alright! this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com.today i have another exciting episode for you, and what i'm going to talk about todayis something near and dear to my hear. we're going to talk about brix testing. so, in arecent episode, i don't know, a dozen episodes back or so now, i did an episode on brix testingwatermelon that i purchased at a local supermarket and actually at a local farmers market. thepoint was to show that a lot of the produce, even at your local farmers market, may notbe that good quality, and i had some comments that said, 'john, why don't you test yourown produce?' well, i've been testing my own produce for years now and actually i posteda clip going back like 4 years to like brix testing my brix, 'cause that's what you normallybrix test, but in todays episode i happen
to have a whole lot of fresh produce hereand i'll be specifically testing one of the crops that i'm currently growing, and i actuallybought 2 different kinds of peppers to show you guys, you know, store bought versus freshpicked, home grown and the difference that the soil and proper harvest time can make.so, that's what this videos all about. now, the reason that i'm passionate about brixtesting is because our system, as it's set up today is a monetary system, and our monetarysystem pays farmers on weight. so, you know, per box of organic peppers you get paid $20or $30 or whatever it is wholesale, and then for retail it's like $4/lb, $5/lb, dependingon where you live, and all they're concerned about, the farmer and their monetary system,is making the moola and making the dollars,
so they want to produce the heaviest cropthey can to fill up the boxes as fast as they can, so that they can sell more boxes so theycan basically get more weight out there and make more money. for the most part, most industrialfarmers and even, you know, local farmers, small scale farmers selling at farmers markets,are not super concerned about the produce quality, and, you know, as a home gardener,this is where you can really shine. this is where i encourage you guys to take it to thenext level, and that's what i teach, the gardening practices that i use, that i teach, includingbuilding your soil, using the beneficial fungi, the beneficial microbes, the compost, thermaland fungal based composts, the rock dusts, the sea salt to get the trace minerals backinto the soil, will all build the brix and
basically the much better tasting product,more nutritious tasting product and more importantly a product that's going to be able to storelonger throughout the year. so, with that, let's go ahead and start testing some of thisproduce. we've got wholesome harvest organic vegetables in here, and inside here we havea whole case or organic peppers, and these are just some standard organic bell peppers.so, what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and take our brix tester, andhow the brix tester works, for those of you guys who didn't see the past episodes is you'regoing to take a little bit of the juice of the crop, squeeze it on the little refractometerhere, and then hole this up into the light and you're going to look inside here, andi'll show you actually a picture of what i'm
looking at inside here, and as you guys cansee it's like a scale from 0 to 32 and right now it's all blue because i don't have anythingon the little glass here. so, what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and takea pepper, and if i was like arnold schwarzenegger i'd be able to crush the pepper and squeezeout the juice. i'm not superhuman like that so what we're going to do is we're just goingto go ahead and break off a piece of the pepper here and literally, once i have a piece ofthe pepper, i can just squeeze off the juice here, and all we need to do is just get acouple drops. so, now that we have a couple drops we're just going t close out refractometer.make sure to have a good solution, and we're going to look at this. so, right now as ilook through the refractometer, its approximately
5.5 on the brix scale, and these are organicpeppers. you know, something that you might even buy in a local whole foods or other supermarket,and so 5.5, is that good for a pepper, bad for a pepper? i don't know. we need a referencerange. right here we have refractive index of prop juices, and this will tell you ifsomething's poor or average, good or excellent. it depends on the specific crop. so, we'regoing to go down to bell peppers. so, a poor bell pepper's 4, so i'm glad these are nopoor bell peppers, and average is 6. these were 5.5, so they're just under average. agood one is 8, and an excellent one is 12. so, this one is actually right under average.so, these are organic peppers you would buy at your local whole foods or other supermarketfor like $4/lb, and they're basically below
average. you know, to me, that's not acceptable.you know, average should be acceptable. they shouldn't even harvest or grow any if it'sgoing to be below average, closer to poor. in any case, just for reference, let's goahead and check another kind of pepper that i also like to purchase that in my opinionhas always been of much higher quality than just the field grown organics in most cases.alright, so the next peppers i got, they're right in the fridge. let's check out whatwe got here. so, what we've got here is we got these winset farms hothouse grown andthese are a product of canada. i think the other ones are a product of mexico. so, itend to think stuff from canada is better than stuff from mexico. so, let's go aheadand open these guys up and grab out a nice
red pepper. so, here's a little red pepper.so, another reason why the brix scale may be different is if you're like testing fujiapples, one fuji apple versus another, the brix is going to be different than testinga fuji apple versus a granny smith. so, the same difference can arise in peppers and wewant to keep that in mind. so, anyways let's go ahead and take a piece of this pepper offand squeeze some of this juice on my refractometer. alright, this one's not quite as juicy soi'm going to need a helping hand. so, to do this we're going to use a standard garlicpress. this is my favorite garlic press i found. it's actually form ikea. that's anothercool store. we'll put that piece of pepper in the garlic press and were just going tobasically press down on the garlic press and
it's going to squeeze a couple drops of juiceoff. that's all we need. there we go. now we're just going to close out refractometerhere. got a nice sample. hold this up to the light and what do we got? check it out, wegot a little bit over 10. so 10.25 is what we're looking at and besides just the numberwe're also looking at the demarcation line and if it's like fuzzy, which we'll put upa picture of real quick for you guys, we actually want it to be fuzzy. that shows there's moredissolved solids and the foods probably more nutritious because it's not all about thenumber only. so, this was about 10.25. so, let's take a look on our chart what this is.so, on our chart, 10.25 for bell peppers is actually good is 8, excellent is 12, thisis 10.25. so, that'd between good and excellent.
probably right around in the middle. so, actuallythis is a quite good pepper. so, so far what did you learn? if you buy peppers in the store,get the hothouse ones form canada, eh? they're a lot better. so, now we're in the backyardgarden and for the grand finale what i'm going to do is actually i'm going to test my ownhome grown peppers. so, what you're looking at here is just a small raised bed. it's maybelike 8 inches tall, 4 foot diameter. we have probably over a dozen different pepper plantsplanted probably at least a foot apart or 11.5 inches apart or so. really tightly. mostof them are all trellised up. i've had to actually steak 'em up because they're gettingtoo tall and they fall over and they break because all the weight of the fruit. you cansee here's some actually sweet cherry peppers.
still waiting for those guys to ripen up,and we got some here. these are actually called the carmen sweet pepper. these are actuallythe bonnie plants and we're going to harvest one of these guy to day. so, let's go aheadand pick this guy off the plant here, and here we go. little carmen sweet pepper. we'regoing to go ahead once again and take our refractometer and break this guy off. thisguy's nice and juicy. let's see if i can squeeze some juice on it. kind of tough. i can squeezeone drop. let's see if i can get some more. alright, let's go ahead and use the garlicpress. that wasn't working too well and the garlic press shouldn't be an issue for gettingsome juice off. alright, there we go. alright go some nice juice on there. close that guyup. let's look it up and see what we got.
holy geez. check it out man, we're kickingsome ass. i wish you guys could see in here. on this pepper here, we're like right under14, so i'm going to say like 13.8 and it's actually a fair bit cloudy. so, 13.8 on thebrix scale. so, let's check out what a 13.8 is for peppers. on the bell peppers, and excellentis 12, so this is totally proof that my peppers here are kicking some ass. these carmens,definitely some sweet peppers, but besides just the variety you're growing, which isvery important, is to build healthy soil so that you can have the highest brix quality.you know, if you're going to use things like npk whether it's from even organic or, youknow, chemically factory made sources, you know, you're probably going to score lowerin brix because the plant is not getting everything
it needs. so, you guys just saw that my cropsthat i'm growing are much higher quality than the stuff you could buy at the store organic.organic, hydroponic, shipped in wherever it's from, you know, home grown is always the bestif you do it properly. the next thing i want to share with you guys actually is how tobuild your soil, because, i mean, this bed was just started this past season. this isthe first full growing season i've had with this raised bed. so, literally, i filled itup with good soil, planted it with my plant starts, which are actually from home depot,and as you can see, i'm now breaking the brix numbers, and i'm not no soil scientist, ididn't go to school for soil. i didn't do none of that stuff. i just do good thingsto build my soil and nature happens. of course
if i even want to dial this in further i couldget specific soil testing from some of the labs that do brix testing and even dial thisin further and maybe get higher numbers, but i'm happy without paying all the extra moneyto get my soil tested by just doing some standard good soil practices or what i call good soilpractices. you're going to get higher brix numbers than your neighbor and be able togrow higher quality crops that are going to number one taste better, number two yieldbetter, number 3 store better, and most importantly be more pest and disease resistant becausea healthier pant makes better offspring or healthier babies that are healthier fruitsor leaves or vegetables or whatever the crop is. so, next i'm going to share with you guysmy practices to build our soil so that you
can increase your brix numbers and have someof the best tasting produce on the planet. so, good soil starts with a good base. thebase of what i fill my beds is this stuff right here. it's compost, and this is compostthat i'm generating myself. wow you can feel the heat something off. it's kind of nicein this windy day here. compost basically adds organic matter and nutrients back intoyour soil. you know, you don't know what's in the soil or in the dirt in your backyard.was it farmed before? was there grass there before? we're the nutrients all sucked outof it? you have no idea, and that's why i like to build a raised bed so that i can controlthe soil or the medium that i'm actually growing in. so, in my soil mix, my raised beds, iput a lot of compost. actually i'm using the
mills mix based on the square foot gardening.1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss or coconut core, and 1/3 vermiculite. that's the standard ix,but then i enrich it with a lot of other things. so, let's take a look at some of the otherthings i'm using to build my brix, to increase it, and make my plants some of the sweeteston earth. alright, so besides just the compost, i add a whole mixture of other nutrient oramendments into my soil, and these are not just fertilizers. these are biological gents.agents of biology that will increase or put biology back in the soil because we want soilsthat are alive. in industrial farming, they don't want anything alive in the soil becauseif it's alive it could be something bad like a harmful disease or something like that.you know, in nature there's beneficial microbes,
and there's harmful microbes and in most cases,the beneficial microbes kick ass over the bad guys, and when you just remove the beneficialmicrobes, the bad guy can flourish. so, we want to being back the microbes, and if webring back the microbes, the beneficial ones will dominate, kick ass over the bad guysand build your soil and besides just bringing the microbes you've got to bring in the thingsthat are going to feed the microbes, and that's what i'm exactly doing. so, we're not reallygoing to get in depth in this video on how to build your soil. we're just going to goover some of the products. be sure to check out some of my other videos on youtube formaking different soil mixes when i'm building raised beds and whatnot. my basic blend isi use the mel's mix that i just explained
to you all, and i also add a heaping generousportion of the organic worm castings, and this happens to be the ergowind brand workcastings. i have also favored wriggle worm, which is actually what i used in that raisedbed. i also like the wormgul+ brand, but any worm casting will do, and as much as you canafford. definitely good stuff. the worm castings will add not only some small levels of nutritionin a slow release fertilizer, but also it's very active with the beneficial fungi andbacteria. they're going to get those guys back in your soil. so, besides your worm castingsi use another kind of casting and that's this right here. it's actually called the insectfrast. the insect frest is basically poop from probably some kind of insect, probablysomething like beetles. i'm not exactly sure
'cause they don't disclose that, but insectfrasts, it's a 2-2-2 fertilizers, so it's also a slow release fertilizer, and in additionit also adds the biologics, the beneficial bacteria and fungi back in your soil, so ilike that a lot. another way i add biologics back into my soil throughout the season isusing something like this stuff right here. this is actually called the boogie brew composttea. compost tea is probably the most inexpensive, cheapest and easiest way to get the beneficialbiologics back in to your garden. so, i like the boogie brew brand compost tea. i mean,this things has like the worm castings a whole bunch of other good stuff in there. this couldactually be fed trough the root drench or actually foiler feeding actually. besidesthose guys i like to sue this stuff right
here that's actually called the boogie humusand the boogie hummus. this is another kind of compost. you guys saw the majority of thethermally made compost, which is (unclear). i'm also using this stuff, bacterial hummus,which is made at a low heat, and this is a funagally dominated compost, basically madeout of carbon or woodchips, and what this guys does is this actually adds the beneficialfungi, microiza, fungi, and other fungi as well back into the soil because it's thoseguys an the bacteria that basically help escort nutrients back into the plants. so, how we'regoing to feed those guys are by using something like this. we have the spanish river carbonite,volcanic minerals plus, and this is basically a rock dust, so whether you use this stuffhere, and azomite the gaia greene glacier
rock dust, the argon minerals, or any othernumber of culture grade rock dust or even just rock dust you could get at your localrock and stone quarry, we need to bring the trace minerals back into the soil. this isone of my keys for success and to building up the brix and having healthier plants. anotherproduct line that i've actually used this year, and this may also be a reason for mybetter increased brix and gardening is that the john and bobs products. this is actuallycalled the john and bobs microbes and minerals, and i like this product because it actuallynot only has the minerals that're going to feed the microbes but it also has the microbesand there's also a line of other john and bob's products that i also have been usingin my garden. so, now if you're wondering,
you might be thinking, 'john, what if i canonly add one product?' i mean, it's hard to say what one product i would add to get thebeneficial results that i did. i mean, the results of my garden are a synergistic effectof all these products, which are only going to build the soil and build the biology inyour soil so that your plants could have the best living and growing conditions, right?if i had t just pick a few, i would definitely say go with the earthworm castings, probablylike number one. probably go with rock dust minerals number 2. i'd then say probably gowith the boogie hummus number 3. the compost tea number 4, and then definitely i'd saygo with the john and bob's products. i mean, all these products have really been amazingfor me, and i definitely recommend if you
want to get good growing results, use someof the products that i'm showing. i mean, the way that i show is basically biologicor natural gardening how the forest does it. you know, in the forest there's no pixiesspreading 20-20-20 fertilizer, you know, but the leaves are fine, the bugs are pooping,the earthworms are in the ground and there's the microbes that's in the soil that havebeen living there for eons without human intervention. the problem is when we get human intervention,we built houses, we tilled soil. it destroys the fungal (unclear), it destroys the microbesand bacteria in there, and we need to use some products like this to replace them. oneof the these days, once i've got this up to snuff, i'll basically just have to put inwhat i'm taking out, which is maybe some minerals
and whatnot, and some organic matter to keepmy systems going to provide me food year after year. in any case, i hope you guys enjoyedthis episode learning more about the brix in my specific garden, and some ways you canbuild your ricks by using some of these products. of course, other ways to build your brix besidesjust dialing in your soil is harvesting your crops at their peak ripeness. the riper thecrop is, the higher the brix is going to be. so, the last way to increase the brix is toget the appropriate varieties of plants. certain varieties of plants, like i talked about earlier-...fuji apples are sweeter than granny smith apples and are just going to bring that higherfrom the get go. so, you just wan to pick sweeter varieties of the crops if you're reallylooking for a higher brix number. i'm no all
about the brix. i'm about the nutrition inthe crop, and brix is one way to show that my crops are more nutritious. another thingthat i want mention also that will effect nutrition in the crops is harvest your foodsand then out them in your mouth. don't harvest them, put them in the fridge, let them sitthere for a week because actually, after you harvest the crops, the nutrition goes downover time. so, i want you guys to eat the highest quality food, the most nutritiousfood, and guess what? you'll actually need less of it, and you can easily do that ina small residential space to have enough salad greens and even other crops to feed you andyour family. so, i want to encourage you guys to check out my other videos where i havedetailed videos on how to grow your own food.
so, i hope you guys enjoyed this episode,learning more about brix and that i've proved once and for all that the crops that i'm growingin my backyard are better than store bought. i mean, any dummy can just think, 'oh, somethingyou grow is probably going to be better in the store.' it's rare that i've found anythingthat i've ought at the store to be better than what i'm growing. on rare occasions ifind a good farmer that actually knows stuff, that's actually growing high quality stuff,but more than likely, you know, nothing can top the stuff you're going to grow at home.i want to encourage you guys to continue to build your soil, if you are currently growing,and if you're not growing, start growing a garden today so that you get benefit formthe highest quality and best-tasting crops
that are coming from your backyard, maybeeven your front yard. so, if you're interested in learning more about how to grow high qualitybiologic organic crops, be sure to subscribe to my videos if you're not already, be sureto check my past episodes, i have over 850 episodes that show me growing and show mytravels and learning about how to grow high quality crops, and i encourage you guys totune into each and every episode because you're always going to learn at least a little tidbitof knowledge that's going to help you out to grow more food. once again, my name isjohn kohler with growingyourgreens.com. we'll see you next time, and remember; keep on growing.