alright! this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com.today we have another exciting episode for you, i’m so excited for this one! once again,i’m traveling, and i’m here outside austin, texas, actually in manner, texas. and thisis for a very important reason. i’m here visiting a plant nursery and a little farmhere and herb emporium, like something i’ve never been to before, so i’m so excitedto be here and share with you guys. where i’m at today is i’m actually at gardenof the ancient and it’s described as an herb emporium and nursery. they got many herbshere, if you know what i mean, but none of those illegal ones, only the legal ones. butthey also have ones that are smoke-able herbs, so i’m interested in learning about differentherbs, medicinal herbs, and all kinds of stuff,
and the main reason why i’m here today isto pick up some plants from my girlfriend. i’m going to try to get her started witha little garden so i need some little small plants; we’re going to put in a containergarden for. i’ll have another episode on that one for when i do it. so anyways, thesun is going down, so let’s go ahead and check out this nursery inside. all right,so this is the main nursery area, as you guys see, it goes up to the herb emporium thatmaybe i’ll do a shot on in a minute. but you know, i’m here for the plants. i meanyou could buy the dried herbs in the shop, which is really cool, you know, all for allkinds of different herbs, medicinal, edible, and culinary herbs. i think they’re allgreat. but more than just taking herbs in
their dried form, it’s much more powerfulto get them in their full living form and so what we’re looking at here is a littlewalkway where they have all the different plants they have available for sale. and hereat the nursery, they actually have many of the same plants that they’re selling herein the ground, because this is their mother stock. one of the cool things that i reallylike about this nursery that’s not happening for the most part in the whole nursery industry—whenyou go to a plant nursery to buy a plant, 80 percent of the plants of the plants you’rebuying at that plant nursery, they didn’t actually grow themselves. they’re gettingsmaller and smaller that main growers that then sell to the nursery, and then nurserythese days are now resellers. which i think,
you know, nurseries should grow their ownstuff, number one they could make more profit, number two they could grow a wider varietybecause when it’s in a supplied chain, they’re not growing diversity, and saving the seeds,like they’re doing here, growing year after year, and they know which plants will do wellin this area. so i mean, you guys live anywhere in austin, even houston, you know, centraltexas, i’d recommend coming out here, getting some of your plants, because they’re definitelygoing to be good ones. so they grow the overwhelming majority of the plants that they’re sellinghere—they actually grew here. and you can see some of the mother plants that they tookthe cuttings or they go the seeds from. they also save the seeds here. so anyways, let’sgo ahead and highlight just a few of the plants
that i really like that are here. the sun’sgoing down so i’m running out of time, but i’m going to show you guys and pack in asmany as i can in a short amount of time. so one of the main reasons why i’m here todayis because i really love the herbs. there’s all kinds of herbs, there’s medicinal herbs,which i had videos on, different medicinal. and there’s also herbs that are quite edibleand other useful herbs that they grow, you know they focus on edibles, herbs, and usefulplants at this nursery. and of course, if you’re looking for culinary a herb, whichis what most people usually think about, and of course they’ve got those, they’ve gotrosemary and basil and all the standard herbs. rue. you know, they’re propagating in oneof the green houses here. but they also have
some more unique and interesting and moreunknown ones that i’ve actually never seen in the ground. i’ve seen them in the dried,powder form in herb shops. and they’re offering some of those today too, so, let’s go aheadand share with you guys some of the herbs. and they do a lot of research here, whichis something i really like a lot about different unique varieties of plants that literally—you’regoing to be hard pressed anywhere else here in austin. so my favorite kind of herbs, ori would call simply a vegetable that they’re propagating and offering here are moringatrees. and these guys are huge! i mean, this is a smaller one gallon pot they’re offeringfor just 10 dollars. and always when picking the plant you’re going to buy, i alwaysencourage you guys to get the smallest pot
size with the largest plant. and let me tellyou, you know, some of these one gallon plants, man, pushing like three four feet. amazingdeal for 10 bucks. now the moringa is a very cool plant. you can actually eat the drumsticks—no,these are not chicken legs. these are the pods that actually come out of the moringa.after it goes to flower you could eat those or use in indian cuisine. but more importantlythan just the pods, i want you guys to be eating the leafy greens. after all, my channelis called growing your greens for a reason. i mean, greens are the source of protein,amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. this literally fuels the planet, the greens, andthe chlorophyll, and the photosynthesis that’s occurring inside them. mmm. moringa is knownas one of the most nutritious green leafy
vegetables on the entire planet, and you couldget them here. so here’s another plant you actually don’t see too often. i mean, i’veseen them before in my travels, but this is an amazing specimen. what we have here isa curry plant. look at that, that guy’s nice and bushy. my girlfriend got to try someof this at the farmer’s market today and she loved this stuff. you know, before thereare curry powders with all the different mixtures, they just have the curry plant. and literallyyou could use this instead of curry and for unique flavors in your dishes. so besidesjust eating your greens, you know, a lot of them can be used for added flavors. you knowi believe you guys should get out of adding things like salt and all these artificialflavor agents. and everything’s artificial
these days, packaged and processed foods.but before there’s all these packaged processed foods and flavor additives that aren’t evenfood, you know, we had plants! and i want you guys to get back to growing some uniqueplants with unique and different flavors. and they’re offering a ton of them here.so i was really relieved actually to find this plant growing at this nursery becausethis is one that i’ve been growing for many years now and the name always escapes me.so now i have a video about so i can remember. i originally bought this plant in vista californiaat the local farmers market down there. an asian lady sold it to me and it was labeledleaf ginseng, and even to this day it’s still labeled leaf ginseng, but the name ofthis plant is actually called the talinum
paniculatum… yeah, i’m not… latin. so,but english name, jewels of opar. it says, in traditional chinese medicine, it’s knownas tu-ren-shen and is used to tone digestion, moisten the lungs. it is rich in iron, goodfor anemia. also useful for treating headaches, pneumonia, diarrhea, and the roots are usefulfor impediments. yeah, hear that guys? the juice from the leaves is used to treat ulcers,increase appetite, and you can eat the young leaves in your salad too. very easy to growand care for, does well in hot, dry areas with full sun and self seeds readily. so yes,this one does not like the frost in an unheated greenhouse in california. it grows year roundfor me. and it’s now going to flower in seed stage. i love picking the little babyleaves, just like this, i mean, they are so
delicious and so mild. mmm. just eat thosein a salad, all day long. all right, so besides that main entry breeze way that goes to theherb emporium, they have several different hoop houses on site, which they have additionalinventory in as well as do some of the propagation of the plants that you’re seeing here. nowwe are here in the fall time, and they’re getting ready for the frost. that is imminentsoon, so a good time to come here would be in the spring when everything starts to bloomand they’re all ready to set and offer plants. you know, once again, for people, so theycould get them in their garden. that being said, i encourage you guys to visit this placeany time of year, because you’re going to get to see what is actually growing at thatpoint, at that time of year. in your local
area. here in austin texas area, you couldgrow year round, man, and don’t think, oh it’s the winter time, i can’t garden!no, there’s always something you could grow, and if you come here, you’re going to definitelylearn that. anyways what i want to do next is taking in some of these hoop houses andshare with you guys some of the cool stuff growing inside. so in every one of these differenthoop houses they have all different kinds of plants. i feel right at home here. they’repropagating many different varieties up top there. and here’s the new variety they juststarted growing that i’ve been growing for a couple of years now. it’s one of my favoritesknown as the longevity greens, aka gynura procumbens. you know, in the philippines theycall it ashitaba, but to me, ashitaba is a
different plant from japan. very healing,and you know, i was talking to one of the guys here and it said that this plant healsthe modern diets problems. i commented in my opinion, you know, the cure for the moderndiet which is you know, processed foods and junk foods, is not a gynura procumbens, whichi believe everyone should eat, and i eat it mainly in the summer time as my main summerleafy greens vegetable. the solution is truly just eating nature’s foods and getting outof the processed foods. so i’m glad for you guys here in austin and central texas,you guys have a resource like the nursery here that provides all these rare, unique,and exotic plants. man, i’m looking at bananas and they’ve got cardamine and they’vegot ginger. they’ve got all these cool rare
things that can be quite hard to find. noteverything is fully labeled or marked easily, so if you’re coming here and you’re lookingfor something, you want to ask some of the helpful staff here and they’ll be able toshare with you guys where in this whole place they have. because they’ve got plants allover the place, man! i think i’d probably love to work here. so what we’re lookingat now is just one of the many aquaponic systems they have growing here. i mean, these arejust mainly made out of the standard ibc totes. you may be able to find these on craigslist.depending on where you live, they may run between 100 to 200 dollars. they may basicallycut off the top and they’ve got the fish in the bottom. and they pump the water upinto some of these plants up top. one of the
cool things i’ve learned about here is thatthey’re growing the dragon fruit and actually they started from seed. underneath the aquaponics,it’s growing faster and more vigorous than the plants in pots or even the ones in theground. so you know, while i’m a big fan of growing things in the pots and in the groundas nature would, i always like to embrace new technologies when some plants will likecertain conditions better or worse, right? so you gotta mash the plant with the growingstyle. so in general, for aquaponic systems, let it seem to do fairly well under aquaponics,and now i know that the dragon fruits will as well. another thing growing up here isactually, or right here, is actually known as the water spinach. and this is really cool,how they get some of the plants starts that
they grow. some of the actual mother plants.they actually just go to the market. so the water spinach was actually gotten from a localagent store. they just got the water spinach and they sell the vegetables, right? but youcould bring them home and root them and plant them out and grow your own water spinach andnow they could sell you plants here. and once again, that’s how the dragon fruit was started.so i always want to encourage you guys to utilize your resources—local stores thatsell vegetative matter, you may always be able to take a cutting, or start some livingplant tissue. so what we’re looking at in this hoop house here, really cool. it remindsme of being back in las vegas! they have all kinds of different cactus in here. and beforeyou think, john! why are you making a video
on cactus?! i just want you guys to know thatall cactuses are edible! yes, you can eat them! if you go to a local mexican market,they often sell nopal cactus pads, or the leaves of the cactus, and they’re eatenmuch like a vegetable. now, all the cactuses are edible, although i wouldn’t necessarilyrecommend eating the spines, and there are some varieties that are more edible than others.in addition, one of my favorite fruits in the world is the cactus fruit. cactus is adrought tolerant plant, it needs very little water. it’s an amazing succulent, and withthe coming years with less water and drought, you might want to start growing some cactusto eat, not only for the vegetable pads, but also for the delicious fruit. so what we’relooking at now, in another hoop house here,
is yet another aquaponic system. i think theyhave a total of 4 different aquaponic systems here that they’re growing. and one of thecool things that i’ve learned about here today is the main way they use the aquaponicsystem here. not to grow plants out full term, but how they use it is for the plant propagation.i mean, after all, they are a nursery here, and they are in the business of propagatingand selling plants to you guys. and once again, like i said, they propagate 99% of the plantsthey’re selling here. you know, they did it themselves. and one of their secrets, andi’m sharing it with you guys, is the aquaponics. so one of the things they like to do in thespring time is they take cuttings of bails, pop it in the aquaponic system, come backin just a week or two, and they’ve actually
rooted them up, and they could transplantthem out and then put them up and sell them to the customers that come in. so they takeall the different kinds of cuttings, put them in the aquaponics, and it works great forthat specific instance. i think just because of that i might have to start an aquaponicsetup at my house. so now we’re outside in the garden and this garden is where theyactually do a lot of the plant propagation, or growing the mother plants that they willget the seeds from or take cuttings from, to keep them going to they can have inventoryto offer to the public. you know, one of the cool things i’ve learned about today, i’vealways heard about tulsi, or the holy basil. and the thing i’ve learned about today isthere are different varieties of holy basil!
and the variety that i like the most is thisvariety. and i’m not sure what variety of the holy basil it is, haha. mmm, really goodflavor. nice and strong. and holy basil is probably one of the most medicinal basilsand it’s the one i believe you guys should be growing. you want to be growing this one.i also heard this one has a high cannabinoids content. and yes, cannabinoids is what’sin another popular “herb†as well. but yeah, this one tastes amazing, and i thinki’m kind of addicted to holy basil now! so one of the plants that they specializeat the nursery here is what you guys see behind me. and it’s the horseradish. the horseradishlooks like it is growing amazing here. i mean they got all this horseradish growing andit’ some of the easiest crops you could
be growing. i mean, one of my favorite thingsto eat back in the day that i don’t eat anymore was, like, a horsey sauce, like ahorseradish sauce. mm! so delicious. but they told me the easiest way to propagate the horseradishis to literally go buy some horseradish from your local grocery store, where you couldbuy it. as long as its fresh horseradish and not super dried out and shriveled and old,right, no longer viable. you could take that, just chop it up into pieces, and put it insome dirt, water it. and it’s going to come up, like horseradish, i mean. the stuff couldactually spread out, and horseradish is in the same family as the brassica family ofplants. and you know, you could also, besides eating the roots, you could actually justeat the leaves and small bites of the leaves.
mmm. spice up your salad! so another thingi recommend you guys to grow if you have acreage, they have like 2 acres here at this nursery.they grow some fruit trees, and as you guys could see, this is a beautiful persimmon tree,and this american persimmon that needs to basically get soft before you eat them. ilove the persimmon, it’s definitely one of my favorite fruits, and it looks like,to me, this has, just another month or so before you could start eating these guys.fruit trees are far easier to take care of and manage than herbs or vegetable plantsbecause literally once you get them established properly in the ground, you know, they almosttake care of themselves depending on the variety of the tree gets. so if you want to be ableto grow your own food with the least amount
of effort, get a fruit tree! they rock. soi don’t have much more time here, the sun’s pretty much down. i got a few more minutesof light. and they have a lot of different edibles here. i can’t possibly cover itall in this short video, so i’m going to have to recommend you guys come out to theplace here if you live anywhere in the area. definitely cool. and you want to come earlierin the day so you have some time to walk around and learn about all the cool plants. boththe edibles and the medicinal, that they’re offering here. one of the last ones i’llbe able to share with you guys today before the sun goes down is this one here. it’sactually called the wild dagga. and this one is actually used to smoke, actually, in replacementof you know, some of those other herbs…
or one of the most popular herbs that yousmoke. i mean, the flowers, wow! don’t recommend it, man, it tastes highly medicinal. i mean,that’s probably something that happens when you smoke them. but i guess the guy from cheech& chong, when he was in jail and couldn’t get some cannabis; he was smoking the wilddagga, because it says it’s going to kind of mellow you out and relax you and all thiskind of stuff. and interestingly enough in african language, the dagga means “weedâ€!haha! so figure that one out. so i guess with this last medicinal herb, i wanted to kindof transition and show you guys really quick, the store they have on sight. i mean, i’vebeen to a lot of herb stores before, you know, and this is one herb store that blows everyother one that i’ve ever been to out of
the water. they have more herbs than i’veever seen in one place. i mean, if there’s an herb available, let me tell you, it’sprobably at this store. so i’m walking in on my way to the herb store and i just wantedto show you guys this because it’s an excellent example of what you guys could do. i mean,they’re into a lot of different green technologies here. you know, they sheep mulch, and theyspread leaves and wood chips on the ground to increase the soil microbiology and increasethe organic matter and reuse materials that would otherwise go to the landfill. the thingthat they’re doing here, like really hardcore, is that every building has multiple ibc totesnext to it to catch all the rainwater off of roots. so many of the plants that they’regrowing here are grown with rainwater, which
in my opinion, is some of the best water youcould be growing your plants with, because i mean, after all, rainwater is what naturewaters plants with. not tap water out of your spigot that has been treated with chlorineand chloramines and all kinds of other chemical contaminants, right? rainwater is one of thebest things you could do, and the rain is free, although in some localities, it maybe illegal to collect your rainwater, which i think is b.s.! but anyways, here it lookslike it’s completely legal, and once again, these ibc totes available on craigslist, youknow, store like 300 gallons, approximately. cost you about 100 bucks. you get them once,you set a system up, and literally, you have free water, some of the best water, for yourgarden, at all different times of the year.
i mean, by the size of it, they’ve probablygot like over 10,000 gallons in rainwater catchment, probably at any given time here.it’s insane! so just beside the nursery here onsite, another place you’re goingto want to check out. you know, i like live plants more than dried plants, but you know,i believe herbs have a place in the human diet and health for us! i mean, before wehad all these medicines and pharmaceutical drugs, right, what did people do before theyhad the viagra pill to get it up, right? well there’s natural herbs that’ll help youget it up too, that in my opinion, are a lot more beneficial than taking viagra, and iwould never subject myself to viagra! but i would definitely take some of these herbsin here to help me get it up—if i had that
problem! anyways, let’s go ahead and showyou guys a quick tour of the herb emporium and actually some of the other gardening itemsthey have inside. so now we’re inside the herb store, and besides being a store, theyhave a little library here with books! lots of different books on herbs and gardeningand stuff, and some nice cozy chairs. so you come inside, just hang out, read some gardeningbooks and learn about all the different herbs that they’re offering here. in addition,they also have a whole section of organic fertilizers and pest controls for your garden.now, you know, they mostly focus on the plants and they got some cool things. not reallygoing to go over them today, but what i really want to go over is just this wall of herbsthat i’m seeing in front of me. to share
with you guys some of the cool, unique herbsthat they have. so while i’m not a big fan of smoking any herbs myself, they actuallyhave an area here of smoking blends that have been traditionally been used for smoking thathave all different kinds for properties and can do all kinds of stuff to you that i haveno idea about. but they’ve got, like, wormwood, mullen, mexican dream herb!? that sounds prettyinteresting. shaman smoke, all these different kinds of things, and you know, once again,these herbs are natural plants. think about it—tobacco. that’s a natural plant youwould grow, right? nothing made in a chemical laboratory or anything like this. just nature’sgift for us, whether you want to smoke them, or like me, i like to eat them. so let’scheck out all the crazy edible herbs they
have here on site. so here’s the amazingherb wall, check it out. each one of these jars has a different herb in it. i mean, there’swell over 300 different varieties of herbs, this herb shop has more herbs than i’veever seen in my whole life! but, no. they don’t have that kind of herb, sorry. soanyways, i mean, they have all kinds of culinary, medicinal ones that are culinary and medicinal.and what i want to do at this point is actually just maybe share just a few of my favoriteherbs with you that you guys might want to start including in your diet for some of thehealth benefits. so one of the herbs that i like to take as often as i can and i’mactually even growing this herb in my garden is turmeric. once again, you know, i believeyou guys should be growing your herbs and
eating them fresh as possible, but of course,if you can’t grow it, because turmeric is a tropical root crop. definitely better toget it dried than to not have ti at all. there’s a lot of research on turmeric that it is anti-inflammatoryand anti all kinds of things as well as very high antioxidant potential and so this issomething that’s going to, in my opinion, keep young and keep you healthy and keep yougoing all night long. the next area i want to focus on for you guys is that they havehere with all the herbs are some other very powerful foods. they’re basically the algaesand the seed vegetables, and this is something that most americans are not aware of and notincluding in their diet. it’s something that i’ve been including in my diet forprobably like the last 20 years now, things
like the spirulina and the cholera, whichare very high in basically pigments and once again, more antioxidants in all kinds of differentbeneficial nutrients. in addition, they have all different kinds of seaweed including thepopular red algae marine seaweed which they say is good for things like viruses and outbreaks,if you know what i mean. and they have all kinds of different other seaweeds that arereally good. now think about it: seaweeds are pretty much like green plants grown inthe ocean, but they’re algaes. i mean, they basically convert the sun energy through thephotosynthesis to make nutrients to make the plant. and you know, i always encourage youguys to eat at the lowest part of a food chain as possible so the plants that you could grow—leafygreens, plants, vegetables, and fruits, lowest
on the food chain. and you know, same thingwith the algaes and the seaweeds in the ocean. they’re the lowest on the food chain. imean think about it, the land animals eat things like the grass and the herbs and thevegetables, and then we eat them, right? well, what did the fish eat? well they eat thingslike the algaes, and the seaweeds, and then bigger fish eat the smaller fish and all upon the chain. so eat the lowest on the food chain for the most amounts of phytochemicals,phytonutrients, antioxidants, and vitamin minerals. and of course, they offer almostall the different seaweeds i’ve ever seen here. so besides all the different medicinaland edible herbs, they also have the big culinary herb and seasoning section. and you know,just because you want to eat a more natural
diet, fruits and vegetables out of your gardenand all this stuff, doesn’t mean your food has to be boring, right? for thousands ofyears, people around the world have been using different herbs and spices to make their foodtaste good! now, not only do these herbs and spices that we consider, culinary, will makeyour food taste good, they’ll also add beneficial nutrients for you. you know, i’ve seen studiesthat show people that live in italy, you know that eat lots of herbs like from the mountains,are healthier than people who aren’t. and so, you know, i want to encourage you guysto use some of the different herbs to flavor up your dishes to make them taste good, plusget additional nutrition. so i mean, they’ve got all kinds of different herb flavors thati’ve never seen before, like one of these
over here was like, a japanese style herbflavoring, they got like a cajun one, they got a mexican one, i mean… all these differentherbs blends, you could just go through one of these a day, and you probably wouldn’teven get to all them at the end of the year. and of course, you’re going to learn thatyou like some better than others. some of my favorite herb blends are like the pizzaseasoning blend, the taco seasoning blend, and of course, i also like the fajita seasoningblend as well. so of course, i cannot leave this herb emporium until after i share withyou guys the tea blend area. i mean there are so many different kinds of tea blendshere. once again, there are so many kinds you could try them all. they’ve got a peacefulsleep tea! so if you can’t sleep at night,
you might want to try the peaceful sleep aidtea, so you could sleep just a little bit better. i mean, herbs throughout history havebeen used for many different reasons. they have a little bit different formulations thatmay help with certain conditions you’re having. another thing is i always want toencourage you guys to drink your teas before you drink your coffee. in my opinion, teasare much better than coffee, although before either of those, i’d rather juice some ofthe greens out of my garden, including some of my herbs to get the beneficial propertiesout of them and into me! so i’m sad to say my visit here at gardens of the ancient isover. it’s dark. i think they’re closed, and i gotta get out of here, i gotta go eatdinner and all this kind of stuff. but before
i leave i want to recommend you guys to checkout their website, gardensoftheancients.com, and if you’re anywhere in the austin orcentral texas area, it’s definitely worth a visit out here. you want to come, maybeearlier in the afternoon, so you could check out all the different things growing as wellas the amazing herb shop with all kinds of cool stuff that you literally won’t findanywhere else. and the one thing i would recommend to you guys is people who are into gardeningand growing food is: you want to come out here on one of the saturdays, because checkit out: every saturday, they have a weekly plant walk from 2 p.m to 4 p.m and the classfee is from 5 dollars to 20 dollars on the sliding scale. i got here right at the endof that plant walk today, and you know, i’ve
met the guy giving the talk, which is oneof the groomers here. he’s an awesome dude, full of knowledge, full of information. i’velearned a whole bunch of things myself from him. so if you come out, you want to comeout on a saturday to go on this tour and then at the end you’ll have some time to lookaround this place and learn about all the cool herbs that they’re growing and offeringhere. i hope you guys enjoyed this episode. once again, my name is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com,we’ll see you next time, and until then, keep on growing!