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alright! this is john kohler of growingyourgreens.com.today we have another exciting episode for you, and still on vacation in maui. we’regoing to share another cool organic farm with you guys. so where we’re at today is, we’renext to my friend ryan’s place. there’s a few cool things about ryan. number one,i’ve known him for 15 plus years now, totally cool. and another cool thing is actually aboutfive years, i came to this very farm and filmed an episode, and i have it documented for youguys. i’ll put a link down below for you guys if you want to see his humble beginnings.basically, what happened was about five years ago, he was working for a local, natural foodscompany and was doing that pretty much fulltime, and tried to maintain a little farm on theside.

slowly but surely, day after day, he’d puta little bit more time in his farm and yes he’d still have to go to work, but at onepoint finally he got his farm built up enough that he was able to leave his job and do whathe really loved. i love gardening and i love farming; this is just fun to me, it’s notwork. and although he is probably technically working more hours and harder, what you believework is is what you think of it. some people might think, “john man, it’s so much workto make a video.” no, for me, making videos like this for you guys is fun. for me gardening,spending time with my girlfriend, traveling, that’s all fun stuff. that’s not work,because you gotta do something with your time. that’s what he gets to do. he gets to wakeup passionately every day. he gets to work

on his farm, he gets to make a living, feedhis family and all this kind of stuff. and actually he’s doing better now than actuallyworking full time with his farm on the part time. i want to encourage all you guys outthere, if you want a career, if you don’t like your job right now, it is always an optionno matter where you live in the country to start a farm. even if you don’t have enoughspace. check my past episodes or my upcoming episode on a guy in portland who has a farmout of his garage, growing wheat grass and buckwheat sprouts and sunflower greens. there’s always a way to do it. there’smicrogreen places that i’ve visited and made videos about it, and that’s their indoorfarm. microgreens, they sell for a lot of

money. the other thing, about my friend hereon maui, things sell for a little bit more expensive than the mainland. plus, the coolthing he does that differentiates himself, and i always encourage you guys to differentiateyourself. if everybody’s growing apples in your area, don’t grow apples. that’stoo much competition. grow pears, or asian pears, because nobody’s got them, so guesswhat, because you’re the only guy with them, you could charge more money for them and thecare in general is probably fairly similar to the apples. and so he really tries to grow a diversityof crops and actually at this last farmer’s market, it was the maui upcountry farmer’smarket near kula on saturday, which, if you

go to, number one farmer’s market in mauiand i recommend you guys get there early, very important, like 6:30,7, because theywill sell out of stuff. there’s that much of a demand for fresh, locally grown organicproduce here in maui. that’s one of the reasons why he can make this happen. somebodymight think, “yeah, the farm behind him looks really great!” well, actually, thisis not actually his farm. this is actually the neighbor’s farm, which also grows withorganic principles, but does it a lot different. if you think of a farm, you think of a placelike this, with rows and maybe some plastic on the ground to help prevent weeds, and allthis kind of stuff. this kind of farm, while it’s cool and i always encourage you guysto grow your own food and have your own farm,

there are more sustainable ways and less sustainableways to farm in my opinion. in this method, they’re bringing in a lot of external inputsbecause they’re not making a lot of their own inputs for their farm on site. whereas if we look next door, you’re goingto see, number one, a lot more diversity and number two, he’s actually making some ofthe inputs he needs to fertilize his garden to make it fruitful, bountiful, and productive.i guess without any further ado, let’s go into his farm and what i’m going to do todaywith you guys is share some of the techniques and special crops that he’s growing andhow to do it, whether you live in maui, or the mainland, an apartment in new york city,you’ll be sure to see some tips that’ll

help you grow more food effectively, whetheryou just want to grow for you and your family like i encourage everybody watching this videoto do, or whether you want to start a small farm like he has to help feed the communityand of course, also your family. let’s head into his cool farm. so this isthe road that goes into his farm and you can see the clearly defined border; you can seethe standard row crop agriculture up to his property and at this property line, he’sdone something very special. he’s using the edges to his advantage and i want to encourageyou guys to use the edges of your property to your advantage. it’s actually quite windyup here sometimes so he’s grown windbreaks around the perimeter of his property and they’renot standard trees or plants that are just

good for nothing, right? everything always has a purpose on his farm,and i want everything you guys grow to have a purpose, whether you’re going to eat it,whether you’re going sell it, or whether it’s going to feed your soil and you’regrowing nutrition for your soil. that’s simply what he’s doing. over on this sidehe’s growing some cash crops, known as sugar cane, i love my sugar cane, but he’s growingtons of sugar cane and he has some of the healthiest organic sugar cane i’ve everseen. it’s like this thick in girth, and we’ll check it out in a little bit. andthen over on this side he has some nitrogen-fixing trees that grow pretty quickly and you canjust chop them and drop them to add fertility

to his soil. i guess without further ado let’shead into the farm and check it out. one of the things my friend strives to do is bringfertility to his soil, and one of the ways he does that is by utilizing animals. so he has multiple different kinds of animals:ducks, geese, goats, chickens and yes, even wabbits. silly wabbits, oh you guys are cutewabbits. so what we’re looking at here is chicken tractor, i mean rabbit tractor. thisis a rabbit tractor that he can pick up and move to where he needs it to feed the rabbitsscrub weeds and produce clippings that he wouldn’t normally eat. he feeds them thatfood and then the rabbits make their rabbit manure. in the last episode that you guyssaw, my other friend does not use any rabbit

manure and you could do it either way. youdon’t need manure to be an organic gardener. there are definitely ways to do gardeningwithout manure, if that is your choice. for example, the next-door grower, you guys sawthe row crops. they bring in animal manures from a local feed lot that’s being fed gmocorn and soy, yet they still consider themselves organic. now the feed lots are feeding them gmo cornand soy but also antibiotics. that’s the kind of manure that i do not and will notendorse or recommend that you guys bring in to your farm. if you do want to bring in manure,know the source. better yet, if you want to do manure, make it yourself. that’s eventhe best, because you know what’s going

into the rabbit’s mouth. personally, i’llprobably not have a whole lot of animals. once again, there’s pros and cons to everythingin life. if you get married to a stripper, that’s a pro and a con, because she’sprobably really hot but the con is she was, you know, a stripper. and not to say anything about strippers oranything, but once again with having animals, it’s a pro and a con. the animals are livingcreatures. they take a lot more work than the sugar canes sitting next to them becausethey’re living, they’re moving, they’re breathing, they could get hurt, they requiremore constant attention. if you guys have any sort of pet, a dog or cat, you guys babyyour pets. and if you have animals, in my

opinion you should be babying them and takingcare of them because they’re actually providing for you, whether you’re going to use themfor food or whether you’re going to use them for manure. a lot of my friend ryan’s time is dedicatedto taking care of his animal, whether that means filling up the water bottle, whetherthat means feeding them every day, making sure they always have water, and making surethey don’t get hurt, or eaten by animals. i want you guys to think about this. the otherthing i want you guys to think about and realize is that he is feeding them weeds that arenot really of a financial value here, but basically rabbits speed up the compost processto make the nutrients more broken down and

available for the soil. you could do the samething just by taking the weeds and putting them into a compost pile to let it cook down. furthermore, the animals over there, they’regoing to eat the weeds like we eat food, and our bodies take out what we need, some ofit is burned in energy for us to be able to talk and move, and then the rest comes outof us. so they’re taking the weeds that have, say 100 percent nutrition, and theyeat it, and then they poop out 80 percent of what was in the weeds when a much betterpreference for me and not have to take care of animals is to put the weeds into my compostand get a higher percentage of net nutrition out of it to put back into my garden. thatbeing said, it will take a lot more leaf matter

to break down because the rabbits and otheranimals are concentrators of nutrients. i always like to give you guys the full storyinstead of saying “don’t use manure!” or “you should always use manure!” i wantyou guys to be mindful, and i try to lay out both angles for you, so you guys can makea decision on what you choose to do on your own garden or farm. next let’s go aheadand move on to, it looks like he just harvested some sugar cane so i’ll show you a bundleof sugar cane. what we’re looking at now is some of the sugar cane that my friend ryanhas harvested, and you can see all the sugar cane plants over on that side. these guysare tall. i wish i had as much sugar cane as my ryan does. he’s had to train thisstuff up because sugar cane doesn’t grow

up erect like guys at night with a hot girl.they kind of flop over and get sideways, so he’s actually had to painstakingly tie theseguys to go upright to provide windbreaks. in addition, they also provide some shadingto the plants planted below. now that could be a good thing when it’s super hot butthat can also be a bad thing because that can limit growth. but no matter what he’sdoing, it looks like he’s doing a great job because the sugar cane is growing quitewell. sugar cane is in the grass family and sugar cane, in my opinion, is the best formof sugar that we should be consuming, if you want to consume sugar. we get all this refinedsugar. everything’s been processed out of it. everybody’s always saying “don’teat white foods! don’t eat white flours

and white sugars!” we want to eat naturalwhole food, and the whole sugar cane here, this bunch, it’s pretty heavy. look at thisbunch right here. this green sugar cane is definitely a lotof heft, a lot of weight to it. it’s quite unfortunate that here on maui, most of thesugar cane being produced is not being grown in an organic manner in my opinion, is notsuper sustainable just so that people could have their white sugar. most of this sugarcane is sold so that it actually can be juiced with sugar cane juicers and drank right up.if you visit ryan at the farmers’ market, he will bring juiced up organic sugar canestraight from his fields and let me tell you, i had some at the farmers’ market and it’ssome of the best stuff. if you’ve never

had it you’ve got to have it. it’s supersweet and uber delicious. this is just one of the crops that he grows to differentiatehimself from other growers because not many people grow the sugar cane. and he has multiple varieties of the sugarcane and much like apples, whether you’ve got granny smith or fuji apples, each varietyof sugar cane grows a little bit differently and of course, tastes differently as well.what we’re looking at now is another specialty crop that i don’t often see around, butryan has been very successful growing this crop. and this is raspberries. i know you’rethinking, “john you could grow raspberries in the tropics man, i thought they were atemperate climate fruit.” actually, these

are not just any old raspberries. they’recalled the mysore raspberries and check them out, these guys are like black raspberries. i always want to encourage you guys to eatyour foods in color, and if you live in the tropics, you should definitely be growingsome mysore raspberries. quite delicious. super good and these guys grow in the wayryan grows them. check it out. they’re also super productive. these are actually verylabor-intensive to harvest, so unless you got a lot of labor, might not want to growthese. they’ve got some nasty thorns on them, more akin to blackberries than raspberries,but he’ll harvest whole containers of these and guess what, when you’re the only guyat the farmers’ market who’s got the mysores,

you can charge almost any price you want. what we’re looking at now is one of ryan’sfields for lack of a better word. this is not like the farmer next door that has thestandard row crops. ryan has row crops, but it’s a diversity of different crops. hedoesn’t just plant all kale in this section and all okra over there and all the eggplantsover there. he has it all mixed up. this is my style of gardening; i like to intermixthings and interplant things and that’s very valuable so that if you have an outbreakof pests on this kale, it’s not affecting the kale on the south fourty over there. thisis technique i personally like to use. also it breaks up the monotony and makes thingslook cool. in addition, because of the way

my friend ryan is farming, he’s more productivethan the farmer next door due to his practices. as you guys can see, one of the practices,unlike most commercial farmers that grow a bunch of lettuce, they’ll come in with theirknife and chop off the whole head of lettuce and sell the whole head of lettuce, or they’llchop off their whole kale plant and sell a whole thing of kale, ryan comes and carefullyand painstakingly harvests the leaves off these kale plants. he’ll harvest one leaf of this plant, oneoff this plant, one leaf off this plant, and because he’s got a hundred plants all theway down the row, he’ll have bunches of kale to sell at the farmers’ market. nowif you’re just going for a family, you won’t

need a hundred plants but i’d definitelylike to have 20-odd plants during the winter when things slow down. unfortunately, or fortunatelyfor ryan, things don’t slow down here in hawaii because it never gets super cold likethe mainland. one of the things i want to let you guys know about is the method of harvestinghe’s using. i call it, for lack of a better word, “sustainably harvesting” becausethink of it, if you took this kale plant, you chopped it down and then you just soldthe kale right here, then the plant would not be productive for you. you’d have to start again, plant the seed,keep it growing and it’s going to take a lot more time to replenish. i always wantto encourage you guys to keep your plants

for as long as you can, provided they arestill productive and if you grow them in good nutritious soil like ryan has here and he’sincluded things here like the rock dust that i like to use and adding compost back intohis farm, you can maintain production and still get good yields. in addition, becauseryan is harvesting in this fashion, he’s harvesting baby leaves so the customers arealso getting a higher quality product, in my opinion. if you’re going to buy kale,collard greens, or any kind of greens in the store, you always want to get the smallestleaves because they’re going to taste better, they’re going to be more tender whereasmany growers are going to pick that old, nasty, long leaves that just aren’t going to tasteas good when you’re trying to cut them up

and use them in a salad for example. i’ve had some of the greens here and i’vegot to tell you, they are amazing. now check this out. you guys might be thinking, “john,is that an earth ship? it looks like the framing of an earth ship.” well no, ryan’s notbuilding an earth ship here, although he might one day. what you’re looking at is actuallyhis cool tomato trellis. ryan’s kind of like me. he likes to reuse things and makethings as most efficient as possible so that he can save on labor, and it makes less workin the long run. if you just let your tomatoes sprawl out on the ground, they’re goingto take more area, more space and you’re going to have to hunt and pick for the ripetomatoes whereas with this, he’s reusing

wood and irrigation line that was previouslyexisting on the property to make an amazing trellis structure, one like i’ve never seenbefore. this thing is towering out at like 10 feettall with just some simple wood and some wood screws and this irrigation tubing. he’smade a really nice structure. to me, this looks like one of those gazebo things youwalk through when you’re getting married. and the other thing he’s doing is he takesthe time to single stem his tomato plants. these guys grow really tall and when theygrow tall and up and over the top, he actually weaves them back the other way and he’skeeping the foliage of the leaves down so that he can easily pick and see the tomatoeswhen they’re ripe. not many farmers take

the time to do it right, to be most efficient,but also enables him to control bugs and disease much better because there’s very few leaveson the plant. i definitely like this technique a lot, especially in a home environment wherei'm at and many of you guys are. you’re going to want to grow your tomatoes vertically,get them off the ground and i may even next year because if ryan’s doing it, i’llsingle stem my tomatoes too. alright, so i wanted to give you guys a walkthrough of thiscool trellis structure. this thing was fully enclosed, it’d be quitecool because you’d have a ton of tomatoes growing but check it out, he not only hastons of tomatoes growing, but if you look at the other side, that’s yumbalicious rightthere. my favorite sugar snap peas there,

right here, coming out the vine. i’m goingto go ahead and try this one. hear that crunch. wow, best maui-grown sugar snap pea i’veever tasted. what we’re looking at now is another area of ryan’s farm. he just doesn’thave all row crops like i showed you guys, and diverse row crops at that. he has manydifferent areas, and i want to encourage you guys when you have a home garden or farm suchas this, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. you want to have different areas,with different gardening techniques because what you’re going to find is if you onlyhave row crops with plastic on top, you’re going to be limited in what you can grow. what he’s done here is build raised bedswith recycled lumber, much of which that he’s

gotten, if not all of it, for free actuallyand it’s just random pieces of lumber, whether that’s 2x4s or 2x6s, stakes, and he’sbuilt these amazing raised beds that he’s brought in some soil and used some nativesoil to have a little bit different soil consistency. and because these are raised beds, he hasmore control of the soil and also the weather and whatnot in here, because the soil doesstay a little bit warmer. in my personal home garden, i grow in all raised beds. i don’tmess around with growing in the soil because the soil, i don’t know the quality of itand i want to make sure i have the best soil because basically i’m feeding myself. nowryan’s a different situation; while he is feeding his family with his food, his primarypurpose for growing is to remain viable as

a business. he’s doing a fine job at that. one of theways he does that is by growing crops people think you can’t grow in hawaii. for example,here has some celery and there’s far and few in between organic growers that grow celeryin hawaii because it can be challenging and difficult. if you go to the cooperative extensionoffice, they don’t even say you can even grow that, and there’s a lot of crops theydon’t even recognize or say you could grow because it’s too hard. so he’s figuredout special techniques that allow him to grow celery and guess what? when he’s the onlyone with celery at the market, he could charge whatever he wants if the people want it. he’sbeen selling out of his celery, so that tells

you something. this celery looks super amazingto me and besides just the celery, this next bed over here that you guys can’t see, he’sgrowing yam bean, or jicama. the biggest jicama i ever saw was at the farmers’market on saturday at ryan’s booth. it was huge, and jicama is one of my favorite rootcrops, and you need a long season to grow a good jicama, like he has here. and of course,when you’ve got good nutrition, rock dust and good soil, your plants are going to performfor you. that’s one of the tips that i’ll share with you guys. one of ryan’s secretsis that working and developing the soil, figuring out what the soil needs, what the plants need,and simply providing it. because really, ryan is not growing simply vegetables. he’s growingsoil, and i want you guys out there to focus

not growing jicama or celery, but focus ongrowing your soil. when you grow your soil and you have good soil, it’ll be a lot easierfor you to grow those vegetables. what we’re looking at now is ryan’s shadehouse, where he starts all the babies that he grows on his farm. now, each one of thedifferent trays has, i don’t even know, like a hundred cells. this is a scale farbeyond what i’ve ever done before, but that’s because he has a full-on farm to produce literallypounds and pounds of food every week to sell at the farmers’ market. so he starts allhis seeds right here, and i want to stop right there for a second. it’s always the best,in my opinion, to start your seeds if you know what you’re doing, because a seed packetis cheap and buying plant starts is quite

expensive. you probably couldn’t be financiallyviable if you relied on somebody else to make the starter plants that he plants on his farmright here. for that reason, especially if you’re a farmer, you need to learn how toproperly start seeds and grow them out. for many of you guys, who might not have evenstarted to garden or grow food yet, i would definitely recommend doing a mixture of buyingsome plant starts because you’re assured a plant start that’s bigger is going tobe more resilient to things happening to it and higher level and probability of successwhereas if you start seeding, if you don’t do enough water, not enough sun, too muchsun, the plants could be stunted when they’re growing up. the most important time of a plant’slife is not when it’s producing for you.

it’s when it’s in its baby stage, andwhen it gets transplanted out. you want to make sure, it’s root-bound when it’s plantedout, and you always want to make sure it has a happy, healthy life. if he forgets to waterhis little babies here, and they run out of water, they could lose their life or worse,in my opinion, they’d actually get stunted growth. and because they were stunted at birth orwhen they’re young, they’re never going to fully mature and develop into their fullgenetic potential. and so he has all sorts of varieties, and he’s selected varietiesthat will do well in the climate here. that’s another very important tip. no matter whereyou live, whether you live in hawaii or california

or nevada, you want to select varieties thatare going to do well in your particular climate and one of the ways you can learn this isby talking to other farmers, if they want to share that information with you, but moreimportantly, like ryan has done since he’s been farming for so long, he’s done trialand error. he buys different kinds of seeds; he plants this variety of carrot, that varietyof carrot. he’s like oh, that variety of carrot didn’t yield so well so i’m notgoing to buy that kind of carrot again, but this variety did really good so i’m goingto keep growing that kind and he’ll constantly strive to try different varieties and seewhat happens. plus new varieties, maybe colorful carrots,red carrots, purple carrots, and that’s

more appealing to customers than the standardorange carrot which everybody seems to grow these days. i’m happy to learn that because he’s growingusing organic methods here, he uses organic seeds whenever possible, but one of the sadthings and facts about organics is that in this day and age, not all the seeds in theentire world are always available organically so there are rules that say if you can’tfind a seed organic, you can find a conventional seed and grow it under organic growing practices,and then you can still call it organic. that’s simply what he’s doing here, so that hecan have a nice wide range of variety that’s going to yield well in this particular climate.i want to encourage you guys, too, to be so

walking with blinders on and like, “i gottaget organic seeds and organic plants!” as long as it’s not gmo, you want to get someseeds and start them out so you can grow them. ryan here, he saves his seeds so that oncehe grows out certain varieties, sometimes he’ll let some plants go to seed, he’llcollect the seeds, and then regrow the seeds, which is now getting more accustomed to theclimate here. plus now, there are first generation organic seeds that he’s produced himself,and the best seeds, are of course, the ones you save yourself in my opinion. one of thecool things about my friend ryan is that he makes use of any resource that would normallybe thrown away. this is a resource that’s constantly being thrown away, but yet youcan use them to grow food. this is especially

important if you live in an apartment in newyork city and you have a little patio, well hey, get an oldass bathtub, fill it with somedirt, put a screen mesh in the drain because that’s where it’s going to drain becauseit is sloped, and plant some food in it! it might look funny to your neighbors, butryan doesn’t have any neighbors close by to see how he’s growing, but he’s simplyusing an old cast iron bathtub and these guys can be heavy, as a large pot. i always wantto encourage you guys to think out of the box, or think out of the bathtub. what he’sgrowing here is actually watercress, one of my favorite leafy greens to eat. they likeit a little bit more moist than other plants. nice and peppery. on the other side, on theback side here, he’s got another peppery

plant, known as the horse radish. let me tellyou, it’s definitely a good thing to grow horseradish and the watercress in the bathtubbecause these guys are spreaders; they will spread out and root out and take over spaceif you allow it to. but in a container, it can’t grow past the boundaries of the container.so here’s some more cool containers ryan is using to grow crops in. of course, first i think we have some standardlarge wide-mouth pots back there, and all of these have similar crops. i believe theyare radishes right now, and whether he’s got large plastic pots and the cheapest placeto buy those large plastic pots is at your local hydroponics store. i’ve found someof the large ones could run maybe 10 bucks

for a nice-sized pot. another thing he’susing is one that looks like, that looks like a kid’s wagon. another thing that looksvery close to this is one of those pull-along igloo coolers. you can poke some holes inthe bottom; i’ve seen some people use those before. all these were reclaimed out of thelandfill and put some good soil in and planting things in. here’s the trick: if there’spros and cons to everything in gardening, especially when growing some of these delicateroot crops, if you have nematodes in your soil, the nematodes will jack up radish roots.that’s happened to me before. but when you put the soil in the container,and you control it, the nematodes can’t get in there and they can’t squirm and squiggle,however they move, and get in there to mess

up your crops. i’m sure that’s one ofthe many reasons he’s using containers to grow these specific crops. next i want toshow you a few more cool containers he’s growing out of. i think my friend ryan takesthe cake for being the most innovative farmer that i know. what he’s using here is reallycool. i don’t know if you can see that on the camera. he’s got one of those plasticdoghouses that come in the two halves: the top half and the bottom half. this is thetop half of one of those plastic doghouses and he put some wood over on this side toblock out the part where the dog walks in. he’s filled this with soil and is just usingit as another container. another thing he’s using and he uses a lot of these guys becausethey are available, are like the 35-gallon

plastic drums. he takes a saws-all and saws it in half, putssome holes in the bottom and guess what? voila, instant plant growing container. so next whatwe’re looking at is one of the many fruits ryan cultivates here on his farm, and it’ssimply the bananas. he’s done quite well with the bananas; he has probably over a 150different clumps on their own and each clump has all these baby plants that come up oneat a time and each plant, or banana plant, people would call them a tree but they’renot technically a tree, comes up and they do what they’re doing here. you can seea bunch of these clumps. you’ve got the big banana flower on the bottom and they makea big rack of bananas.

he has many different varieties of bananasand i actually had an apple banana earlier. if you come to hawaii, you’ve got to getone of ryan’s apple bananas. they’re some of the sweetest that i’ve tasted. this isbasically another cash crop for him because with the 150 clumps, he makes, i don’t know300 pounds give or take, this will be different every time. this is a constant supply andharvest. amazing. they produce fairly quickly compared to other fruit crops that can begrown. if you live in the tropics, i definitely encourage you guys to grow some heirloom varietiesof bananas, not the standard williams or cavendish bananas that’s so commonly found in thesupermarket. what we’re looking at now is a pond thatryan put on site here. now the pond has the

fish in there, which he’s currently developingand letting them grow. he’s using some kind of aquaponics system, for lack of a betterword, he’s not using a formal aquaponics system where he’s got the water runningout, but basically he’ll pump out water and feed his vegetables with the fish water,which is the pee and the poop of the fish that adds fertility to his soil. this is yetanother way that ryan is adding fertility besides the other animals. he’s also usingthe fish, and of course uses and makes plenty of his own compost here. what we’re lookingat now is a trellis system that ryan has created using some standard t-posts every probably10, 12, feet, some wire and some cane grass that was growing on his property.

this is actually done very methodically, aboutevery foot. he has some wire running down to the next one, it’s weaved inside thecane grass, which is a locally produced resource here on site, and he’s planted all his newlittle tomato plants down below to let them climb up and grow this amazing, low-cost trellis.ryan is full of cool and innovative ideas on how to reuse things on site instead ofbringing in new things whenever possible. this is one of the things i admire about him,and i want to encourage you guys to always think, once again, outside the box. and thinkabout how can i use this resource on my property, whether it’s old plants that would’vegone into the compost. well can i use that to make a trellis out of old tree limbs, right?if they’re straight, shave them down so

you could make a trellis out of it. use sometwine or some wire, instead of having to buy expensive trellis material, make your ownout of materials you’ve got. it’s definitely smart and going to save you money in the longrun. what we’re looking at now are some liliquoivines, and these guys are quite productive. there’s a lot of liliquoi, and for you guysthat don’t know, liliquoi is a hawaiian word for passion fruit. i love my passionfruits. he’s got some standard passion fruits here, and one of the things i want to pointout in this area is that all along the property, he’s growing his own fertilizer. i wantto encourage you guys to also grow your own fertilizer. in many places around the world,you can grow your own fertilizer. “john,

how do you grow fertilizer man? i thoughtthat was the stuff that comes out the bag.” well, think about it. where did fertilizeroriginally come from before we had stuff in a bag? it came from nature. plants would grow nextto other plants, they create symbiotic relationships with their roots, and the plants such as theone right here, which is actually called the pigeon pea, is a nitrogen-fixing plant. soit absorbs the nitrogen out of the air, stores it in the root zone and all the leaves arerich in nutrition as well. he literally chops and drops this stuff, basically break it up,tear pieces off, drop it on the ground and guess what, when that stuff breaks down, itfeeds the plants that are next to it. sometimes

he’ll use the pigeon pea to shade thingsout if they are young and tender and until they get strong. then he’ll chop down thepigeon pea and he will feed that to his plants. let me tell you this, the best food for plantsis animal manure! no, kidding, it’s other plants man. it’s how the nature system isdesigned and set up. if you put too much chicken manure on your plants, you may burn your plants,but you can put as much leaves and plant matter as you want on your plants, and it’s notgoing to burn. so think about that. i try for the most part to model nature’s systems.of course, now when you’re on a farming situation and ryan is pulling out tonnageof food on a monthly basis and pulling this food off, he’s taking nutrition out of hisfarm and sharing that and getting it out to

people in the community. he also needs tobe bringing back that much, or more in my opinion, nutrition, back to his soil to keephis land fertile and enable him to keep his production up. because he exports more nutrients than he’sbringing in, he’s going to be running at a deficiency and you can’t run in a deficiency,whether that’s with a checkbook or at a farm for very long. another innovative wayryan’s using the pigeon pea is to provide support and trellis up his chayote squashvine. now ryan is the one responsible for me growing my own chayote squash at my place,so that i could start eating the tips like he does, and actually like he sells at themarket. this is a chayote squash vine, and

this is a delicacy. the vine grows and youclip off the little tip right there, and this is edible raw. it’s such a delicate anddelicious flavor. mm, it’s quite good, but besides just the baby tips that you can eatraw in salads, there’s a chayote squash fruit. you can see two excellent examples here. theseguys are honking. the squash can be cooked up like any other squash, and these guys aredoing quite well also. these provide two sources of income, but at the same time, you can seethat pigeon pea here that’s being succumbed by the chayote squash, but guess what, thepigeon pea is growing and also providing nutrients for the chayote squash. also he can squashand drop this stuff to provide nitrogen to

his chayote squash vine. if you’re neverheard of chayote squash before, i want to encourage you guys to go visit a local ethnicmarket, like a mexican market, sometimes asian markets will also sell the chayote squash.check it out. if you want to start one of these for next year — and only grow themin the summertime because winter it gets freezing, these guys are not going to make it, althoughthere are more cold-tolerant varieties, but the standard green kind is not one of those. you take the fruit and plant it half in dirt,half out of dirt and it sprouts up and grows a whole new vine. so you’ll want to do thisabout the same time you plant your tomatoes for next spring. you’re going to want todo this inside, keep it warm, so that it germinates

and then makes a vine for you. these vinesgrow very quickly and besides which, they’re also very delicious. so this next shot’svery important. i’m not going to talk too loud, otherwise it might be quite dangerousfor me. you see there’s a crack in this tree right here, and if you look very carefully,i know some of you guys got really good x-ray vision, you can see in the crack, and i’mnot going to dare stick my hand in there. but he has a naturally occurring wild beehive.one of the things ryan strives to do is create homes for creatures, and i want you guys tocreate homes for creatures, too. he creates good soil to have good soil microbiology.he creates a good home with a lot of organic matter to feed the worms in the soil. he’sproviding a good home for his plants, but

he’s also providing a good home for thebees in this tree that’s rotting, that’s no longer, well almost not alive. the beeshave had their own hive in there. now he does not harvest honey. this is a wild hive hedoes not mess with, but the bees in my opinion are an integral part of farming and your gardening.without the bees, we would lose 30 percent of the crops because the crops need to getpollinated by the bees. so having simply wild bees here that are doing their own thing,it simply increases ryan’s yield. i want to encourage you guys out there, ifit’s legal where you live, to start keeping bees to help bees out. they’re getting colonycollapse disorder due to the use of pesticides and all these chemicals in nature, and i wantyou guys to help the bees out because commercial

farming and commercial keeping of bees, inmany instances they’re shipping bees across the country, they’re using different chemicalsin the bee hives is not a good thing. ryan lets these guys do what they’re going todo on their own. he does also have hives that he tends to in other areas of the farm todefinitely increase his production as well. he’s also starting to produce honey. but he’s only going to take the extra honey,and unlike the other farmers who just take all the honey from the bees, then the farmershave to feed the bees sugar water, he’s trying to live more in accordance with nature.and if bees have the extra honey, then he’ll tap off the top. it’s kind of like wheni was a kid; i’d go in my mom’s purse

and take just a dollar or two so that shewouldn’t miss it. that’s literally what ryan’s doing with the honey. in any case,the sun’s going down. i want to get some time to interview ryan on the show for youso next we’re going to head in and sit down with ryan, ask him a few poignant questionsabout his farm and some tips that he can give you guys to increase your garden at home oryour farm if you’ve got one. so now i’m with my friend ryan, who’s the farmer hereon this amazing property that i’ve gotten and had the pleasure to show you guys. we’resimply going to ask him a few questions. so the first question is ryan, why do you chooseto grow using organic practices and actually, even more than organic, you’re making manyof the inputs on your farm.

ryan: the main reason that i grow my own foodis that i want to feed myself and feed my family. my family’s super important to me,and when i look around at what’s available, i was like, well i have a problem with that,i have a problem with this, and i’d get too picky and then i’m like alright, i guessif i want to do it right i’m just going to have to do it myself. and so now sevenyears later, i’ve been doing it myself and now we’ve gotten to the point that i canshare it with the rest of the community as well. john: wow, i mean that’s why i started growingmy own food as well, just like ryan. i was not happy with the current food system andhow foods, even organic food, is raised. they’re

not doing specific things that i feel, andryan will also probably feel, are really important to have high quality and the best tastingfood. so ryan, next i want to ask you about the animal agriculture. so you’ve incorporatedthings like the rabbits, the chickens, the ducks, and even the goats into your wholemix here. what role do they play in your farm overall? ryan: it adds to the diversity and diversity’severything, really. i like to provide housing for all the animals. so all the animals providea different mineral, different spectrum, they all have a function on the farm, and theyhave pastureland that has a future that’s going to be an orchard. in the meantime, i’mbusy maintaining a productive farm. the goats

can keep that maintained, and all the whilebuilding up the fertility. they eat the grass, they spread their manure, and it’s buildingup the fertility. i rotate those goats around, i move them to another location, and wheni go in to work in that area, it’s going to be easy to work because it’s not goingto be overgrown with thick woody stuff. i can get in there and they’ve made the soilso much better, they’ve done a lot of the hard work for me. the same with the chickens.with the rabbits i always like to say it takes the work out of weeding. instead of weeding,i’m pulling out, i'm actually harvesting food for the animals, food for the rabbits,either for the chickens or the rabbits or the fish. and then i’m in relation withthem, and their manure is in relation to the

soil microbes, and so it helps us make allthese circles and all these connections in the soil food web. john: i think it’s really important to haveconnections. he’s using a lot of the inputs on site, and keeping them on site. let’stalk about that for a second. how important is it to you to be as sustainable as possible? ryan: well, i look at all the options. it’svery important. that’s my main goal, is to figure out how to tighten that loop, closethat loop and really be, discover what is actually sustainability. so i look and i seeother organic farms and i watch what they do. a lot of it is it’s organic, you needso much nitrogen, you go to the feed store,

the fertilizer store, and you buy big palletsof fertilizer that’s organic. and you’re like, alright, what’s in that? what makesit organic? can i do that myself? and i look at it and go well geez, that’s chicken manure,slaughterhouse byproducts, blood meal, bone meal, and where does that come from? and youlook and go, oh, you think, there’s a naã¯ve perception that all comes from organic farms.the reality is, it doesn’t. most of the organic farms keep that for themselvesand what’s available as certified organic or op certified organic fertilizer is slaughterhousebyproducts and animal byproducts from factory-farmed, antibiotic-, gmo-fed animals, and that iscertified organic. that’s what it is. to me it’s substandard. organic isn’t reallymy goal, so i say, alright, i want what they

want out of that. get the nitrogen, and allthe minerals and everything that comes out of that animal and go a little deeper. i needto do it myself, do that dirty work, and really have a relationship with all those animalsso that i can really understand and know what’s going into my food. i can just go buy gmo-fedanimal manures and byproducts, but it’s possibly laced with all this gmo contaminationand antibiotics and hormones and all kinds of whatever, and i just don’t know aboutit. it’s a big question mark. i’m like alright,i’m going to do it myself, so that really helps me to close that loop. i can producethe animals, i feed the animals on the farm, whatever isn’t good enough to sell or idon’t eat, i refeed it to the animals and

recycle. so i can lose a whole entire cropbut it’s not really a loss. it goes back into the animals and they turn it back intofertilizer and that feeds the next crop. so that helps close the loop and gets me closerto that word — sustainable. john: awesome. i want to encourage you guyswhenever you can to think about these kinds of things. most people that are organic gardenersjust buy the organic stuff from the store and put it on their crops without even thinkingabout it. i try to teach you guys a different way and in my videos provide you options.in this video you’re looking at how ryan does it and in the last episode you saw howmy other friend does it without the use of animals, and the choice is yours. i just wantto give you guys a whole bunch of different

things you can try to see which one makesthe most sense for you. i just want to provide you guys with options, and at the same timei’m learning, every farm i visit i’m learning so much new information to make my farm thati have one day, amazing. so ryan, how many acres do you have here and is it easily workableby you and your family? ryan: we’re about four acres. we have acouple of neighbors that we have some pasture on, but it’s about four acres, but it’snot even all used yet. we’re able to be quite productive, it’s pretty intensiveproduction and i’d say, it probably takes 40, 80, 100, 200 hours a week about altogether.so whoever that is, if that’s my family or if i have some help, to be able to maintainthat, so maybe 50 hours a week an acre. but

you also have to think it took me many yearsfor me to get to that point, of not being productive for many years and learning andlearning and building the infrastructure and building that soil up so that you’re buildingthe equity in the soil so you can start getting that residual effect from that. so it takestime to get to that point. john: good point. i want to always talk aboutbuilding up your soil. i talked about it earlier in this episode but it really is that important.good farmers know that they are, once again, building up the soil, not actually growingplants. ryan, another cool thing about you specifically is that i know you used to worka fulltime job and have a part-time farm, and you were able to leave your job and comefull time on the farm. you want to share this

and provide some inspiration for people outthere who might be working at a job that they hate for money that they don’t need, whenthey’d just rather be out in the garden? you were actually able to make it happen,and what are some of the tips that you would give the people out there who maybe want tohave their own farm one day and be sustainable and use their own farm as their source ofincome like you’ve created for yourself? ryan: if you’re grateful, your cup is alwaysfull, so be grateful for what you have. start with what you have and be grateful for whatyou have. and use what you have, and that’s how i feel like we’ve been able to buildthis farm. looking a bathtubs and whatnot, as not necessarily trash, but maybe someone’sdiscarded 15 foot piece of fence. on a shoestring

i can start and build and take little piecesand while i have a full time job, be grateful for that job. i was able to fund the infrastructureof the farm, so i was grateful for my job that it was able to afford the farm becauseto do it the way i really want to do it, it’s not something that happens over night. soit takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of energy and if you see it as labor and work,then maybe you’ll get discouraged. if you count how many hours you work and howmuch money you make, you’re like “oh, i’m making $2 an hour it’s not worth iti want to keep my job.” but, if you use it was what you want to do and there’s apassion and you know you’re building that equity in, you’re building the equity, you’reputting in the soil, you’re putting in the

infrastructure, that is the bank account.the farm is the bank account so you can put all your energy and resources into that, andyou know, you have faith that it’s going to come back later, so you build a pond andinvest in livestock and plant varieties and soil amendments. it can be thousands and thousands and thousandsof dollars in building up the soil and getting the ph and getting the mineral content right,but once it’s there it’s less input. so the beginning of farming, it’s a lot ofinput and very little output, and so it can be very discouraging so you have to hold thevision and keep your eyes on the prize so you can move forward into the future wherethere’s less and less and less input and

more and more and more output. that is thegoal we’re looking for. john: awesome. i always want to encourageyou guys out there, whether you want to farm or you’re not ever going to open a farmlike ryan did, always live with an attitude of gratitude. every day i wake up i'm gratefulfor waking up because some people simply did not wake up today and able to do the workthat i do. visiting farms, having so much fun in life, and once again, i want you guys,besides just thinking about the money, because yes we all need money in our society to live,but also think about what you would enjoy. i love gardening, i love farming, i love visitingfarms. i love what i do and even if i’m not making the most money, as long as i haveenough money to live, survive and do what

i want, i’m totally happy with that. i wantto encourage you guys to go a little bit in this direction because it seems to me in americatoday that everybody’s focused on the almighty dollar. to be successful you gotta be rich!well to me success is doing what you love, having a smile on your face and more importantly,helping others like i do in all the videos here. so ryan, is there any last tips andtidbits of knowledge that you’d like to share with all the other gardeners and farmersout there? because you know so much about this stuff, it’s amazing. ryan: my tip is, the more you know, the moreyou realize you don’t know, so remain open and don’t think that you know everythingbecause there’s always so much to learn.

and having a relationship with your farm.i spend a lot of time, i work a lot at night, and i really examine the plants and find outwhat bugs are working and find out what are the beneficial insects. i see stuff crawlingaround and i see what is it doing, and you can get that relationship. it seems a relationshipwith the animals. and another good tip i have is, it’s noteven my tip, everyone’s already said it, but if at first you don’t succeed, try again,so how many times have we failed at growing celery or failed at growing collard greensor failed at growing every crop? you have to fail in order to learn, and as much asi’d like to think i can just watch some video or read some book, i don’t know. itends up being i actually have to make the

mistake myself to really bring it in and ownit and really learn from it. somebody can tell me, oh when you grow sweet potatoes,watch out for this. and i’m watching out for it, but then it happens anyway. it’slike alright, at least i saw it coming but it still happened to me. so at least now that i see it happen, i canunderstand it and move forward with how to do it again. and so try it again and if thatdoesn’t work, try it again. have that faith and don’t think of it as work. it’s justa process. we’re learning and we’re in relation so be in relation, and don’t seeit as a failure. it’s an opportunity, and if it turns out to be compost, that’s goodfor your soil, that’s putting money back

into the equity of your farm and bank account.that’s going to continue serving you in the future so there is no waste, there isno trash at all, it gets cycled back and that again is the sustainability loop. john: wow, some of the most wisest words eversaid by a farmer on my show. i encourage you guys to heed those words. in one of the modelsthat i go by in my life is there’s no such thing as failure. there’s only successesbecause i kill a plant, i’ve succeeded at knowing how to kill a plant so that i cando it better and improve next time. i know many of you guys out there are thinking, “butjohn! seriously though! i’ve got brown thumbs man, i can’t do it!” well, another thingis attitude. with that kind of attitude, you’re

not going to succeed, so i want you guys toopen up yourselves and start the process of growing. i don’t even want to say “try”because if you try to stand up on top a stool, you will not actually stand up on the stool.i want you just to do, like yoda says, “there is no try just do.” and i can’t say thatin a yoda voice. so ryan, we are here on maui and you have some awesome produce. how cansomebody buy some of this amazing produce you guys saw, whether you live on maui orwhether you’re visiting maui, definitely recommend your first stop should be ryan’sstuff. it’s some of the best here on the island. ryan: we sell it to upcountry farmers’ marketin kula, every saturday, starts at 7 in the

morning, goes until about 11. we do a wednesdaymarket in makawao town in po’okela church. it starts at 9 to 1. we do wholesale deliveriesto different restaurants; you can find out stuff a lot at mana foods and down to earth.those are the two larger health food stores on the island. we do some other smaller stuff,too. we definitely have our produce around and we’d appreciate everybody’s support.i’m very grateful for the support of the community because if it wasn’t for the supportof the customers who want the quality and want the local and organic and want the beststuff, then i couldn’t do it, so mahalo for all the support from the community. john: awesome. well thank you for that ryan.sun’s going down, i gotta get going, but

i really love spending time on your farm.this is actually the second time i’ve visited this farm in my week here on maui. i’m goingto be flying out tomorrow so this is pretty much one of the last episodes i’ll be makingfor you guys. but i really, sincerely hope you guys learned a few things along the wayat ryan’s farm, once again whether you want to start a farm, whether you’re farmingalready or you’re just a gardener. there’s tons of tidbits of knowledge inthis video, and you might even want to watch it a second time to get all the knowledgethat was shared inside it. in addition, you want to be sure to subscribe to my videosif not already. i have over 1,000 videos now, and i visited this place like five years ago.the link is definitely up if you want to see

the transition from then to now because itis amazing. it’s like when i go on vacation for a week and leave my garden and i comeback after a week and it’s so much more grown. i got to come back here after fiveyears and it’s like this place is like a jungle. 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,remember, keep on growing!

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