Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting video for you. And where I’m at today, we’re in Las Vegas, Nevada. And in this episode, what I want to show you guys is actually a way you guys can grow food even if you live in an apartment, a condo, or a house with HOA that you can’t grow in the front yard, like I’m here. Or whether you have a backyard that’s small and you don’t have a lot of room to grow, or maybe you don’t get good light, or maybe you got too much shade in your backyard. So what I want to do next is actually go around the back and show you guys what’s growing in the backyard. So now I’m here in the backyard, to show you this amazing garden. Just kidding, there’s not really much in this backyard growing. There’s a big concrete pad that takes up most of the backyard here. And then they have a little rocked in area around the edges, you know, that could be turned into a raised bed garden but actually the gardener today, I want to show you guys, isn’t even growing outside actually. Especially in Las Vegas during 100 plus degrees summers, where it’s like 100 plus degrees for like 2, 3 months. Literally at a time. It can be challenging to grow. That being said, I want to let you guys know that you guys can grow wherever you live, whether it’s Phoenix like my Jake Nayes has a garden year round, or myself, you know, in Vegas, you can garden year round. It’s possible; you just gotta grow the right things, wherever you live, right? That being said, many of you guys may not even have space to do it outside, and don’t like going outside in the summer cause it’s too hot. That’s alright; you guys can also have a garden too, right? And the kind of garden I want to suggest for you guys is actually a sprouts and microgreens garden. And this kind of garden doesn’t even grow outside. And actually, a matter of fact, I don’t even recommend you guys put it in a greenhouse outside or anything like that. I encourage you guys to grow a sprout garden or microgreens garden inside because these little baby, delicate germinating seeds like the same exact climate that we do, on the inside of your house, where it’s air conditioned, you know, 70-80 degrees is just perfect to grow a sprout garden. So anyways, let’s go ahead and head inside into the kitchen and show you guys, how in a small amount of space, maybe like 8 square feet, how this gardener is able to grow all his leafy greens he needs. So now I’m inside, in the kitchen of this gardener’s home. And just cause he doesn’t grow outside, he can still be a gardener because he’s growing food. And that’s what I want each one of you guys to do is grow some of your own food. And that’s what he’s doing here. On this literally NSF metro style rack, you can buy one of these Costco or Sam’s Club, even other places, you know, Target I think sells something like this. You know, it’s basically 4 feet wide, 18 inches deep and maybe like, I don’t know, like 6 feet tall. But as you guys can see, he’s got all different kinds of both microgreens and also sprouts in jars growing on. And no matter your climate outside, you can always grow these plants inside, especially any time of year, whether it’s hot in the summer, whether it’s cool, snowing outside in the winter, right? The sprouts and the microgreens love the same exact climate that we do. And you can put a really good dent, you know, in the different kinds of vegetables that you don’t have to buy now because you’re literally growing greens and I want to let you guys know sprouts and microgreens, they’re some of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. What does this mean, nutrient dense? This means they have the most amount of vitamins, phytochemicals, phytonutrients and minerals compared to the calories. They have very low calories, but they’re very nutritious. You know some of the sprouts here; you know like this shelf here, he has all kinds of broccoli sprouts growing. These have been shown, by you know, studies to be anti-cancer foods, right? Very powerful foods that you can grow literally, that he’s growingjust in little, uh, half gallon mason jars. You know these are very inexpensive, you can buy; I think it’s like a six pack, sometimes around $12, right? And he’s growing some, uh, I think like the pea sprouts, and also the wheatgrass, and barley grass just in a standard, 10x20, you know, flats. You know, super simple. So you know what I thought I’d do in this episode, is actually show you guys how he’s growing. This is not rocket science. You’re just germinating some seeds. And the cool thing about growing in this way, is that unlike when you grow tomatoes out in your garden right, it could take, you know, 50, 60 days to grow the tomato plant to get it to actually fruit and have a tomato that you’re actually eating, right? In this case, literally, he’s starting with raw seeds. The raw seeds he soaks for a couple days, maybe like 2 days, well actually he soaks them for 8 hours or overnight and then he lets them grow for two days and then he transplants them out and then depending on what he’s growing in between like, uh 6 to 10 days, he’s done. And here in Vegas, especially during the summer when it’s nice and warm and he’s getting good sun, you know, things grow pretty fast, so these wheatgrass takes him about 7-8 days, and something like the sunflower greens that I’m going to show you guys in a minute takes him about 6-7 days. So you know that’s a very quick time that you guys can be starting to grow your own food. So just imagine if you started today after you watch this video, by next week, this time, you could be harvesting some of your own greens to eat. And as you guys know, my channel’s called Growing Your Greens. And it’s called Growing Your Greens for a reason, because greens are the number one under-eaten food on the entire planet, and especially in America with the standard American diet where there’s so much processed foods, and junk foods, and animal foods in excess are being eaten. So I really want you guys to focus on eating your leafy greens. My goal every day is to eat 2lb of leafy greens and because these guys are 4-40 times more nutritious than leafy greens maybe I’d get away with eating a pound of this stuff. But nonetheless, the more the better. So let’s see how he’s actually growing these sprouts and microgreens here. So first thing I want to show you guys is actually the easiest thing in the whole world to grow, it’s literally just sprouts. We’ve all gone to the grocery store and you see those little boxes of sprouts. And, man, they’re getting expensive. When I was a kid, I can remember a little box of sprouts was like 39 cents, 49 cents, 59 cents, you know; and nowadays, to buy a little thing of sprouts is like $2, man, and if you look on there, it’s only like a couple ounces of food for $2, it gets quite expensive. Growing your own sprouts is one of the best ways to get the most nutrition and also save the most money. Cause literally, if you’re buying like broccoli seeds, which, once again, are one of the most nutritious, uh, sprouts you could grow, and here’s the broccoli seeds he gets from Sprout Man, these are certified organic broccoli sprouting seeds. And I will say, although they say any broccoli seed will work, even if it’s meant for growing plants outside, uhm, you know it’s always better to grow, to buy sprouting seeds specifically, because sprouting seeds have been tested for contamination and that’s really important. Also the sprouting seeds generally have a higher germination rate than just standard seeds. Of course, if you guys are growing broccoli outside, yeah let your broccoli plants go to flower, said seeds, and then save your seeds and use those seeds to grow your, uh, sprouts. So, literally, once you have the seeds, all you need to do is use, like, 4 teaspoons of these seeds and what you’re going to do is soak them overnight, about 8 hours, 12 hours, you know sprouts are not picky, sprouts are not picky. But yeah, soak them overnight and then you’re going to get a jar like this right and you’re just going to put them in a half gallon size jar with a little lid on here. You know they make these plastic lids with little holes, if you don’t want to get a plastic one that’s reusable, you could use, you know, like some kind of cheese cloth with a rubber band but then the cheese cloth kind of gets really funky over time. I actually prefer the stainless steel, uhm mesh grid with a little locking cap on the top and then what you do is you put the seeds in here after they’ve been soaked and you basically just rinse them. So you run warm water through here over the sink, hopefully you’re using filtered water. Rinse them out, drain all the water out, like he’s done, and then you basically just set it in nice place. Now it shouldn’t necessarily get direct sun. This gets some indirect light here, which is alright, but you don’t want them in full direct sun or anything. I wouldn’t necessarilyrecommend putting these in the closet either. Maybe during the first day or two, you could get away with that but just some ambient light, you know, that’s going on. And then what they’re going to do, they’re going to start sprout and grow. They’re going to start growing just like; they’re just like little babies, right? And check this out, if I hold that up close to the camera, you guys can see, basically they’re the seeds in there and they start to grow a little tail. So these tails, I mean, they’re about an eighth inch long right now. And this is literally, like, uh, the first day of growth after he put it in here. Actually, he started these this morning. And then, you know, what he does is, every day he starts one batch, right? So if he starts a batch today, in just about 6 days, he’s ready to harvest the one he did six days ago. So we’ll go down the line, this is cool, right? This is the one he started today, right? Here’s the one he started yesterday. Look at the difference between this guy. This is today and this is the one done yesterday. Look at that, I mean, they grow so much, they’re still very small, they’re starting to green a little bit. And they’re not yet very big, right? And then we go to the next day, right, the third day. And look at the third day. Right now, they’re getting even bigger; they’re filling more of that jar, right? And then we go to the fourth day. The fourth day, they’re even filling more of that jar, right? And then on the fifth day, that’s when he actually takes them and he rinses all the hulls off. So you guys can see there’s lots of hulls in there. You can eat the hulls, they’re not going to hurt you, but they don’t necessarily taste so good. There’s probably some beneficial nutrients in there, they might be eaten, but most people don’t like to eat the hulls, so basically he washes the hulls all off, and then on the fifth day, and then he’ll basically put them into a large one like this, without all the hulls, so you guys can see this is relatively clean, and basically he doubled up the fifth day and the sixth day, that’s why in there it’s double right now. But then now these are the ones ready to eat. So literally in six days, you could have probably one of the most, uh, important anti-cancer foods in the entire world, right? The broccoli sprouts. They contain sulforophane, isothiocynates, and all these other discovered, and undiscovered, phytonutrients that I want you guys to eat on a regular basis. Now once you have your sprouts, how do you eat them? Well, that’s a good question, so you know, one of the things he does here, is he juices them. So this way you can actually concentrate the nutrition in the sprouts. Aside from juicing them, I would also encourage you guys to just eat them, right? Our teeth are our best juicers, that we’re given free and clear. The unfortunate thing is, most people don’t chew their food properly. They may take two chews and swallow. And in that case, a juicer is definitely something better to use. But if we just take, you know, handfuls of these sprouts, and put them in our mouth and just chew them up to a mush, and swallow them, you know, we’re going to get the best nutrient value out of them. It’s very important not to heat or cook your broccoli sprouts before you start masticating them and chewing them on up because you will lose some of the anti-cancer benefits contained within them. The other thing you guys could do is just make a sprout salad. You know, add it to different recipes, right? Always add these last, so if you’re making something cooked, cook it, and then take that out and let it cool a little bit and then just add the sprouts on the top. And, you know, I would like to, I would like you guys to add copious amounts of these sprouts. I mean if I had this many sprouts at once, I would basically just put all these in a bowl, I’d blend up a dressing, could be like orange juice and macadamia nuts blended up, with maybe some hot pepper in there, and pour that over the top and just eat a whole sprout salad. Or you know, add these to a salad, you know. Pick greens from outside, if you have a garden, and then add sprouts to it. So you’re getting the best of both worlds. You’re getting all different kinds of vegetables in diet. And you know, as much as I think very highly of these sprouts and microgreens, of course, there’s something to be said about plants you grow outside and eating many different kinds of plants. Because although broccoli has, uh, you know, been shown to be anti-cancer and have all these other beneficial effects, including being anti-aging to help keep you young, some of the other plants have so many other phytonutrients that are also so valuable for you. So yeah, broccoli, super simple. I mean, literally, you just need these, uh, mason jars, some lids, some clean water and seeds. And I know you guys could do that. Now the next thing I want totalk about is some of the microgreens he’s growing. You know he’s growing wheatgrass, sunflower as well as pea microgreens, and there are so many other microgreens you guys can grow and once again, the broccoli is simple, that’s a little bit more difficult but really that hard at all. So I’m going to go ahead and explain the process. So growing the microgreens are also really simple, really easy. It requires a few more things than just the seeds, a jar and some water. So what he’s doing here, is he grows several different types. What we have here today are his stock of seeds. So I do encourage you guys to store your seeds properly. If you’re doing microgreens, you’re definitely going to be probably buying the seeds in bulk. Uhm, and he’s storing them in basically in a five gallon, food safe, bucket here. And so what we’re going to go ahead and do is take the lid off and inside you guys are going to see all the seeds. So inside here, he has some sunflower seeds and these are the black oil unhulled sunflower seeds. And all he does is he takes a scoop in here, which is actually just a two cups all measured out and then he just takes these and pours them into a mason jar, right? So just like an empty mason jar here, he’ll pour these into this guy and then he’ll basically soak these. You know and it does take some time to soak these, maybe like 12 hours or so, he’ll soak them. They need to be totally indoctrinated with water literally. Now besides just soaking these in water, he also adds something else that I encourage you guys to do. He’s using actually the ocean solution product and that’s right here, the Ocean Solution and so what the Ocean Solution does, it basically adds 90 different trace minerals into the soak water that now the seeds can absorb and they can have some extra nutrition when they’re growing. He has found that by using the Ocean Solution, when he’s just soaking his seeds that the plants that end up growing are a little bit more crunchier than without using them. I always encourage you guys whenever you are able to use some extra trace minerals and in the case of the seeds, to me, the water soluble trace minerals such as the ocean salts, always make the most sense because you know, in general, small microgreens don’t really pull nutrients up too much from the soil, the soil is there primarily to hold the roots in place. And so yeah, once he soaks those, uh, then this is basically what he’s going to get. He’s going to get, you know, two cups of expanded because now, since they’ve been soaked, they’re starting to grow and germinate and they start actually grow bigger. He put just in a little jar here. And then he basically grows it like this for about two days. He’ll rinse this, you know and basically just drain it out and then he’ll basically just leave lay it here on the shelf, you know, with once again, just ambient light, not in direct sun or anything like that. And then they start to germinate and then finally at some point, the seeds start to pop open, a little tail comes out. Now, you know, he grows the sunflower like I just showed you but he also will grow, you know, wheat and barley. This happens to be the barley which he uses to grow the barley grass, which you could actually just harvest and chew on and spit out the pulp or you actually juice and this is, uh, soaking barley, and then this grows little tails and the next step is he’s just going to get one of these nursery flats. You know these things are a couple bucks, at a hydroponics store if you can find them near you and these have, well this is a closed bottom so there’s no holes in this, and then basically he’ll put some soil in here. So it depends on what he’s growing so, for example, for I think the wheatgrass, he’s using coconut coir fiber material, so that’s a soil-less medium. And he’ll just spread this on the bottom, you know like an inch or so. And then just basically pack down the wheat seeds or the barley seeds in there, and basically he’ll press those down in, maybe put some weight on it. And then actually put it and cover it and leave it in the dark. This simulates basically the plants germinating underground. What they’re going to do is send the roots down and then they’re going to start actually growing up and they’re going to turn yellow. You know, check the link down below for actually a guy, another, uh, farmer actually in Vegas, who grows the wheatgrass for a commercial business. And I did a video at his place with kind of more details about growing the wheatgrass as well as some of these other microgreens. But anyways, he just puts in this, covers it and lets it sit in the dark. And then at some point, plants start to push up, he’ll take the cover off and that’s when the plants are ready for some sun. so what he’s going to do at that point is then move them onto this rack above which let me go ahead and show you guys what’s going on.So once the plants push themselves up and then basically takes the covers off, now the plants are ready get some light. So how he does it here, is actually here he has this rack here in pretty much a non-sunny spot. There’s a window right behind, which is actually a really nice place for the window, but there’s no direct sun that comes in this window, because it’s on the other side of the house, or it gets indirect light all day. You know that is enough light to grow these and as you guys can see here’s some wheatgrass he grew and you know it’s pretty green, not maybe like super dark, rich green, but you know, it’s growing fine, right? And actually, you know, I like to do some light deprivation, or not give it full intense light because you know there’s pros and cons to light. You know, with excess light things might get kind of lazy. In this case, I like that he’s actually growing it in a not super lit area because the plants are like “Okay, I want to get more light, I need to grow taller to reach the light.” And they keep growing but they can’t get the light because unlike, you know, us, they don’t have legs they can’t move, so they’re trying to reach for the light and they’re not getting as much light, so they might grow a bit thicker or taller to reach for the light. Plus, you know, this looks to me pretty green. So this has only been growing, imagine that, 4 days, after he, uh, basically put them in this tray to grow, so that’s an amazing growth in just 4 days. I mean this tray is almost ready be harvested, maybe in another day or two he’ll be harvesting this one. And then over here, same thing. This is actually the barley grass. I mean most grasses are seeds, and you know, and you know if you’re cheap and you don’t want to get the sprouting seeds, you know you guys could get seeds at your health food store, in the bulk bins, right? Hard winter wheat, you know, that’ll grow into the wheatgrass. But this is the, uh, barley grass here. And yeah you can get raw barley that has not been heat processed. And it will grow into the barley grass. You know, you can get kahmut seeds, right? You could get ancient grain seeds so aint(?) corn I think is an ancient grain seed. Like it’s an heirloom…you can grow heirloom wheatgrass. Once again this is only 4 days; this is ready to be harvested. This will produce lots of fresh juice and add lots of nutrition to your diet, right? (UNINTELLIGIBLE), right? I visited them a while back, I’ll put a link down below if I remember to that video. You know they grow their wheatgrass and they’ve been educating people about the power of wheatgrass. I mean, there’s whole books written on wheatgrass and the power and effects of not only the chlorophyll in the wheatgrass, but also the different enzymes, you know and different phytochemicals, phytonutrients and also the minerals. Many people don’t know that the grass family of plants, which you know includes wheatgrass, barley grass, sugarcane even is a grass, uhm, lemongrass, you know they can absorb up to 90 different trace minerals from the soil so these are very rich sources of minerals. And you know, as I mentioned before, he’s soaking these in the trace minerals. That being said, most of the nutrients in the grass will actually come from the seed that you’re starting with, so it’s very important to get very good, high quality seeds, hopefully they are organically grown seeds. And when you guys go to pick out seeds to purchase, right? Ask the seed seller how many pounds, or how many seeds are actually in a pound. So for example, I’m going to make up numbers here: say you ask the seller, how many seeds are in one pound of your wheatgrass seed? And he tells you, and once again, I’m making up numbers here, this is not accurate. He says there’s 900 seeds in one pound. Which is probably way low. And then you ask another seller how many seeds per pound and that seller says there 1000 seeds, you know per pound. And then which one do you want to buy? And you’re thinking, John I’m going to get the one that’s 1000 because you get more seeds. Well especially if sprouting, and you want, you know the healthiest plants, you actually want to get the number of seeds that are the lowest because, think about it, if the seed count is higher, then each seed is smaller. That means the germ is smaller, that means all the energy, all the nutrients in the seed is less. You want to actually get the seed that is actually the largest, because that’s going to have the most stores of the nutrients for that seed to grow into your grass, before they start absorbing the nutrients from the soil. So you know, I want you guys to maximize the amount of nutrients. Doing these little things like he’s doing here with the Ocean Solution to add the trace minerals, like buying higher quality seeds that have more nutrients in them to begin with. So yeah, this is after 4 days. And you know, I thinkthese pea sprouts also he likes to grow and these also grow relatively fast. And so this is basically his shelf to basically get them germinated, get them started, but before he harvests these, he really wants to get them to green up. You know, when you green them up, they contain more chlorophyll and that’s when the plants really start pumping some nutrients into the little blades. Now before I show you guys that, in a different area, I’m in his kitchen here, I’m going to show you guys how he waters. Watering these guys are not hard, you know, I’ve been places that basically like to bottom water and water on the bottom, here in Las Vegas, this is a very dry climate that literally liquid gets sucked out of the air and you dehydrate when you’re sleeping. Basically all he has is this very simple pump sprayer, right? Pumps this up a little bit and then basically press this and basically just sprays the plants down on the top and you know maybe get some water on the bottom. And he waters the appropriate amount and this is, you know, where I see many people, in my opinion, fail, you know? And they fail by, basically, over watering. They think plants need a lot of water to survive. And you know what, plants are resilient. They’ve had to live out in nature for thousands of years before man invented watering devices and had to water them, right? They had to send their roots down and they’ve had to absorb their own water from the rain when it rained occasionally or you know whatever. So basically what he does, and he found that the pea sprouts don’t need that much water so all these guys, he literally takes the sprayer, might spray them down adequately enough only once a day. So it doesn’t take a lot. Don’t drench these guys. If you water too much, you’re going to see mold problems. So you know, going through here, on his plants, you know I’m actually just seeing roots, I’m not seeing any mold issues, on these guys here. Nice and healthy. To me, these guys look a little bit dry but everyday what he’ll do is when he’s in the kitchen making food or whatever, he’ll just do a thirst assessment and a thirst assessment, what’s a thirst assessment? Well when you can tell if you’re thirsty by you know kind of feeling in your mouth. If your mouth feels like “hey I’m thirsty”, like I’m getting that feeling right now, I’m thirsty, but how do you do a thirst assessment on plants? Well basically he comes here and he lifts these guys up. And he lifts them up and he’s like “alright, it’s pretty heavy. That’s got enough, you know, water in there.” That’s good. And then once again, you can come up to these guys and yep they’re pretty heavy. Now if you came up and whoops, and just using the same exact strength and it just went up easy, you’d know if was like empty and dry, and then you’d want to water. I mean I use the same technique on some of my potted plants in my greenhouse. I mean, number one in my greenhouse, like I can see the soil to see if it’s dry. But here the roots are literally covering everywhere, and then also I lift up my pots to see if they’re light, and if they’re light then it needs water, you know? No duh. Super simple, super easy. So yeah, once a day watering, that’s all it takes. So anyways, after he’s grown it over here for a couple of days, then he takes it up to his greening-up area, so let’s go ahead and show you guys that one. So now I want to show you guys actually, his greening-up area actually in his living room over in here. And it’s actually over on the other side of the house with a nice large window that gets good sun, right? So what he does is after growing over there for a couple days, like in, you know, not direct sun, the plants are like reaching for the light. Then he brings them over to the other side, next to this window and then he sets them over here, so that they get really good light. This will help them to green up, so they’re ready to eat. Also make them more nutrition rich. So what we have over here, are some sunflower greens and these guys are actually looking quite healthy, quite good. And these guys have been growing for a total of 5 days, 2 days you know were literally soaking in those jars, then he spread out the seeds, put them in here, and they were basically off like a rocket. So literally just after 5 days they’re already this tall, and these are of harvestable stage. That being said, I want you guys to get the most bang for your buck and let them grow another two days, after another 2 days than they’re totally ready to be harvested. How do you know when they’re ready to be harvested? Well number one, I would encourage you guys to basically harvest them while they still only have their two baby leaves right? Same with the wheatgrass, right? Wheatgrass will have a single blade and once it starts to joint, that means when it sends out the second blade and kind of splits, right? You should haveharvested before it joints. Same with one these little baby sunflower greens. You guys can see there, that’s one little sprout, there’s only the two baby leaves, and what we want when we’re eating sprouts is just the baby leaves, right. Once this grows longer, and has been sitting around longer, it’s going to send out a third leaf, right? You want to harvest it before the third leaf comes out. But don’t worry, if you’re lazy and you forget it, and you forget to check it and the third leaf is out, there’ll be like “I gotta throw them out now, John said I can’t…” No! You want to harvest them obviously when there’s two leaves, but if there’s three leaves or four leaves or they get a little bit bigger, don’t worry about it they’re still great food to eat, and I want you guys to eat them because you guys already took all the time to grow them, right. And I’m going to try this guy. Mmm! Wow those are some quite good, you know, one of the main benefits I see to the sprouts, and the microgreens, is that they are alive. These are foods that are alive. How many foods do you guys eat that are actually alive, right? If you guys eat like, animals, right? They’re definitely not alive when you’re eating them, right? They’ve already killed them and you cook them, they’re totally not alive. But the sprouts right? These guys if you pick one and eat one, it’s totally living, it’s totally alive. What other things that you could eat that are alive, right? Well, like vegetables, even if they’re vegetables and I go out to my backyard and pick them, once I pick them they’re not quite alive anymore, although I bring them and then eat them, it would be better if I just leave the plants on the plant and then just, you know, eat it off the plant. But yeah there’s a lot to be said about living and live foods. Live foods contain more energy and also this thing called prana, chi, life force, you know, bio-photons, whatever you want to call it. And this is yet another way, or another nutrient that I believe most people are deficient in. And that’s why a lot of people have low energy, because they’re not eating these foods that are full of life. Or full of life force energy, you know? And so that’s why I love eating freshly harvested foods from my garden. And the optimum way to use your sprouts, is if you use one tray a day, make sure that you are, always have one tray a day ready to be harvested, so that the tray you’re ready to harvest, you basically don’t just cut it and put like in your fridge, that’s…doing that is still better than probably other things you’re eating, but I want you guys to know the best information and to do the best, you want to just grow it and when you’re ready to harvest it, you cut it and you juice it, you cut it and you put it in a salad, that same day. And matter of fact, don’t even cut it until you’re actually going to be using it. That way you’re going to maximize the nutritional benefit for you and your family. So yeah, just, uh, 2 more days on this, 7 days and then I think these guys can maybe be harvested now, he’s going to let them get a little bit taller before he harvests them, but that’s the amazing thing, when you guys grow your own food, nobody’s dictating you guys, to you guys, when to harvest your food, right? If you go buy sprouts at the grocery store, like in a little package, right? They’ve already dictated to you when you need to eat those or if you go buy lettuce or tomato, right? And in the case of tomatoes, it’s clear to most gardeners that they’re choosing the point in time to harvest tomato when they’re not even close to being ripe so that they can make the shipping and not expire and not go bad. And you know to have the best food, you want to harvest at the appropriate time, so whether you want to harvest them young a little bit, because maybe you don’t have some greens for that day and you need to harvest them, like I would harvest these if I needed greens, or you could let them grow a day or two when they might be a bit taller and you’ll get more bang for your buck. Especially when juicing them, cause you know basically every day that all you are adding is water, so that’s like, I mean really cheap. You’re getting a lot more nutrition for that water that you’re investing in the plants to grow, more phytonutrients, phytochemicals, more vitamins and minerals for you. Oh and yeah, the other thing, is that this is not anything special. He doesn’t have any special kind of rack or anything. This is literally just like, actually it’s a fairly nice coffee table that’s he’s using that he’s covered with this plastic so the water doesn’t drip down, but once again, these little trays he’s using have no holes, so they’re not going to drip, unless you know he does something really bad or it gets a hole or something like that. So yeah, it doesn’t take a lot, you don’t even need to buythese special shelving, you can just use whatever you’ve got, you know? You could grow these on your kitchen table. Grow these on some extra counter space, not too difficult. And as you guys have seen today, you know he’s very successful, uh, growing the sprouts and microgreens here and he has been for over five years now. What I thought I’d do next for you guys, actually what I want to do is sit down and interview the gardener here that’s growing all these sprouts and microgreens and you know find out more about why he’s growing the most nutritious foods in the entire planet and continues to do this on a day-to-day basis. Literally for his health. JOHN: So now I’m here with Dave Gil and he’s the gardener here that has his indoor garden. I’m trying to get him to garden outdoors and maybe next season he’ll do that, but meanwhile he’s been so successful growing indoors, he doesn’t feel he needs to do that, well at this point. And he has so many greens to eat and in some parts of the year, he probably has more greens that I have to eat, especially right before I plant for my summer garden, I took all my winter stuff out. And I don’t have so much to eat. He has this stuff each and every day and that’s the value of sprouts and microgreens, right? You guys can have this any day of the year, no matter the climate changes or non-climate changes, or the weather outside or whatever is going on. And as you guys saw, in as little as 6, 7 days, you can be having some amazing sprouts to eat. And we’re going to ask Dave some questions about why he grows the sprouts and microgreens, why he’s so into it and how he’s even able to do this keeping a full time job, right? So, Dave, the first question I want to ask you is why did you start growing all these microgreens and sprouts? DAVE: Well John, it all started about seven years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in 2010. And I studied a lot, I was not raw vegan prior to that, I was a sad diet eater, and when I studied what raw food can do for you, I started growing and changing my diet and just within one week I changed my diet to 100% raw. Started juicing a lot. And started growing stuff a lot. I initially started with wheatgrass and barley grass then I moved onto other greens and sprouting. JOHN: And so you’ve been growing now for what, like five years? DAVE: At least five years. JOHN: And so, um, you found out you had the prostate cancer, so how was the cancer affected by getting rid of all the junk food in the standard American diet and going on towards that healthy diet rich in plants but more importantly than just rich in plants, rich in some of the most nutritious plants such as the sprouts and microgreens you’re growing? DAVE: Well, it just changed my life drastically. I did not do chemo, radiation, and of that stuff, no surgery, and I decided to make a change and of course you know a higher power was involved in me making the decision. And changing you know the um diet really helped me. I lost 30lb within three months, and I started cleansing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and cleansing my liver and stuff like that. And I was losing a lot of weight and I started feeling better. And I felt strong, I felt vibrant, you know. And I went to the doctor after 3 months and he told me the cancer’s gone. JOHN: Wow, so he literally got rid of his cancer by growing his own sprouts and eating them. So let’s talk about that. Like how many sprouts, you have a lot of sprouts here, how many of these sprouts do you actually eat in a day? DAVE: I would say I do at least 16 ounces of juicing, 16-20 ounces of juicing of sprouts. At least one tray. JOHN: So you juice one tray a day, literally. DAVE: Yeah one tray and don’t forget about 4 ounces of broccoli sprouts too. JOHN: Every day. DAVE: Every day. JOHN: Wow, so four ounces of juice, or four ounces of juiced broccoli? DAVE: Four ounces of broccoli juice. JOHN: Wow, so you juice as much as you need to make four ounces of juice. DAVE: Yes, yes. JOHN: And so how much of that would this be, like half of this or… DAVE: Actually it’s about 4 teaspoons. JOHN: Oh, no, no, no… of the finished sprouts DAVE: Oh, half. Half. JOHN: Because this was 4 teaspoons of seeds but then to juice this, they give four ounces, so you use about half of this. DAVE: Half, yep. JOHN: And then one whole flat. So you know I think that’s quite a good amount to eat on a daily basis whether you know you just want to be healthy or whether you’re trying to reverse some kind of disease situation. So, let’s see, I guess another question I have for you Dave, is, um, how much time do you invest in growing? I know you’re a busy real estate agent here in Las Vegas, and if you’re looking for a house or something definitely call Dave, he’s a good guy, I can vouch for him. But, um, how many hours a day do you spend tending to your little sprout garden? DAVE: It’s like tending to your regular garden. You gotta put workinto it to get the benefits out of it. You know, it’s not like… I’m not going to say it takes me 30 minutes, it takes me I’d say from an hour to an hour and a half from juicing, cleaning, you know sprouting, I would say about an hour and a half a day. Average. JOHN: So on average, an hour and a half a day, but to grow and also to juice, and I know juicing can take a lot of time. I juice myself but just thinking about the growing because you know many people might just want to grow the sprouts. You may not really want to juice the sprouts. Something like barley or wheat grass you might but the sunflower greens you can actually just eat. But to get the highest investment, I think juicing them in a slow juicer really gets the nutrients. I mean I could sit here and pluck out some of these pea greens, and wow, they’re actually quite good, flavorful. But they’re really kind of fibrous. And some people might not like to chew their food and eat a salad like a sprout salad and chew it for like an hour to get all the nutrients out. And that’s why juicing is good. So taking, if you didn’t juice, how much time do you think you spend, you know, soaking seeds, watering them once a day, and taking off the tops and maybe moving them to the other side? DAVE: It takes time. I haven’t timed myself because I enjoy it so much, John. So, I don’t time myself, but it takes effort. You know, it takes effort. I would say about 10 hours, 12 hours a week. You know, on the average. But like I say, I’m a regular guy. I told John I work, I make a living. This is something I have passion for and share with other people as well. And I do it for my health. You know everybody has different reasons. But I think for me was to live, and I did that to that extreme and I will continue to do that and I will continue to share that with other people as well. JOHN: Yeah that’s very important and that’s why I got into dietary changes and growing my food as well. I mean a lot of you guys out there might be healthy and you might think you’re healthy but you’re only healthy until the one day that the doctor says you’ve got cancer, or you’re only healthy until you know, you drop of a heart attack, or you go to the doctor and he says you have blood sugar issues, you’ve got diabetes, right. And instead of just reacting to when you get a situation like that like me and Dave did here, I want you guys to be proactive so that you don’t get sick in the first place. A literally by growing a flat or two so you can harvest it every day for you and your family, juicing some of it, eat some of it. You know you could actually stop this from happening in the future. And especially even if you have loved ones that are pets, like pets right? Cats, dogs, they like to chew on wheatgrass. Grow some for them. Of course I wouldn’t eat the stuff they licked or anything, but juice some and give some to your pets so they don’t get these modern illness either that in my opinion are caused by the modern diet, including highly processed foods, GMO foods, I mean that’s another reason people grow their own food, is to get away from the GMOs. So let’s talk about the seeds actually. The seeds are probably the most important thing, that you need to have good quality seeds. And hopefully organic seeds, once you do the sprouting and microgreens, so Dave, where do you get your seeds from? Cause I know you’ve bought them from all over many different places you tested over these five years. I bought them here, they didn’t work; I bought them here, didn’t work so good; I bought them here, oh and these ones worked really good. What are you sources so that people out there could use these sources too. DAVE: Absolutely. Well there’s no one source for all the seeds. you kind of have to test and try it. And I tried them and different places, areas. You know I bought from Nebraska, Nebraska has some nice seeds in there, as far as pea sprouts are concerned. But when it comes to their sunflower sprouts, forget it. You know, so sunflower sprouts I get from an outlet in Utah, okay? And obviously, these come from SproutMan. JOHN: The place in Utah, do you know what’s the name? DAVE: I’d have to…I can get you the name for that. It doesn’t come off the top of my head. JOHN: I’ll post it down below in the description, if you want to know where he gets the various seeds and you guys know the best sources. DAVE: Those are the best sources. Then again, you have try it, it depends on the weather where you’re living, how they grow. In Vegas it’s dry so they may not grow as some other places, you may have more humidity but for Las Vegas, these are the seeds outlet that works best for me, as I have tried the others. JOHN: So since you’ve been growing for five years, what are some of the tips and things that you’ve learned over the five years that maybe you used to do when you first started and what’s different in how you do it now? DAVE:Well, a lot different. I must have burned out 20lb of seeds just making mistakes from trials and errors, so right now, I think I’ve perfected my skills as far as growing is concerned. I think it’s very, very important to get the right soil. Organic soil. Oka, don’t be buying cheap soil with chemicals and stuff. I get organic soil for my seeds and I also do coir, you know coconut coir, obviously coconut coir doesn’t grow everything, so you kind of have to, like I said, it depends on your weather, it depends on where you at. But basically try to get just organic soil to grow. You want to grow something that’s nice and clean and you know, cause you want to eat something that’s nice and clean for yourself. JOHN: So when do you use the coconut coir, and when do you use the organic soil? And, you know, for what seeds, do you grow each one? DAVE: Well coconut coir, I pretty much uhm, use it for my wheatgrass, barley grass, sunflower sprouts. I don’t use it for my pea sprouts. Because for pea sprouts, for some reason when I use it, they don’t grow as tall. They’re kind of dormant, I don’t know why. So I said ok soil might have something to do with it, so I just started doing organic, and they just grow like crazy, you know within 6 or 7 days. JOHN: Wow, so yeah, that’s what I’d recommend for you guys, you know once again, if you’re starting out, you might fail, like he wasted 20lbs of seeds and guess what guys, 20lbs of seeds is not much. Like a pound of wheatgrass seed might cost like a dollar or something, right? Sunflower seeds, also very inexpensive, and even if you’re really cheap, just to get started, not that I necessarily recommend this but I do know people that do this, is you could go down to Walmart and get, you know, black oil sunflower seed meant for bird food. Now on that package, it says not for human consumption, right? I’ve eaten those before, I’ve had friends who’ve eaten them, not that I’d necessarily recommend it, because you don’t know what kind of chemicals or sprays are on there and make sure you read the ingredients if you are going to do that, to make sure that they’re not coating them in oil or adding preservatives to it. That being said, it’d be best to get some good quality seed sources that are meant for human consumption like the ones that I’ll be putting down below, thanks to Dave here. So, uh, let’s see here, Dave, uh, any other final comments you’d like to share with my viewers today about growing the sprouts and the microgreens? Or any reasons why they might want to do this? DAVE: Well, you know if you want to stay healthy, I mean, this is not hard to do. I mean, I don’t have a green thumb. You’ve seen outside, I can’t even grow anything in the pot. I can’t, I tried. I can’t even grow mint. It burns on me. And even aloe vera plants burn on me. So I don’t have green, I’m a professional, I’ve worked in real estate for the last 20 years. I just, this just works for me. And I believe it works for me because uh, this is what is healthier, you know, I mean like these are like a hundred times, up to a hundred times more uhm, nutrient…nutrient dense than buying broccoli. JOHN: Broccoli, yeah especially the stuff that been picked and shipped and probably like a couple weeks old by the time you get it. And the nutrients are going down. DAVE: I would say just do it. Just do one tray a week, you know. What do you have to lose? Just try one tray a week, of some sort of seeds. And once you start getting used it, then you’ll see it’ll make a difference in your health. Whether you’re sick or not, you will feel the energy, okay. I was telling John, I can’t sleep at night because I’ve got so much energy. I’m looking for something that I can sleep, you know, so uhm, but it is what it is. You have to do what’s best for you. You know, our individual needs, my need was to get rid of cancer. Cancer’s gone, but now I’m kind of hooked on it. Because it gives me the energy, it gives me the strength, and it gives me the endurance. It also gives me a lot more sharpness in my mind. JOHN: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I’ve experienced all those things as well. And the other thing that I want to say is that even if you have cancer, whatever disease you have and you get over it, don’t just go back to what you did in the first place, to get you the cancer in the first place. You know, now Dave is living a cancer-free life, eating the most nutrient dense foods that’s going to prevent him from getting cancer in the first place. I mean, most Americans are eating processed junk foods and GMO foods which in my opinion causes some of these massive health problems in our society today. And furthermore, I want to say start off it easy, microgreens and sprouts, by far the sprouting is the easiest. So I want to encourage you guys. You know you don’t even need a half gallon mason jar to do this you can use a 64 oz mason jar that many of you guyshave right? And start growing some broccoli sprouts, some clover sprouts, some alfalfa sprouts. Start out easy cause you’re going to learn the process of just soaking the seeds, rinsing them a couple times a day, making sure that all the water is drained out, Dave’s doing an excellent job of that, cause if you have extra water in there, it can get kind of moldy and kind of funky so you want to make sure that it’s totally dry. And actually I like to store my jars kind of tipped upright but don’t have all the seeds to one side. Have them all layered at the bottom so they’re all getting good air circulation. I mean jars are super simple, most of you guys own them. There’s also other contraptions and sprouting things, and bags but jars work and you just got to get used to it. And once you’re able to grow these little sprouts here then you should graduate, literally, and move up to growing the microgreens. You know, like Dave’s doing here. That’s the next step, because literally the first step is you’re just sprouting the seeds, you’re just soaking them, and germinating them in the jar for two days until they start to grow and then you lay them out in the trays, you know, to grow them into the full size. This stuff is super simple, super easy. No matter where you live, what time of year, if you’ve got a little bit of extra room in your house, even if you’re just renting an apartment, right? And you have one room in your apartment, right? You can put some shelves hanging down from the ceiling and grow your sprouts and microgreens up there. There’s always some room you guys can make, because these guys, literally, just one jar doesn’t take a lot and now you could be your own producer instead of a consumer in our society and that’s what I want for all you guys. I want you guys to take responsibility for some of the foods you eat, even if it’s just one jar a week, right? That amount could just spark that little fire within you, and yeah you might mess up right, but as Dave said, he can’t grow anything outside, but he’s been ultra-successful at growing this and what I would say to that is whatever you practice, you’ll get good at, right? My girlfriend loves playing the flute, she’s practicing every day. She’s getting better and better playing the flute every day. I’m gardening every day; I’m getting better and better. And the thing that I want you guys to know is that we learn from our mistakes. We don’t learn any other way. If you’re always successful, you’re never going to really learn anything, but it’s when you mess up you’re like “oh, I figured out not to do it that way because it doesn’t work.” And then you’re going to try a little bit different. Growing sprouts is not that difficult. So Dave, are you available actually to help people grow sprouts if they need help or…? DAVE: Absolutely. They can call me anytime, we’ll put our number down, my number down. Uhm, I do help people, people do call me about their health issues and stuff. I’m not a doctor, I give them what I do. I give them my testimony and the rest is up to them. You know? Yeah, I don’t charge anything, I’m not a doctor. And if they need help, they want to know how to grow, like John said, easiest to grow is this. This is the easiest. I mean this is no-brainer, so… JOHN: Wow, that’s amazing, and thank you for putting that offer out to all my viewers and hopefully you don’t get swamped with too many calls, I mean, likewise, I make these videos for you guys for free, because I want to be the change in the world I want to see, like Gandhi said literally right? I want everybody to start growing. I want everybody to be healthy so that we can get rid of this sick-care system that’s dragging down the nation, right? So that all these people don’t get sick, they don’t have to suffer and they can live healthy and unfortunately we’re not taught how to grow our own food in schools and I believe that every child in the nation should be taught how to grow food because we all need to eat, right? We’re taught how to do reading, writing, arithmetic, and science and all these things that may not have so much use outside of school, but we all need to eat. So I hope gardening programs come back in the future. And that’s why I do these videos and Dave’s here to help you, because his life has been saved to be put on this planet to you know help others. I mean, help thy fellow man. So Dave, do you have any more final comments or words of wisdom you’d like to share with my viewers today before we sign off? DAVE: I just want to add one more thing: I do have a website dedicated to how to grow stuff, okay? I’ll put that, we’ll put that link right? JOHN: What is it? DAVE: gods…g..o..d..s…gods… rx just like drugs dot org (godsrx.org). JOHN: godsrx.org. Yeah, check that website out, learn how to grow stuff, learn more about Dave and what he does to help the planet behealthier. So anyways, if you guys enjoyed this episode, and want me to come back to Dave’s place and do more in depth videos with him, please be sure to give me a thumbs up, that will let me know you guys liked this video, and I’ll come back and maybe we’ll show you the whole process of starting everything and maybe he’ll even start making videos on his own, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don’t miss out on any of my new and upcoming episodes I have coming out every 3-4 days. You never know where I’ll show up or what you’ll be learning how to grow on my Youtube channel and finally, be sure, be sure, to check my past episodes. My past episodes are a wealth of knowledge, over 1300 episodes teaching you guys all aspects on how you guys can grow your own food at home and become independent of the system so you can buy less food, save more money and get healthier all at the same time. Finally be sure to share this video somebody else that wants to grow some food but has been scared to grow outside, growing indoors is a lot easier than growing outside let me tell you guys and plus you have very minimal investment equipment like a jar, some seeds and some good purified water to get you guys started. So with that my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. We’ll next time. Until then remember keep on growing your sprouts.
