    Learn the reasons why small fruits (i.e. blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, grapes, etc.) should be a component of your plan for food and financial security. General production guidelines for establishing small fruits, and where to source inexpensive plants to get you started.     

<div> <div> <div> <div> <p>Learn the reasons why small fruits (i.e. blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, grapes, etc.) should be a component of your plan for food and financial security. General production guidelines for establishing small fruits, and where to source inexpensive plants to get you started. </p> </div> </div> </div> </div>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Agriculture

Growing Specialty Crops

Darren Greenfield

Sweet Potatoes

I work at Weimar Institute, managing the farm there.

We have been growing sweet potatoes for 6 years now.

I don't have time to tell you the testimony behind that and why, Because I will cut out some valuable information in the presentation But I've learned a lot over the years and I still have a lot to learn but they're actually a very easy plant to grow and I believe that as Adventists we have an advantage with sweet potatoes because we are promoting the health message If you were to put Adventist advantage into the mr.

Google and and get an answer back on what what it is You will find all these presentations there about how Adventists have this amazing health and longevity that the general population doesn't have.

And so as we grow sweet potatoes and we promote sweet potatoes, We can tie it into the health message as we tell people about the benefits of sweet potato, and I'll share a little bit about that.

So, sweet potatoes are rated by some authorities as the best vegetable you can eat.

They are loaded with carotenoids, vitamin C, potassium and fiber.

The skin has as much antioxidants as blueberries and 3 times the nutrients of the flesh.

So Make sure you get good organic ones if you're going to buy them or if you're going to grow them.

Obviously, you're not going to be pouring chemicals on them, so eat the flesh, eat the skin.

They can absorb up to, This is the key thing to remember they can absorb up to 62 Minerals if they are in the soil, did you get that?

62 now contrast that to most Vegetables and fruits that we grow most of them can only absorb less than 20.

So 3 times as much or more the nutrients of most of the food that we eat.

They have also an anti-cancer protein called sporamine, and it's 80% of its total protein.

Exposed directly to tongue cancer reduced its viability in days.

So basically the test they did, they had these people with tongue cancer eating sweet potato regularly and it had the same effect as putting them on chemo or the treatments that they normally give.

Sweet potato leaves they're really good to eat they're not the best tasting but you can mix them in a stew or put them a little bit in a salad or mix them you can eat the leaves Sweet potato leaves kill 94% of prostate cancer cells in vitro.

An extract of sweet potato leaves was discovered to be extremely toxic to prostate cancer cells in a study killing 94% of them in vitro and slowing the growth of prostate tumors in mice by 75% Other research has shown that these super greens are also active against breast cancer lung cancer colon cancer stomach cancer and leukemia And the health benefits of these greens are not just for the lab.

1 study out of Taiwan showed that eating at least 100 grams per week of this super vegetable decreased lung cancer risk by up to 57%.

In other studies, sweet potato leaves boosted immunity in humans and lowered blood sugar in mice with type 2 diabetes.

If you need an energy boost, sweet potato leaf could be just the vegetable for you.

A recent study showed it significantly relieved fatigue in mice, increased exercise capacity and even boosted muscle glycogen levels.

They are an excellent source of potent antioxidants called polyphenols, including the unique and powerful, can't say that word, and anti-cancer peptides.

And alkaline diet fans, take note, these greens are 1 of the most alkalizing vegetables out there, delivering 400% the alkalizing power of pure lemon juice ounce for ounce.

400% the alkalizing power of pure lemon juice ounce for ounce.

If any of you are involved in trying to do some agriculture with a school, for our North American climate, where our schools are out of sync with the growing season, you can plant them before school gets out for the summer.

During the summer time when you don't have that student labour force, they just need watering and weeding.

When school comes back in you harvest them, you store, wash and pack them while you have students and it provides excellent work experience for unskilled students.

You know, a lot of the plants and things we grow, if you have unskilled students, they can often do a lot of damage, and it's hard for them to do a lot of damage to the sweet potato.

So here we have some elementary kids come out.

They have fun picking up the sweet potatoes off the ground and it's really a fun activity.

If you're looking at it for making money, This quote comes from 1 article that says, Sweet potatoes are a marketer's dream commodity because as with blueberries and strawberries, demand keeps increasing despite harsh economic times.

That was 2013 and I can say, because we've been growing them before that time and up to the present time, every year the price is increasing.

Not a lot, maybe 5 to 7% every year, but it is continuing increasing and some other crops that we grow, the price is declining, it's going down.

This is really a blessing because by the time you get to October in North America and most of the country your crops are ending, your income stops or maybe you start putting in some winter crops but definitely the income starts declining rapidly and if you harvest your sweet potatoes in October then you have some months to sell them.

In fact we would grow enough to keep selling all the way through to March or April so we had a constant strong income right through those months and so that was a tremendous blessing.

I'm not so sure on pricing out on the east side of the states.

In Tennessee when I was there over Christmas I saw in the stores that they were selling sweet potato for about, I think it was 79 or 80 cents a pound, whereas out in California they're over a dollar a pound, maybe a dollar 50 a pound, and for organic ones maybe 2 dollars 40 a pound, So the price seems to be a lot stronger on the West Coast than it is here.

So you have to weigh the economics if you want to grow them, but it's definitely worth experimenting with and seeing if it's a crop that will work for you.

Like anything in life, we should turn to the Word of God for our wisdom.

I love this passage in Isaiah 28, and this is kind of a promise that I have claimed, and God has been true to His promise and has blessed tremendously.

It Says, give air and hear my voice, listen and hear my speech.

Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow?

Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods?

When he has leveled its surface, does he not sow the black cumin and scatter the cumin?

Plant the wheat and rose, the barley in the appointed place and the spelt in its place?

For he, that is God, instructs him in right judgment.

For the black cumin is not threshed with a threshing sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over the common, but the black common is beaten out with a stick, and the common with a rod.

Bread flour must be ground, therefore he does not thresh it forever, break it with his cartwheel, or crush it with his horsemen.

This also comes from the Lord of hosts who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance.

Praise God, he is so willing to teach us if we will ask.

In the book Education it says, in the cultivation of the soil the thoughtful worker will find that treasures little dreamed of are opening up before him.

No 1 can succeed in agriculture or gardening without attention to the laws involved.

The special needs of every variety of plant must be studied.

Different varieties require different soil and cultivation and compliance with the laws governing each is the condition of success.

So sweet potatoes, unlike just about everything else we grow, you don't plant seeds to have them grow.

They're not part of the potato family, the Irish potato family.

Some people think you get them and cut them up and look for eyes and grow them and put little chunks of sweet potato in the ground.

They are planted from vines that are called slips.

They're amazing because they're almost like a weed.

These little slips that you cut that might be you know 12 inches long, you put them in the ground and a bit of moisture and they immediately send out roots and those roots in just a few days can grow that long.

They take off and in fact when we cut our slips and we have them in tubs that we put a bit of water in, if we don't get them planted in 1 or 2 days, by the time we actually plant them in the ground, we're planting them, they've already got these white roots out the side just from sitting in water.

You can plant them upside down and they still grow.

Here you see a little picture of in our greenhouse or high tunnel, it's not a heated greenhouse, in 1 of the beds there we just basically take sweet potato and We scrape back the soil back a couple of inches of soil back and then just lay them side by side close together Thick right across there and then cover them back up with the soil and so that we have maybe an inch of soil covering them and then we additionally put another cover of plastic under there to help it get hot.

In fact, for us out in California there, the best time to start growing them is about mid-February to end of February to get them started.

Yes, the sweet potato put the soil over them.

Now if you're a home grower Obviously this might not be practical for you, so what you can do if you want to just do a few, get yourself 1 of these pots that's maybe a 5 gallon or 3 or 4 gallon pot, put a mix of maybe soil 50-50 with compost or sand.

Sand will leach the water out pretty quickly so clay soil holds it the moisture better and you can just put 1 or 2 sweet potato in the top and just cover it with an inch of soil and then put plastic over the top and then put a string or something to tie it on and then put that in a window sill in your house or somewhere where it needs to be about 70 degrees or higher.

You will see in about 2 to 3 weeks the sprouts will come through and start shooting up and they'll start growing.

They need some light but I've actually seen where they've been in a window where they get light half the day, the sun comes up and then passes over and they're in the shade and they will grow in the vines, you can actually have your vines grown that way and then plant them out.

We plant them starting beginning of May after the risk of frost is gone.

They are a tropical plant and so They originate in South America and they like warm weather.

In fact, you can take your slips and plant them in the ground, give them a good soaking and then not come back and water them for the whole summer and they will survive.

They won't grow big sweet potato, but they will survive.

They're just an amazing plant and easy to grow.

You can see that I've got some conduit bent into hoops there.

So if you're just starting and waiting for the sprouts to come through, you could put plastic straight over top of them, but as soon as the sprouts come through, you're going to give them some space.

So if you use that frost cloth, you could put that straight on the ground.

See the ground, the temperature in the ground typically stays close to 55 degrees and so if it's cold like in mid-February in our area it's still going to be around 40 degrees or something like that, maybe 50 degrees.

Jared Westbrook

Growing Garlic

We have a small farm up there about 4 and a half acres inside of fence and that's for the elk.

That's deer on steroids And they're not garden friendly.

This is kind of, we're up in the high country.

Colors aren't too good on the screen, but that's kind of the area we're in, down in that valley.

And like I said, we're called Gila Garlic.

We've been growing since 2009, I believe.

And I've always kind of enjoyed being outdoors.

We raised horses when I was younger, and really enjoyed that.

Always wanted to have an outdoor lifestyle and really enjoyed that and have just wanted it more and more.

You know, when you, when I look around anyway and see some rancher friends and you know their kids, their 4 year olds are out riding, chasing cows and stuff.

Just the peace of the country and it's a much more wholesome environment, easier to not be distracted and find our heavenly connection.

So anyway, I guess through the years it's been, okay, how do I find a work that can keep me outside, can keep me involved?

And so agriculture was an interest among other things and we said well let's pursue agriculture some.

And we were at an elevation of about 7, 500 feet so it's really cold and everybody around us it goes down so everybody else can grow tomatoes and we can't without a greenhouse.

And so we're like, what can we grow where we can make use of our climate, have it work for us instead of against us, and that we can actually get to market?

Because we're also about 2 to 3 hours from the nearest decent-sized markets if you were to be farmers markets or that that sort of thing.

So we did some research some Friends of ours who are into farming they're here and Quite involved with this conference their names the Dye singers.

They pointed us in the right direction of garlic said well, why don't you look into that and so we did and That became our main study We've we've done a few other things.

We do have a greenhouse so we've done tomatoes and and that as well, but garlic has been the main crop and So we might ask why garlic other than for us the reasons I've said being it can work for us well.

It's funny because people hear, oh you grow garlic, oh man you must really like garlic, you must enjoy it.

And you know, eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and all that.

It is still a spice and not a food group.

So, that's no offense to anybody that likes to eat it by the clove or wear it for perfume or something.

But, Really though, for us, the climate had a lot to do with it.

So if any of you are from northern climates, they're very conducive to garlic.

Western climates also, because of the soil types and moisture, tend to be conducive.

There is a lot of good garlic also grown back east as well, but you have to tweak your environment and your varieties to match where you are.

And the other thing that had a lot to do with it is the ability to have it be a cash crop.

It's right now a very popular crop because gourmet garlic, hardneck garlic, otherwise known as, is hard to find.

When you walk into Walmart, that's not what you'll be finding.

You'll be finding varieties from California, Gilroy, or even China.

Most of the world's garlic actually does come from China.

Like California, they'll have like California Early, California Late.

I'm not sure what the Chinese varieties are even called, it's just you know the white garlic you find in the store.

So the hard neck is in high demand because it's hard to find and people have found out that There is so many different flavors and it can be much more potent.

There's some that are almost sweet and some that are super hot, like hot as chili even.

You hear anywhere from 2 to 300 different varieties of the hardneck gourmet type garlic.

And so it's in high demand for upscale restaurants, even people that enjoy gourmet food and that kind of stuff.

And as well as for its health properties.

It has some very powerful health properties which if we have time at the end I'll mention a few.

But it's a very powerful antifungal as well as antibiotic and such things.

So that was 1 of the things we were looking for as well as it being able to grow was it being a cash crop that could do quite well on its own.

When we first started out we thought well we can just do 1 crop.

Now of course monocropping definitely has its downfalls.

So if you can not monocrop, I definitely recommend you have 2 or 3 other crops as well.

But it is good to focus on 1, learn it well from that aspect.

Gourmet garlic sells from anywhere from $10 a pound up to $22 a pound if you're ordering, you know, online or whatever.

And that's for good sized organic seed garlic.

And so many of those high-end restaurants and food connoisseurs are willing to go to great lengths and expense to get this stuff on their tables.

And if you're wondering about how much you can grow per acre, I believe it's, Some farms that are very intense have done up to 10, 000 pounds per acre of garlic.

You have to be very intense and you have to have super good soil, but that's kind of like the upper limit.

So you can run some numbers there and see how it is, it can be quite financially rewarding if you can do that much and do it well, which is the key, doing it well.

We also like garlic because it's in the ground for 9 months And about 4 or 5 of those months, you can kind of let it take care of itself.

Not completely, it's always good to keep an eye on it.

But you know, through the winter, it's kind of in a dormant stage.

There's no weeds, you don't have to really water if you have snow especially.

So it kind of gives you a little buffer there in the winter, say if you were doing like summer crops and then you planted garlic and you could still kind of leave it through the winter and then use it for your market garden the next year when it was ready and still kind of have your winter off so to speak.

Now of course if you're I guess that's that's the the time investment.

The time investment also is if you're say growing a thousand pounds of seed garlic, you are going to be putting in a lot of man hours.

I figure it's upwards of a couple thousand man hours if you're going to manage that much garlic.

So though it is a cash crop, you're gonna have quite a bit of investment time.

There's a little bit of, you know, equipment costs, but probably not much if you're already farming.

And also, the investment in marketing, because you're gonna wanna be able to sell what you grow, which if you're doing farmers markets and such you may not have any problem doing that.

Another advantage is it's a forgiving crop.

It, you know, pretty much if you plant garlic even if the soil is not good or you didn't water it enough or it got too cold or your mulch blew off, it's very forgiving.

They like to say though garlic is fairly easy to grow, it's fairly difficult to grow great garlic because when you're looking to get the large size that the American market requires and such things, you do have to have your systems in place and you have to have specific nutrition and be on top of things like that.

So it is forgiving, it was good to learn on for us.

Yes, the elephant garlic actually, since you bring it up, is more closely related to leeks.

It's actually not even a garlic, but it does taste like garlic, so that works.

And I've said a little bit about the difference between the Gilroy California garlic and China garlic and hardneck gourmet garlic.

The stuff that is imported or coming from Gilroy, a lot of that is actually irradiated And so many of the health properties are lessened, if not completely gone.

They do that because they don't want it to sprout, so that tells you something there.

And that helps, of course, with storage, but It also is then not a living food, so not ideal there.

Bob Gregory

Small Fruits

Father in heaven, we're so grateful for the liberty to assemble here freely and to talk of things pertaining to your creation.

We ask that your Holy Spirit would attend to us and guide us, that you would be with the words that I share, but also with the hearing of those that are here to learn and to understand of you and your will for us in the garden and in the work that you have for us in your kingdom.

Many of you have been in some of my other classes, but for those of you that haven't met me, I'm Bob Gregory.

I have about a 50-year background in agriculture, and my wife and I currently own and operate Berea Gardens, an agriculture center in central West Virginia where we have a market farm, we do training programs, and we also have a regional seed bank there.

And I've grown a lot of different things in the course of my career, but I'm not a real expert on small fruits.

So it could very well be that some of you out there that have more experience with these things than I do may know more than I.

But I'm going to share with you some basics of what I do know.

We have on our farm about 180 blueberries and We have about 300 feet of row of raspberries that we have planted.

We've recently planted some black raspberries, and we have a few blackberries, too.

And I do, as an agronomist, understand the principles for growing these small fruits.

And I want to, first of all, talk about some of the advantages of growing small fruits in our farms.

Many of us want to be self-sufficient in our food supplies and what we grow, realize there's great value to having fruit in our diet.

And we concentrate often on things like the apples and the peaches and the plums and those things that are really delicious.

But I want to encourage you today to think real vigorously about adding some of these small fruits to your farm planning, too, if you haven't previously done so, for a variety of different reasons.

And 1 of the reasons that we selected small fruits for growing in our area and in our climate, which is a relatively hot, warm climate.

And we have lots of rain, dew, and humidity in between.

And that's a recipe for some real challenges and difficulty if you're just growing tree fruits.

That's a real challenge if you're just growing tree fruits.

In fact, trying to grow Many of the stone fruits in our region of the country with organic methods is really pretty difficult.

It can be done, but it's really quite difficult.

And even though we may produce them organically, we're still gonna find ourselves spraying pretty frequently for fungal diseases.

And those sprays take a toll both on the quality of the fruit and on the on the vigor of the tree over time and it's really quite challenging.

The other risk with growing large tree fruits is you often have a loss to frost damage on both sides of the growing season.

In the spring, the frost can take out your blossoms and essentially you can lose your crop before it's even set.

In the fall, if it's late varieties of apples and pears, for example, you can lose them to an early frost in the fall also.

If you plant a late blooming variety so that it will bloom after the frost in the spring, oftentimes those trees won't be fully, the fruits on those trees won't be fully ripened until after frost arrives in the fall and that damages your quality too.

1 of the ways to work with that narrow window of opportunity with a crop that isn't quite as susceptible to problems with the humidity and the moisture is to consider small fruits.

They're usually more reliable in their capacity to set fruit because they bloom later.

Typically you have fewer disease problems during the course of the production of that fruit.

Once the fruits start to ripen, they become pretty susceptible to disease.

But at least you have a long window of opportunity where those fruits can develop and grow until they become very susceptible to damage from wet weather or from moisture.

The small fruits also have some health benefits that the large fruits don't have.

And that has to do with the antioxidant content of many of the small fruits.

The blueberries, the black raspberries, the raspberries themselves, and the blackberries all have wonderful amounts of antioxidant compounds in them that some of our tree fruits are not so rich.

And I'm going to suggest a couple of fruits to you here today, too, that you may not have considered trying to grow that are extremely high in things like lycopene and other antioxidant compounds.

They produce phytochemicals, too, nutritious phytochemicals for us.

And they provide a real opportunity for us to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

In the winter months, because they're relatively easy to either dehydrate or can or dry.

Back to Menu

Series

Growing Specialty Crops

Small Fruits

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Sweet Potatoes

1h

Growing Garlic

59m

Small Fruits

52m

Growing Microgreens for Fun and Profit

53m

Growing and Selling Cutflowers

1h

Sound Doctrine