Nutrient Packed And Flavorful California Dried Plums Are A Smart Snack
this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com.today we’re on yet another field trip, and this is going to be a good one. we’re outhere in occidental, california at the occidental arts & ecology center at 15290 coleman valleyroad. here in occidental. and the reason why i’ve come out here today is for one veryspecial reason. it’s for their perennial plant sale. normally the arts and ecologycenter has 3 plant sales a year, and they sell all kinds of perennials and non-perennialand annual crops, but this sale deals with specifically edible perennial food crops andalso herbs and other things. so, i’m really excited and i’m going to pick up some newcrops or new edible perennial plants that i’ve only heard about and they have hereavailable today. so, we’re here at the main
entrance and this plant sale is actually upat their greenhouses, which is actually the next driveway up the road. so, let’s headup the road go and check out the greenhouses and check out that plant sale. so we’re here at the site of the plant saleand you can see there are large greenhouses that they have that are here and these greenhousesbasically make their plant sales possible so that they can control the environment sothat some of these plants will actually sprout faster, grow faster. especially some of theperennials that tend to be a little bit more sensitive to the cold and won’t grow asfast when it’s too cold. because we are out here in occidental. in any case, in thisgreen house the plants aren’t for sale and
they have a sign stating such. the plant saleis next door, which we will go to in a second, but i wanted to show you guys this. when youhave greenhouse like i do, you can grow things like this. this is the narjillo or the nar-jil-oas i call it (that’s not pronounced right) but this is an amazing plant. once again thisis in the solanaceae family- this plant is huge i have some of these in my greenhouseand it’s really a slow grower but this guy looks amazing and these are the big leavessolanaceae. and here’s some of the fruit. these make some really big fruit that haveprobably been there a while and hopefully soon they will ripen up. i have never hada ripe one of these. and here’s a little flower bud flowering. these plants are actuallyreally nice, they’re a little bit fuzzy
and actually kind of ornamental too. and onceagain they are really slow growers and they’re not frost-tolerant so you want to definitelykeep them warm if you want to grow these guys. actually the seeds for these guys are availablefrom baker creek seeds or rareseeds.com. next, let’s head over to the plant sale.so this is the entrance to the plant sale, we’re going to, they have this nice littleset up here it’s like a screened in area so that the bugs can’t get in, the birdscan’t get in. all plants are just $8 at this time for a one-gallon size i think that’sdefinitely a really good value for the size. and especially, i mean you can’t put a priceon some of the varieties that they grow here at arts & ecology center that you really can’tfind anywhere else. so $8, phenomenal deal.
so what we’re going to do next is we’regoing to cover some of these different crops that they’re offering mashua, yacon, capegooseberry, lost crops of the incas, the oka. there are so many perennial food crops thatyou can grow in your garden that will make gardening easier. so, most people focus ongrowing crops that have to be re-planted every year. so like, every, you know springtimeyou could plant out your tomatoes when it’s not frosting and they’ll grow for a periodof time until it frosts and you lose them and then next year you gotta start all over.well perennial food crops are really smart because basically you plant them once andas long as they have the proper conditions they’ll either come back or just produceyear round food for you. so you just have
to plant them once, make a one time investmentin the plant and care for the plant and it will give you many years of food. so that’swhy i like perennial food crops and i try to focus growing a lot of the crops that igrow, perennial food crops and not necessarily annual food crops that you have to keep plantingyear after year because you know that gets to be a lot of work and i’m all for thelazy man’s garden where you can literally plant things once, walk away and come backand there’s always going to be food for you. the arts & ecology center is originallywhere i got my purple tree collards that i’ve been growing and propagating in my yard andi’m sad that they actually don’t have the purple tree collards at this plant sale,but they do have some walking stick cabbage
which is very similar, so let’s go checkout the leaf food crops first. so next, let’s talk about some perennialfood crops, this one is called the walking stick cabbage. so this one gets between sixand ten feet tall and i have been growing this for a couple years, it’s actually stayingin the same place where i have been growing it and it does go to seed but it just keepscoming back and keeps growing and actually makes a nice thick stalk. the reason why it’scalled the walking stick cabbage is because once the stalk dries out and it’s reallytall and straight and you dry them out you can actually use them as a walking stick.all these leaves can be used just like a cabbage leaf or a collard leaf. i like to eat themraw, you can use them as wraps or you know
cook them up if you so desire. as you cansee they have a lot of these guys here, these are started from seed and they have a lotof them here. you can see over here they have some that actually are already bolting. toprevent that what i normally do is knock off or cut off the section that is bolting andit will encourage a little more leaf growth. here’s yet another edible leafy green andfor a long time of years you may know this one because i grow it and it grows reallywell. i like a lot this is called red veined sorrel. also called red variegated sorreland also called bloody doc under a whole bunch of different names. let’s see, in generalthe plant is definitely good to eat and for salads and what not i like to pick the smallbaby leaves such as these baby leaves. now,
the larger leaves are definitely good forcooking. also, i like to juice them or blend them up. they can actually get a harsh flavorwhen they get larger and especially when this plant goes to seed, the leaves get a lot morelike i’d say like bitter. after all this is a kind of sorrel. but, i really like thisplant because it is actually quite ornamental. you can see here they have a whole bunch ofone-gallon pots all lined up next to each other. you could literally have a field ofthis stuff and to me this looks quite beautiful, so not only beauty but also an edible perennial.this one for me grows year round when it does get a little bit cold it, you know, dies backa little bit, but continues to shoot up and grow more the next season.
this one is called french sorrel so like thered veined sorrel, or the bloody doc that we just saw this is another edible food crop.i haven’t grown this one, this one is french sorrel. it’s fairly commonly available.and once again this is kind of like an acidic lemon flavored leaves, but once again definitelysomething good to grow. next door here probably one of my favorite edible leaf crops theyhave. this one is called the malabar spinach, the malabar spinach has nice succulent leaves.definitely likes to grow in the tropics, so south florida or hawaii probably grow reallywell. here in california we can only grow them like in the summertime, doesn’t likethe frost at all this year seeds that dropped on the ground last year actually just resproutedon their own so for me that means it’s a
nice perennial crop i can grow one time ofthe year and they drop seeds and if i don’t collect them they will just sprout up on theirown. so actually, i don’t have to restart and sprout the seeds so i at least have adozen seeds that had germinated and are now growing in my garden because i grew theselast year. and there are two varieties, there’s the red malabar and there’s also the greenmalabar. i have found that the red malabar variety is actually a little bit tastier andtastes better than the green malabar variety. so this plant is native to africa and southwestindia. you can eat the leaves and also the stems also the flowers and the fruit actually.the fruit, and i have a good episode on this where i show it, the fruits will make theselike little fruit pods that are purple and
they’ll stain your clothes but that purplecolor is very rich in anti-oxidants and then you’re going to eat that purple color andbasically spit out the seeds to grow for next year alright, next we’re going to talk aboutanother commonly known perennial food crop and this one you could probably grow prettymuch anywhere. so called asparagus. you’re saying, “hey john that doesn’t look likeasparagus you buy in the store.†well, you’re right. because if you let the asparagus thatyou bought in the store continue to grow, it will turn into this. and this is the asparagusfern and the asparagus fern besides being actually beautiful it’s also edible so youcan just pick and eat the leaves of the fern.
there’s not actually a lot there, tasteslike the asparagus you would buy but it’s very fibrous with very little flavor so mostpeople don’t eat it. but what is really good actually is when the asparagus will producelittle seeds or fruit and the fruits are usually like an orange color and you can just eatthe fruit and spit the seeds out and use those seeds to grow. the fruits are actually prettygood, but these ones are basically a long term food investment crop, so what i meanby that is you plant them one year you’ll probably get a couple asparagus the followingyear, maybe by the third year they’ll actually start to produce in a significant way. soyou’ll want to dedicated space for an asparagus if you choose to grow these. for half theyear they’ll look like they’re not alive
while they’re underground and they won’tbe coming up. and the only time you can harvest these is basically in the spring when it throwsup the asparagus shoots that we’re all used to. so next we’re going to talk about some rootcrops and actually this is one of my favorite root crops. probably the number one root cropthat i have because it is so easy to grow and will yield a lot per plant. be sure tocheck my other videos where actually i harvest a lot of pounds of tubers from these guys,these ones are called jerusalem artichokes, also called sunchokes. they aren’t necessarilyrelated to artichokes and they’re not from jerusalem. but, what these make are an edibletuberous root that are very high in inulin,
inulin is known as a prebiotic, the inulinactually feeds the probiotics that are a friendly bacteria in your gut. it’s really good andit’s not necessarily digested through the human body we’re not able to actually digestinulin. it’s also very high, good carbohydrate source and growing tuberous roots are thenumber one way to actually grow for calories. so if you have a limited amount of space youwant to grow a lot of calorically dense foods. tubers are probably the number one way todo it and of all of the tubers that we saw today, the jerusalem artichoke plant is probablythe number one plant to plant because it’s going to yield a lot per plant and man theywill grow like weeds after you have a couple of seasons of them. so plant them in a placeyou want to dedicate to jerusalem artichokes
because you probably won’t be able to digthem all up and they will come back next season. so here’s yet another perennial tuberousroot vegetable, this one’s called mashua and it’s native to the andes. and you cansee here if you notice these leaves you might be thinking they look like something, andyes these leaves kind of look like nasturtiums because this is, tastes very similar and isrelated to nasturtiums you can eat the leaves and the flowers. the leaves and the flowerstaste like nasturtiums and you can also eat the tuberous root that you can see picturesof here on the little sign they have. now the tuberous roots taste also just like nasturtiumsthey are actually very hot and spicy but to diffuse the hot and spiciness you should cookthem but you can also eat them raw if you
like things hot. so here’s another root crop actually thisis probably my favorite root crop of all the root crops that they have here available today.a yacon. so this one actually grows only when it’s warm out, it doesn’t like when itgets too cold and let’s see you should harvest this one after it flowers. if it does flowerfor you, and then basically that’s when the plant has stored all the nutrition inthe tubers. and this guy is actually known as earth apple, because when you harvest themyou can literally take the tuber out and they don’t really store well so you only wantto harvest them when you’re going to actually use them and eat them. otherwise i keep themunderneath the ground to basically keep them
preserved. so you can pull them out and they’recalled earth apples because you can literally just bite into it and it’s a nice sweetflavor kind of like jicama, between jicama and tasting like an apple, that’s actuallya little bit sweet. so they’re really delicious, really good. i just like to use these guysraw, you can peel them or not peel them. but, they grow really well here and then they’llalso send out a crown and you can divide them for the following season you have a wholebunch more plants. so that’s exactly what i did this year. be sure to check my othervideos where i actually harvest yacon and share more about this plant. so here’s yet another edible root crop thati’m going to try this year, this is called
oca. and this is if you take a look at theleaves here on a close up you may notice that this resembles a plant that you may know.this is actually a form of oxalis and this is native to the andes and the sign says itproduces an abundant sweet edible tubers. so, i’m quite interested to see how thetubers will taste. there’s a picture of how they should look and i haven’t had oneof these before and i don’t know if the tuber tastes anything like the plant it’sprobably not too sweet. but, i’m going to get one this year and try it. so next we’re going to talk about the edibleflowers and some of the edible flowers that they have here available at the arts & ecologycenter. so here’s the first edible flower
we’re going to talk about today. this one’scalled bee balm and you can see here, here’s a couple blooms. here’s a bloom on the beebalm and this doesn’t do it justice because these guys actually open up and get reallynice, bright, and beautiful. and you can also eat the leaves on the bee balm. definitelya good edible flower to have. so you know, you can have flowers that look good, theycan be used as cut flowers but you can also eat them. so let’s take a look at two more.this one is the dianthus another edible flower and here’s the dianthus petals, so how iwould use this is basically i would just pick the petals off and use the petals in a salad.i mean these are quite beautiful, nice pink color. so here’s the final edible flowerwe’re going to talk about the abutilons.
and you can see there they have actually nicebeautiful flowers. they have two varieties here, this guy has white petals so you couldactually just harvest the petals off the flowers and use them in salads. also there’s a varietyof red, i mean these kind of look like they wouldn’t be edible but yes, you can eatthese flowers. so before you eat any flowers don’t just start eating flowers, do someresearch, do a google search to make sure the flowers that you are growing or that youwant to eat in fact are edible. because actually not all flowers are edible. next let’s talk about some fruit bearingplants that are also perennial. so this is the tree tomato or tamarillo plant. and thisone i really like a lot if you smell the back
of the leaf and like, rub it, my gardenersays this smells like hot buttered popcorn. so, in a recent episode i did show this growingin san francisco successfully year round and fruiting because it doesn’t get too colddown there. now, it doesn’t mind the heat but it just doesn’t really like the cold.so, i grew mine outside underneath an overhang in my house. it grew fine for about two years,the third year, and this was unprotected, the third year it just didn’t make it. sonow i have one in a nice fifteen-gallon pot in the greenhouse. it does tend to dry outpretty quick so you need to give it constant water. but the fruits, i’m letting themripen up, they generally ripen up actually near christmas time, they look like littlechristmas tree ornaments hanging on the plant
at that time. you know they have a mild flavor,this is what they look like on the inside and they’re not necessarily a sweet fruitbut they’re definitely good nonetheless they probably have a lot of anthocyanins becausethey are really rich in dark pigments. these are normally imported, you can buy them insome produce markets from like new zealand. and unless they are really ripe, there’sa big difference in flavor from, you know, not all the way ripe to full ripeness fromwhat i’ve experienced. alright, here’s yet another perennial ediblecrop. now this is probably a perennial if you protect it. i planted it outside in myfront yard and it didn’t make the full season so it wasn’t necessarily a perennial andit actually didn’t come back the following
year. so if you protect it, it probably willbe a perennial depending on your climate. this one is called pepino or pepino dulce.it’s native to the andes and it says it has a sweet honeydew like fruit. let’s see,so i’ve never gotten them to be as sweet as honeydews. i’d say they taste more likeunripe honeydew. you can see this is what the unripe fruit looks like. i do have a reallygood episode on the pepino melons, these are also called pepino melons. you can see ithas actually beautiful flowers. and this is also in the solanaceae family, the nightshadefamily. here’s some immature fruits there. and this one you know looks so small rightnow, so you might plant it in a small place. but let me tell you once these guys get goingthey will literally spread, divide, and conquer,
and take over. i mean this plant got so hugeit really outgrew the small, raised bed i put it in. if you want to grow these guyshighly recommend you guys plant them in a protected area. and actually they do needa long season to ripen up. that being said some of the ripe fruit, i think i have oneripe fruit from last year. nearly you know six, seven, eight months later. so they actuallystore really well. but, give this plant a lot of space to spread out because it definitelywill spread out and definitely protect it if you want to grow them. so here’s yet another fruiting crop, youknow it’s not a sweet fruit crop this is a hot crop. so these ones are called manzanopeppers. they come in different colors, they
come in red, yellow, and orange. these happento be the red manzanos and these are all actually fairly small plants. now these to my knowledge,and of the peppers that i’ve ever grown, these are the most frost-tolerant so be sureto check my other videos where i have a really good episode on the manzanos, how i plantthem in my yard, how they did. definitely the ones in the greenhouse fared the bestand actually right now i have ripe manzano peppers in the greenhouse, even this earlybecause they will grow all year round in a protected greenhouse. unprotected in a frontraised bed they didn’t do well, they didn’t make it. i dug them up and actually put themin another greenhouse and they came back. and in a wine barrel in front of the garagein front of concrete where it stays a little
bit warmer, they may have made it over wintertimebut i pulled them up just to be safe and put them in a greenhouse. so once again, likeif you lived in san francisco these guys would probably do great because you know it doesn’tget quite that cold it doesn’t freeze down there like it does up here. next door is another pepper and one of thereasons why i came to this sale today to get my hands on the pepper next door. so let’scheck that one out next. one of the reasons why i came to this sale today is to get oneof these guys it’s a aji amarillo peruvian pepper. so these are supposed to be anotherpepper that’s tolerant of the cold, obviously, but not frost-tolerant. and so i haven’ttried one of these, or grown these yet so
i don’t know a lot about them but once againthey’re a hot pepper and hopefully they’re gonna grow year round in my greenhouse. soi’m going to be sure to pick one of these guys out, and take it home, and grow it. next i want to talk about my other favoriteplants that i’m growing and this is called the cape gooseberry or also called the incanberryor pooja berry, these are originally from peru and chile that’s where they’re nativeto. and this is in the solanaceae family, so it’s kind of like if you want to thinkof tomatillo, these have little fruits like tomatillos and like these little husk-likethings. i did have an episode on this a couple episodes ago where i harvested them. whenthey’re ripe they basically, these turn
and drop off the plant and they’ll be anice bright orange color. so you can see here in the picture from my estimation these onesin the picture are not completely ripe. now if they’re not completely ripe they’rea little bit more sour you know, like a tomatillo. when they’re fully ripe they have a littlebit of sour, but also to me they’re very sweet. this one in the northern californiaclimate, probably in the bay area will grow year round no problem. here in sonoma countyi do need to give it some protection in the wintertime. it almost could make the winterif we have a mild winter, planted right up against the house. but if it’s in like afield you will definitely need to protect it. and it does come back if it does die backdown to the ground depending on how bad and
how bad it got frosted. it will come backand re-shoot the following spring. definitely easy to care for, delicious fruit that i lovea lot. but, i’d recommend that you’d eat them when they are absolutely ripe. so now i’m going to talk about some of theherbs, they have a culinary herbs section with all of the common herbs like marjoram,rosemary, thyme, sage, there’s lovage, garlic, hyssop, whatnot. but we’re going to go aroundto some of my favorite herbs that they have available here. now they have so many herbsi can’t possibly cover them all so i’m going to pick out some of the favorite onesand some of the more unique ones they’re having available here today.
so this is the first herb we’re going totalk about today. this is actually called spilanthes, or the toothache plant. now, let’ssee from my memory there’s two different type of spilanthe plants i’m not exactlysure which variety this is, but you could see here they produce these little flowerbuds and these flowers will actually open up into flowers and produce seed. and lasttime i was in hawaii i was collecting spilanthe seeds. this one is native to the braziliantropics and this has a very unique property. what you’d do is you’d actually just takeand snap off one of these flower buds and you can also do this with the leaf but theflower buds are much more potent. take one of those and put it in your mouth, press downor squeeze on it and chew it up, you know
suck all of the saliva out of your mouth andit basically, it’s good for toothaches it’s a very intense like, feeling you’ll getin your mouth it’s insane. you’ll get like a rush, you’ve gotta try it if younever have. these are tropicals so you’ve gotta protect them if you’re growing themhere in california. of all the spilanthe starts, or starter plants i’ve seen for sale theseactually look the healthiest and have the most flower buds. on average some of thesehave like fifteen flower buds per plant so this is an amazing deal to have some reallypowerful medicines actually growing outside your door with the spilanthes. next we’re going to talk about some mints,and this one in particular is called mountain
mints so this looks like it kind of growsas a shrub, grows nice and tall gets two to three feet tall and you can use the mintyleaves for tea or other mint purposes. these can actually spread so you know, once againi encourage you to grow mints in containers and not necessarily plant them in your raisedbeds unless you want an entire bed full of mint. and that’s actually one of the problemsi have in my community garden now i didn’t actually plant the mint there but now i havea whole bed of mind that we need to perennially weed instead of perennially harvest. so now we’re going to talk about stevia.this is another one of my favorite herbs that they’re offering here today at the plantsale. this one is actually basically, a good
sugar substitute. you can just literally pickthe leaves off this and eat it and they’re actually very, very sweet and they don’tcontain any sugar so, it’s a excellent sugar substitute. if you go to stores like wholefoods they’ll say like stevia powders like either in the liquid or white crystallinepowder where they basically extract the stevia sides, which is actually why these are reallysweet out of that, but we want to be eating whole natural foods, like grow your own stevia.if you want something sweet when you’re making your recipe pick some leaves off, putit in your recipe to make it sweet the natural way by using whole foods in your diet. so another herb or a culinary herb is societygarlic. many of you may already grow society
garlic as an ornamental, and actually manypeople grow it as an ornamental but many people don’t know that actually you can harvestthe leaves as a garlic substitute and also the flowers, i love eating the garlic flowers.so the society garlic flowers are nice, purple flowers and they have a nice garlic flavorbut they’re not too strong. and also you know, because you know you’re eating theflowers and the flowers are purple you’re getting some nice purple anti-oxidants inyour diet. i want to remind you guys to eat the rainbow, eat the foods of color eat theflowers that are different colors because each of them have different nutrition profilesin them so you can get healthier one bite at a time.
here’s yet another herb that i have grownin my garden, this one’s actually called sweet mace and it’s a culinary herb nativeto mexico and guatemala. it has tasty mace flavored leaves, one to two feet tall andit’s also known as a mexican tarragon. so the leaves have a nice flavor, not too spicy,a little bit mild kind of like a little mint. and you can also eat the flowers, the flowersare actually quite beautiful, nice and small. so yet another herb that you can eat, so theseare just some of the herbs they have here. they have different kinds of herbs, they havemedicinal herbs, culinary herbs, so many kinds that i can’t even cover them all in thissmall segment. you want to be sure to check out the arts & ecology plant sales if youlive anywhere in the bay area. it’s definitely
worth a drive to be able to come here andsee and purchase all of the different varieties of plants that they offer here. you know ihaven’t found this selection anywhere else. so just got done at the plant sale, endedup getting 4 plants. got some job’s tears that actually i didn’t cover in the video.these produce like a grain-like crop, it’s actually a type of grass. not sure if youcan eat these raw, so you’ve probably got to cook them once you get them. we’re goingto grow this in the green house, it’s actually a little bit frost-tender. got the aji amarillopepper, got a spilanthes plant with lots of flower buds, also got some oca and also yaconplanted in with the oca, so got the double good deal. got four things!
so i definitely had a fun time visiting thearts & ecology plant sale, or perennial plants sale and i’m glad they had this sale. theygenerally have 3 plant sales a year so if you live anywhere in the bay area you definitelywant to go to their website oaec.org, this is a non-profit. they do actually have someamazing tours throughout the year, so get on their email list to be notified of theirplant sales and also the tours. they’re doing some great work here and i would encourageyou to support them by visiting their plant sales and buying up. once again this is johnkohler with growingyourgreens.com. we’ll see you next time, and keep on growing!
