d like to try to grow these. i would recommend growing themoutside in the summer and then inside in the winter, if it gets cold where you live.so you caught me - i’m on my lunchbreak. and even if you come here for a tour or towork chris will put you to work. and what i’m doing today is i’m saving seeds atthe same time i’m getting to eat my lunch. so what we’ve got here is some special jaboticabafruits. say that 5 times - jaboticaba, jaboticaba, jaboticaba, jaboticaba, jaboticaba. it’slike jabba the hut, jaboticaba. and these are actually known as tree grapes basically.they grow on the stem of the tree. they grow
a lot of them. and these are abnormally largejaboticaba fruits that are quite rare. so what he’s having everybody that comes overtoday, you’re gonna take the fruit and get to eat it, but don’t bite and chew everything.you’re gonna wanna save the seeds - most important part of the entire fruit becausethe seed is inside the fruit, so that you can share the seeds with others or simplyspit it into nature and grow a whole new tree so that the tree can reproduce. quite good.we’re gonna go ahead and this is the seed. i can’t really show you the seed – theseed is surrounded by a fruit pod. basically put this in the jar and he’s starting tosprout these guys. and he’s gonna plant these out and ask the little seedlings, andthen he’s gonna be able to share these with
others and grow more of these especially uniquearch jaboticabas on the property. so if you wonder where all those seeds endup that he saves when you come over and spit them out into a jar, they probably end upsomewhere like this. this is his little tree seedling nursery and this is just one of hislittle shade houses that he has set up to propagate out many different trees. and thisis another area of the garden that i really value chris for doing, you know. i mean, hegrows these guys out not only for his own use to plant new plants on site, but alsoshare and to offer to the community to get some of these rare and unique varieties outto others. i mean, you’ve got some really cool dragon fruits, like a blue dragon fruitover there, a purple dragon fruit, and all
different kinds of palms as well as fruittrees. now i’m gonna share with you guys how toharvest the papaya when you can’t quite reach it. we’re just gonna grab a stickand very gently just gonna cut it close to the little bit. woah, and then you gotta catchit! so you gotta have lightning fast reflexes so you can eat papayas off your own tree.alright, so now we’re walking up a big hill and we’re checking out other areas of chris’farm. now, certain parts of his farm was the perennial food forest but of course asidefrom that, he has many different other areas of his farm where he’s growing food includingthis section here which is basically just a, you know, banana orchard. lots of bananaplants and in addition, in between the banana
plants, because they are so big and shadingthings out, he’s starting, you know, a tropical exotic fruit trees down below. and when theyget bigger then he’ll chop the bananas so that these guys can get more sun. and actuallyright now we’re actually going up the hill on the way to his vegetable garden, whichis really cool. you know, it’s done like no other that i’ve seen and i want to encourageyou guys, you know, don’t just have a perennial food forest. as cool as perennial food forestsare, you might wanna also have a separate, you know, orchard that may not fit in withyour food forest as well as a special vegetable and herb garden like he does here. you know,the more kinds of different growing systems you can have, the more resilience-y you willhave in the end and the more food diversity
you will be allowed to grow.so one of the things chris attempts to do is maximize the use of his space even thoughhe has ten acres to play with here. you know, he can spread things out, you know, prettygood spacing if he wanted to. he also wants to duplicate and model nature and how naturewould work. and in nature these two plants, the vanilla orchard as well as the dragonfruit, would naturally want to grow up and climb up a tree, whether that’s a tree that’salive or a tree that’s not alive. in this case, this tree is actually alive. it’sknown as the ice cream bean tree or inca bean tree. this is quite unique cultivore, youknow, most ice cream beans kinda just look like a standard bean pod. you know, the onesthat he’s grown here are quite unique – check
it out. this ice cream bean pod is like 3feet long, and this will do some damage. and, you know, it’s kinda like, you know, conicalor circular or whatever, i don’t know, whatever that shape is. and what we’re gonna do toopen this is just we’re gonna take it and twist. and when we do that what we’re gonnareveal on the inside, very carefully, is oh man this stuff looks really good – lookat that. inside here we’re gonna see these little fruit pods or little seeds and aroundeach seed is this white, fluffy, cotton candy- like material, like that. and this is thestuff we wanna eat. kinda tastes like cotton candy ice cream. little bit moist. not a wholelot of flavor, but actually quite sweet, quite delicious. i think this like tubular ice creambean stuff’s one of my new favorites. now
with all the different fruits to eat here,you’re gonna save the seed so look, this one’s actually sprouting. and we’re gonnago ahead and distribute out these seeds in just a minute to plant more trees. and thisis something i believe everybody should do with all their fruit seeds.so another thing chris likes to do with seeds, i mean, immature fruits or fruits that he’snot gonna eat is save the seeds and harvest them and regrow them. and so one of the wayshe likes to do this in some instances is just literally take the seeds, and we’ve gothere some ice cream bean seeds. so the ice cream bean is like a pod that you open upand then on the inside there’s this fluffy, white cotton candy like ice cream containingfruit that’s super good and it’s surrounded
by a seed. so then what happens is you takethe seeds out and then he wants to re-plant these, he just takes this and throws it outinto the margins. and, you know, this is a place where the tractors not gonna hit that’smowing. and maybe one day these will turn into some ice cream bean trees which are absolutelydelicious. this is just yet another way you can reuse and plant your seeds. and i wannaencourage all you guys of a fruit, seeds of any kinda fruit, always try to replant yourseeds, you know, whenever possible. obviously it’s the best to do it on your land becauseit’s legal but, you know, if you were to do it say on public property or parks or otherlands, you know, that might not be legal so you might wanna check your local laws whereyou live.
alright, so now we’re in chris’ vegetablegarden. you know, separate from his food forest he also has a standard vegetable garden. buthe’s doing it differently than any other vegetable garden i’ve seen. i mean, hisgardening style is unique, unto himself although he uses many permaculture principles and differenttechniques, you know. everybody’s garden is gonna reflect them, their personality andalso, you know, what they think is best. and one of the things that’s really importantto him is water conservation and also minimizing the amount of work he’s doing. so one ofthe way’s he’s gardening is this way. it’s actually just like flood irrigation.what he’s done is he’s actually dug these like little ditches all along his raised beds,that’s really cool. and what he does is
basically just waters the ditches, fills themup, and the water just soaks in. and as the water is sitting there, it actually capillatesout through the soil and feeds all the plants in the soil. you guys can see this water’sbeen sitting here for, i don’t know, maybe an hour or two while i’ve been making myvideos, and it’s soaking up into the ground to water the new seedlings that are planted.i think he’s got some different kinds of greens including cucumbers and what not inall these beds, and some lettuce. and you can see over there man, i mean, the water’scapillated like a foot up. that’s completely amazing that he’s able to save water, andbasically all this whole garden is on a gravity set up. so he has to water one spot and thenit goes through different channels and filters
into different channels and it waters everythingvery simply, easily and more importantly, efficiently. and, i mean, if you go to someforeign countries this is how they garden back in the olden days, but we’ve forgottenall this because now we have drip irrigation tubes and pipes and all this kinds of stuff.but chris likes to kinda live it more like natural, you know, more like, like, like withoutany kind of major inputs. you know, he doesn’t use like bag organic fertilizer, he actuallyhasn’t brought in any nutrients off the, off the farm, you know, from a store. he simplyuses, you know, fertility that’s created on the property, as well as bringing in otherlocal free resources, such as manure, which is, you know, how he fertilizes much of hisgarden here. now i wanna let you guys know
there are all different kinda ways to growa garden. you could use manure, you could use rock dust, you could actually buy, youknow, chemical fertilizers which i don’t recommend, or synthetic fertilizers whichi don’t recommend, you could use organic bag fertilizers. there’s a whole spectrumand i wanna always wanna encourage you guys to grow in a more biologic way, you know,in accordance with nature than against it, you know. and, you know, i wanna encourageyou guys to grow the highest quality food with the most nutrients in there, if yourbudget allows and you can bring in additional inputs. i think it’s quite valuable, althoughi also respect chris on how he’s growing here very successfully without bringing inany products. and that’s the conundrum right
– there’s no right and wrong. chris’way is right; john’s way where we have to buy stuff is wrong, right. nobody’s rightor wrong, right. i wanna make it so that any way you wanna garden whether you just wannause the resources you got and do the best you can, great, if you have resource to spendon extra soil nutrients, you can bring those in and have higher quality food based on whati’ve seen and my experience, that’s great too. and i just wanna give you guys all thesedifferent options, you know, to allow to pick the way that you would like to grow, you know,and what you need based on your specific needs. you know, my needs are to have the highestquality food because i know that the highest quality food that i put in my body is gonnamean that i’m gonna be a higher quality
person and have higher quality nutrition andhave a higher quality immune system, you know, to fend off diseases and all this kind ofstuff so that i don’t get sick. but yeah, definitely what chris is doing here, amazingusing some of these ancient old-school technologies in the modern day.alright, so what you’re looking at behind me here is just another area of his garden.he’s growing the standard, you know, corn; got some heirloom varieties of corn. he’sgrowing some beans and he’s also got some squash growing below it and i think also seededrandomly with some chiya seeds. and once again, he’s using the flood irrigation which lookslike it’s working pretty good on the corn, and everything’s growing quite well. and,you know, i wanna encourage you guys, i mean,
chris is growing non-gmo crops. i wanna encourageyou guys to grow non-gmo crops and get some good, certified seed that you know is non-gmoand more importantly doesn’t have any gmo contamination in there. you know, we gottatry to keep the seed varieties pure and we’re not gonna get that done by leaving it up tothe big corporations. each of us have to take a responsibility to grow and save our ownseeds out and share it with one another to keep some of this genetic diversity alive.and, i mean, that’s one of the things chris really strives to do here is grow a wide varietyof like unusual and rare crops that he can then save and pass on the seeds. like i gotsome special, cool, cold weather cucumber slash zucchini relative that i’ve neverheard of before, but i’m gonna get to grow
out and see how it grows in las vegas that,i mean, i’ve never seen in any seed catalog. so i mean, this is the kinda work that hedoes here and this is why it’s so important and so valuable. i mean, every time i comehere i learn about new varieties and species of plants that i was not aware of, i get totaste new varieties, species of vegetables as well as fruits, as well as just have agood time. so anyways, let’s go ahead and continue on our tour and share with you guysa new and really unique crop that i know you guys have never heard of because i hadn’tuntil today either. alright, so this next plant that i’m gonnashare with you guys is, i’m sure there’s no other videos on youtube about this, it’scalled sechium tacaco, and i don’t even
know if there’s an english word for it,but basically, it’s a unique kerbit family plant that’s very similar to the chayotesquash. let me go ahead and bring a vine over for you guys. and this is what it looks like,right. i mean, this is very similar to the chayote and supposed it’s like potentiallymore cold tolerant. you could actually harvest the little tips and eat them like chayotesquash. in addition, it makes these like little funny looking fruits there, and the fruitsbefore they get these little like bumpy spines on the tops, it’s kinda like reminds yousimilar of atchacha that i’ve grown. you can actually just harvest these little babyfruits, immature ones, and you can just eat these when they’re in their raw state. let’ssee man. it kinda tastes little bit like cucumber,
but has like a little bit of astringent bite.when they get much more mature than this you probably will not wanna eat them raw. they’renormally cooked though. it’s quite good, quite delicious. and it’s a new one on me,i wanna try to maybe experiment with growing these guys to check out the cold toleranceof it. although overall, i think i prefer the chutney squash because this is like havinglike a weird astringent flavor in mouth happening on. but yeah nonetheless, it’s cool i wasable to introduce with you guys as well as learn myself a new crop that’s edible andthat you may be able to grow in the tropics. so now we’re looking at the area of thegarden that’s pretty much the standard garden. and once again it has all the troughs forthe flood irrigation. so all the water has
channels and just kinda moved its way throughthe garden so that everything just gets watered. and he has a variety of different vegetablecrops growing in here that may not necessarily work too well in a food forest type systemthat has more wildish, perennial crops. these are more annual crops that, you know, franklydo need to get a little more sun to produce nice, large leaves and all that kind of stuff.so he’s got, you know, standard things such as, you know, bok choi and dennis kale andlettuce and he’s got some, you know, bolting solantro. but the other cool thing he’sdone is actually because, you know, he’s gonna use this as a vegetable garden now,but in between he’s planting like, you know, food crops. so fruiting crops that’s just,bananas and papayas like every so often that
will end up growing up and crowding out thisspace. and then he’ll move the vegetable garden to another space, and actually that’swhat he’s done in his own food forest you guys saw earlier. like maybe a year or twoago when i was here, he actually had a vegetable garden that’s now been all overgrown andoutcompeted with fruit trees, you know, which is the final goal, you know, for chris there.now i always wanna encourage you guys to grow in a variety of different ways, you know,so you could have more diversity in your diet. i guess one of the things i wanna share withyou guys is how well chris’ gardening or growing style works. i mean, he’s growingall kinds of different crops like you can see some nice huge beets, but i wanna go aheadand dig a carrot for you guys to show you
guys how big the carrots are, you know, withhim using minimal inputs on the lands here. so now i wanna go ahead and pull a carrotfor you guys from his garden. but before i do, i wanna share with you guys this plantright here. this is a small papaya plant that’s actually growing right amongst these vegetablesthat’s gonna get really tall, and the vegetables are gonna stay really small. and this varietyof papaya is actually known as an exotic variety of papaya – one of the sweetest varietiesthat i’ve tasted. had some friends, had one of my friends place over in maui thati made a video about it was a ten acre permaculture fruit forest that is actually amazing, sochris is also growing the same kind, one of the more superior varieties that is non-gmo.in addition he’s growing a really cool like,
you know, this is like split leaf papaya.he’s growing like a solid leaf papaya that i’ve never seen before that he actuallygot from australia. so that’ll be really interesting to see that one. but i actuallywant to just go ahead and pull a carrot for you guys. i mean, really chris is not reallyusing any external inputs, he’s using all inputs, you know, produced on the farm aswell as some ones that he’s gotten for free in the local area. you know, one of the thingsthat he also doesn’t like to do that i like to do, is he doesn’t like to cardboard sheetmulch due to all the paper and the stickers on the cardboard. so he’ll, you know, likedo manual weeding and there’s always a solution to any style of gardening. you guys couldchoose the style that you want to do and,
you know, if you do choose this chris stylethis is what happens man. you get nice, large, luscious, big, huge carrots with very minimalinputs. now this is also dependent on your current soil that you have, there’s probablya really rich soil here in hawaii – it’s all from volcanic base. and, you know, it’sobviously he worked it really well but a lot has to do with the nutrients already in thesoil. if you’re starting out with a nutrient depleted soil, you’re gonna have to bringin, you know, potentially more inputs than what your land can grow for you there to provideyourself some fertility. so i always wanna encourage you guys to be smart as a gardenerbecause, you know, the healthier crops are, the larger they’re gonna get, the more bug,pest and disease resistant they’ll gonna
be and the more nutritious they’re gonnabe for you. and hopefully that’s one of the reasons why you’re growing the garden,not just for the sheer joy of being out in the garden, picking carrots right out of thegarden, being able to eat it, eat your own lettuce out of the garden. i mean, everythingtaste better when you grew it and pick it yourself by far. that’s something that iwould agree with, as well as chris. so the next thing i wanna do is actually sit downwith chris and interview him about some of his secrets on his style of permaculture farmingthat he does, and how he’s been able to grow these large carrots with minimal inputs,as well as some of the more exotic and unique varieties that i just simply plain forgotthe name of. so yeah, let’s go head over
and speak with chris the farmer here.alright so now i’m with coconut chris and he’s the farmer that’s basically madeall this happen. so chris, thanks for having me out on your farm today man, appreciateit brother. thank you for coming, honored to be on your channel. awesome man, great.yeah, you’re a subscriber, you watch my videos sometimes right. yeah, when i havecomputer time, there’s still no electricity on the farm here and so yeah, when i havetime in town i’ll check out some of your videos. cool man, i wanna encourage you guys,you know, to get away from the computer! i mean, chris lives his life away from the computer,and yeah he’ll check the computer sometimes but, you know, our lives in my opinion aremeant to be living out doors right. i mean,
we’ve got this advent of houses and computersand artificial lighting, but it’s best to be out in nature and that’s what chris hasthe joy to do every single day of his life, to be out in nature. you know, walking amongsthis plants, tending to his plants, taking care of his garden and, you know, i want youguys to appreciate and enjoy that and do that if you’re not already. so chris, why doyou really enjoy working in your garden so much? i mean, i heard you earlier, i was filmingand he was just laughing in the background ‘cos he’s just a kid at heart and lovinghis plants like we all should. but we have this disconnect from nature instead of beingconnected like chris is. well, i feel free to do as i please and i like being outsideand active, and it’s pretty safe, safe hobby,
sport. but i also enjoy eating fresh fruitsand vegetables, occasional nuts and seeds, and that’s what keeps me feeling, feelingthe best. feel really healthy eating fresh fruits and vegetables and i wanna encouragethe people that live around here, make it easier for them, they’re busy working jobsand it’s kinda like a full time thing to grow a garden. you know, and so if you’regonna just try doing that for a while and it’s been happening, you know, for kindagotta be there all the time and protect it from the wild pigs and horses and cows andturkeys and different critters that run around. and so, yeah. awesome, yeah man, i wanna encourageyou guys out there, you know, to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables in your diets. youknow, that’s why i grow my garden, that’s
why i have friends like chris who’s growinghis own stuff so when i come visit, i’ll be eating some good stuff too right. superimportant to eat your fruits and vegetables and it’s quite unfortunate that most americansneglect eating fruits and vegetables, and especially the ones we are eating are unfortunatelysub-standard or poor quality, the ones you’re getting from the grocery store. even the oneslabelled, you know, organic. you know, it’s always better to grow your own ‘cos it alwaystastes better and more times than not, it’s more nutritious. so chris, so why did youwanna embark on this big project to grow all this food for the community as well as yourself?well, it seemed like the right thing to do. yeah, and i’ve always loved growing plantsand picking fruits and vegetables as a child
growing up. so lots of good memories of thatand i also, you know, heard from a child, you know like, went to church a little bitwhen i was a kid and the bible, it says to plant your fruit trees alongside tributaries,like streams. so this property, like many properties, have streams flowing through themand that brings down, you know, nutrients from the forest above and that’s like thebest fertilizer for growing food, you know. so i’ve been planting food along the streamand incorporating the patterns i’ve learned from nature in the flatter areas on the ridges,and just kinda creating streams with the water flowing it through, and it’s a lot of fun.it looks really cool too. i mean you guys saw some of the different, you know, patternshe had, you know, amazingly to get his plants
watered. so chris, i want you guys, i wantyou to share one of the top tips with my viewers out there on like how to have a successfulgarden and, you know, a permaculture food forest like you do. like, what’s one tipthat you would recommend for everybody out there? find the patterns in nature. everyweed is compost and mulch for something else. everything has a use. just learn what growswell in your neighborhood and maybe join community gardens, or volunteer on a farm in your areaand figure out what wild leaves and things will grow, and micro climates. and get excitedabout all the different things that do grow where you are because everywhere in the worldpretty much you can grow a wide variety of plants. in this location i’ve been at forthe past 13 years in this area, you can grow
a lot of different things just in walkingdistance, almost everything. well, he’s quite blessed here. so i don’t know, a tipwould be… that’s a tip, get to learn the patterns, you know, and learn nature and learnwhat grows well in your…to eat, to be eating it too yeah. ‘cos then it gets in your bloodand helps you see more clearly. yeah, i mean part of my gardener’s intuition is not ‘cosi’ve got green thumbs, i mean, i wasn’t born with green thumbs. i used to, you know,make many a plants not live too long, nowadays i do pretty good. i’m sure as does chris.but when you eat plants you’re more in touch, you know, whether you want them to just energeticallyor spiritually, it’s fruit. and i truly believe that we are one with the plants becauseit’s the plants and the fruits of the earth
that are truly feeding us, either directly,or unfortunately indirectly, you know, for many people. and i wanna encourage you guysto have fruits and vegetables feed you directly instead of feeding you indirectly. and yeahi mean, learning the patterns super important, you know i, nobody has ever shared that tipbefore, so thank you. you know, i try to get that across in my videos like the longer yougarden, the more you’ll see like oh, when i do this, it happens like this and it’ssuccessful, and when i do this, it doesn’t work so well. and you know, when this plantwas next to the stream or near a water source, oh my gosh, it produced so much. but whenit was further away and didn’t get enough water, it didn’t do so well, and vice versa.so, you know , the only way you’re gonna
learn patterns of nature is by getting outto nature, getting out in your garden, doing it and getting experience and getting yourhands dirty or at least keeping them clean. chris has got some more gardener hands thani do, he works harder and longer hours in the garden than i do. plus i’ve got likea special mixture of i use some sea salt, some sugar and some oil to make a nice scrubthat, you know, that ladies use to scrub their face, i use it to scrub my hands and it reallygets that dirt and grime out of all the funny places man. and my nails are kinda grummybut my skin’s pretty clean. but i‘ve been on vacation for a while. i need to get thatrecipe from you. alright chris so, tell me more about your fertility program becausei know, you know, one of the things you’re
really into is, you know, trying use the inputsof, you know, that’s produced on your farm and in the surrounding areas, you talked alittle about weeds are not a weed they’re, you know, food for other plants. and whatare, how are, how are you able to grow all these, these great fruits and vegetables andcrops and like the carrot that i showed you guys. and that’s a fairly large carrot.you know, without putting 10 10 10 miracle crap fertilizer even using like, you know,organic chicken pellets out of a bag and sprinkling those out on your garden right. without fertilizerright! is this possible? well, he’s doing it – how’d you do it? well i’ve donea lot of other things and i just like to do things the easy way. just wanna be simple,but fortunately there’s easy to get cow
patties in the area. free range cattle. andi can fill up feed bags, i get the all my helpers who go out and we shovel full of bagsquick and drive them up the hill or over from the other side of the fence there even. horsemanure too. and the barn down in the valley has sandy loam, you know, rock dust. and wescoop that up, and i’ll use some of that but mostly this last year i’ve been likefull time cow patty and wild horse collecting. you get some weed seeds and whatever, i cultivatethe land and mulch it with lemon grass and bedevere, whatever mulches we got, and itkeeps weeds from sprouting. and then to make sure like all the trace minerals, it’s allpretty much washing down. it’s floating in the top and into the ocean, so if i canget sea water when i’m down at the ocean
in 5 gallon buckets and i dilute it like 1to 15, 1 to 20 ratio just for delicate plants. my coconut trees, i’ll just pour a wholebucket of sea water on it. so certain plants can take certain ratios of it. yeah, i’vebeen also getting high quality, sun dried sea salt from the island here and i just throwit by the handful. i just sprinkle it around. i got about 5, 5 gallon bucketful’s thispast fall and i’ve spread almost all of it in this like 10 acre area. and mostly focusedaround certain plants, not everything. but the yeah, the vegetables just grow so healthyif i’m getting like little cabbage moth caterpillars, i’ll just, you know, throwsalt and cucumbers even, things that get stung by the bugs, protects, gives the plant animmune system. i’m not sure the whole science
but you can look it up on the internet, there’sa lot of information about sea water agriculture if you research it, and so i just, it’sreal easy. cool, i mean, yeah i mean, i definitely recommend like growing your trace mineralsand chris is doing that with a local source of the rock dust, you know, from the streams,as well as using, you know, the sea minerals from the ocean. and that’s what i recommendfor you guys, you know like, i don’t necessarily source it and get the sea water like he does.and you might wanna also be sure if you are using sea water, make sure you don’t getcontaminated sea water. he lives in an area where it’s really undeveloped and undisturbedby man and there’s not a lot of ships or like there’s no sewage going in the oceanhere. it’s really clean, but like, if you
were to go to like san francisco or somewhere,you know, and try to get ocean water like i don’t know about that. you might wannaget a real good sea product, you know like they got the sea cagree like sea 90 product,and there’s like different products, you know, that comes in concentrates in jugs wherethey get, you know, clean sea water. and i do have videos on that already, and of coursei have videos on the rock dust as well so those are two primary sources for him. andanother nutrient source for him is, you know, besides just all the weeds and things, hegets like tree trimmings and wood chips that he spreads on the property underneath treesto mulch with. and in addition, he also uses the manure. so, let’s talk about the manurefor a second, you know. now chris has a very
unique situation much like he can get un-contaminatedsea water, he gets un-contaminated manure which is very important. you know, i’m nota big fan or an advocate of using, you know, manure in the garden for the primary reasonthat most of it is contaminated. you know, if you go buy manure at home depot, you know,it has, it’s from a factory farm that’s been fed gmo corn and soy to the animals,and they’ve also been fed antibiotics and now all that stuff is in the poop that nowyou’re buying to put on your vegetables that then you will in turn end up eating,which is not a good thing. so you know, we’re here in pasture land, you know, there’sjust cows free roaming and horses free roaming, they’re eating the grass, you know, verylittle other feed stocks are being added so
they’re producing good, clean manure. andif you could get a good, clean manure source, yeah use it with moderation, you know, butstill chris does a lot of, you know, mulching and cutting down of weeds and composting hisown stuff to make plenty of, you know, fertility on site as well. so yeah, so in my style ofgardening where i don’t have access to some of the manures, like pure manures like chrisdoes and for most americans that can’t get this, i recommend, you know, maybe no manureor, you know, little manure approach. and that’s why i recommend a lot of the thingslike the rock dust powders and, you know, the earthworm castings so you could get awayfrom the manures, you know, that may be contaminated. so chris, i wanna share with my viewers somethingthat you’re growing special here that i’ve
never really seen before in my life, and it’sthese guys here. what are these guys here man, they look like some funky fruit? it’sa prehistoric variety of banana called fehei and there’s many shapes and varieties ofthese. i first collected these from some botanist friends living down in the valley and i’vebeen propagating them around. it’s an unusual banana that the fruits stand up in the airinstead of hanging down, and i just harvested about a 60 pound rack of fruit. and they haveto be very ripe to eat them. so like this one isn’t really black yet, it might bea little chalky, we’ll give it another day or so. but this one here you’ve seen howit’s changed color. it’s nice and black. look at the inside. oh my god, look at that!i wanna show you guys this, look at that,
like a little push up, look at that! man,that’s like fluorescent yellow, that’s insane! so tell us, this is a prehistoricbanana! i’m eating a banana that would have been eaten by the dinosaurs in the prehistorictime! that’s when i read up on them, yeah. and you can, you know, look them up and it’si’ve been spending most of my time just growing them than reading about them, buti did do a little research on it and yeah, it’s one of the oldest types of bananas.the, when you cut the trunk, the sap comes out and it’s actually purple like blood.wow! that’s the color, natural color and dye and you actually when you eat these you’llsee your urine changes to this color. so it’s hard to describe the flavor of a perfect,ripe fehei banana. i was hoping maybe you
could help me describe it. alright well, letme see. wow! i mean like, this is like a true heirloom banana. i mean, it’s not even likeheirloom because it’s prehistoric. this is like wild like wild style, wild kind bananaand we really need to get back to some of these undomesticated, un-hybridized fruitsin my opinion because these are the fruits like, at some point they bred all those nice,yellow, rich, anti-oxidant pigments out of this fruit. and i’m so glad to be eatingthis stuff. and it tastes like no other banana that i’ve ever tasted in my life like, lookat that! it’s almost like the banana’s sweet potato like. it’s like really richand creamy, it’s like if you had banana pudding and then you have like a nice bananaflavor with like floral overtones. wow! i
mean, these are some of the things that chrisgrows like heirlooms, unique, rare varieties. how many, how many different kinds of bananasare you growing right now chris? i’ve grown about 50 types in the area, but there’sabout 20, 25 that i really love. plantains and dwarf variety bananas. but i’m surethere’s about 25 types just in this little garden plot here. well i mean you guys sawsome of them. but really, they looked really great. alright yeah, these fehei bananas yougotta look them up and try to grow these guys if you live in the tropics somewhere. they’resimply amazing. oh wow, look at that one. so that one’s probably like not quite asripe as this one so it’s gonna be a little bit chalky and totally… it got damaged too,the bottom might be a little overripe. sometimes
you gotta be careful before you eat it. ohyeah, yeah it’s all organic here so, you know, there might be bugs crawling in thereso you know, i always encourage you guys to inspect your produce before you eat it. iwanna see this under a black light. oh yeah, that would be a trip man. the fluorescent,wait i know, you could smear this on you and then go into one of those parties like raveswhere they have the black light, and you could have edible body paint. edible body paint,yeah! i want my girlfriend to lick this off me. alright, so chris any last words you’dlike to share with my viewers today about, you know, your farm and how you’re growingor any words to the wise for growers out there that want to be able to, you know, be moreefficient at doing what they’re doing and
create for themselves what you’ve created,you know, for yourself as well as the community here? yeah, maybe some just learn all aboutwhat’s native to your area and what how people use those native plants to improvetheir livelihoods. and then figure out what is, you know, from all over the world thatyou can grow and very deliciousand edible, and see what people are growing. like maybejoin the rare fruit grower club and go to pot lucks and meet other people that gardenand join a community garden if you don’t have a whole lot of space of your own, orjust go see what people are growing. go to botanical gardens and just get around like-mindedpeople that are doing this kinda thing to see and make observations. and do researchand watch more of your videos. thanks. and
maybe, you know, volunteer on a farm and gethands on experience, you know, with farmers. cool, so i know, speaking of volunteers iknow you get interns that are, you know, serious about learning how to grow in the way thatyou do and learn that there is a commitment involved. it’s not just like oh, volunteeringfor a day, you want, you know, more of a long term commitment. how can somebody contactyou if they’re maybe interested in learning more about this opportunity to learn fromchris the master permaculturist himself? really, okay, thanks. well yeah i was on the wwoof-erplatform for a while but it just i don’t have electricity here and ,you know, i’venever even owned a computer. it’s kind of challenging and distracting, you know, buti’d like if people were really wanting to
eat from the land, you know, and maybe evenhad some experience already growing plants and picking food maybe they could just emailme and talk story and maybe they would wanna come out and stay for a while – camp orbe in a cabin, participate in all of our accomplishments. it’s a great neighbourhood to be in andso feel free to write me. the email is chriscoconut@gmail.com. it’s c-h-r-i-s and coconut at gmail. alrightcool, thanks chris. yeah, reach out to chris if you’re sincerely interested and havesome experience and already on a plant-based diet and would love picking and eating someof the best foods that i’ve tasted here on big island and definitely more varietiesthan i’ve seen anywhere. with some unique and exotic things that literally nobody elseis growing so that’s really cool. chris
is an awesome guy and i love every visit thati come out to visit him so thanks chris for having me out today man, brother. thank youfor coming out. appreciate it and i hope you guys enjoyed this video and you’re gonnahope you enjoyed the video ‘cos he’s been listening to me while filming, but he doesn’tknow what’s in it. but hope you guys enjoyed this video. if you enjoyed it, hey pleasegive me a thumbs up, let me know. i’ll try to make it out to chris’ next time and,you know, i covered one tenth of 1 percent of what he has growing on here. there’sno way i could cover everything in the video that’s already too long that people arecomplaining about already. but we can come back and show you other stuff about otherthings that you guys are interested in and
every time i always learn something new, andhopefully you guys did too. also be sure to check my past episodes. i’ve done over a1,050 episodes now on all aspects of gardening and be sure to subscribe to my videos if you’renot already because i put out new videos every couple days to, you know, teach you guys moreabout different kinds of gardening. growing nutrient dense foods, growing foods at home,eating the foods that you grow so that you can be healthier because of it and in turnmake the world a healthier place one person at a time. so once again my name is john kohlerwith growingyourgreens.com. we’ll see you next time, until then remember, keep on growing.
