Come back.

We planted plant to plant and I said, we are going to grow and come back.

We planted planted plant.

And I say, the way we fought and we planted, planted, planted from the earth to the dirt.

We still love design.

We love designs from the earth to the dirt.

Come back, we keep plant.

Now look why you see the form grown.

I said It comes from negative.

Say the good food make me plant me.

We had the good food born from every plant God to plant and I bet iPhone, iPhone come up with planted planted plant.

And I said your food in your phone come every plant not to plant and all born on grown come back We planted planted plant died today one the big island of Saint Croix We got the queen we hold I just happened to be expecting this tomato plant and if you notice is had some leaves missing and some here There are signs that I caught warm or some type of to an insect was attacking this plan.

Well, let's talk a little bit more about the garden.

The last time we were here, we were installing a drip irrigation system.

But today we're going to talk a little bit more and expand out and see what's been happening since the last time we were here.

I'd like to introduce to you Miss Shawna Bass.

So on our bass from the Queen Louise home.

Shawna, welcome to Home Grown.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

I initially said quite warm, but it could be a horn worm.

Tomato horn worm because there are several different types of worms, but the tomato horn worm is the one that usually attacks these plants.

And you see some of the leaves are missing and some is here.

That means he's been feeding on this rather recently and he's hiding out someplace because he like you and I don't like to be in the sun for too long.

So Chano talked to us the last time we were here.

We did the irrigation demonstration to show people how the irrigation would be laid out and installed.

But I wasn't here for the planting.

Okay, you guys have done a wonderful job here with the plant and what has your experience been with the garden?

It's been positive.

It's good to see the fruit come in on the trees and the pepper.

We've harvested some lettuce, so it's been a good experience so far and I hear the staff have been kind of reading the garden dark red in the garden, planting their own items.

Yes, yes.

I've had a few people to pay particular interest in the garden.

Okay.

Let's take a look at some of the things that you have growing here.

I see you have a nice line of tomatoes.

Have you harvested tomatoes already?

No, not yet.

Not to it.

All right.

So you are close to getting a crop of tomatoes from from from this garden.

You've actually got to grow.

So you should get quite a bit of tomatoes from this once we, you know, once you begin to harvest.

And I notice over in the other row, you have two rows of peppers, green peppers haven't harvested any peppers as yet either.

I'm looking forward to that.

You can see that we have quite a number of trees with peppers.

Okay.

So hopefully we'll be able to start harvesting those soon.

Okay.

And again, as we were pointing out when we were laying out the irrigation system, we have to have a nice walkway and we have a nice walkway so that even if the plants with they get a lot bigger, you still have space to to walk in between.

Yes, some nice size peppers.

However, they are kind of small.

We had some issues with fertilization.

Okay.

So Mr. Quarterman from UVA actually came out and did some fertilization for me.

Okay.

And it's looking a lot better than it looked initially.

So I'm pleased about that as well.

All right.

I'm beginning to see that some of them are actually beginning to show signs of blushing red and and changing color as if they're they're ready to harvest.

You may have to take off a few of them because of the size of the plants.

Okay.

You may have to take off some of the larger ones as they continue to grow because it's going to continue to flower and add more fruit.

But as the fruit gets heavier, heavier, it's going to begin to weigh this size.

Now, some plants actually will grow to a much taller height than these, depending on the conditions under which they're growing.

So under her situation, she'd have to take out some of the larger, larger fruit.

So that doesn't a weight of plants down because sometimes you'll get them as large as this basil this is gorgeous Haven't eaten any of the business yet?

Not yet, no.

I'm surprised because you have a lot of tea drinkers in.

I do.

I've had a few people to ask me about them, but no one has touched them as yet.

Okay, good.

Well, yeah, they're going to be good size and they're they're looking lovely.

Any pest problem?

Not that I'm aware of.

This is my first experience with a garden, so I'm that seasoned in recognizing, you know, the signs of a pest.

Okay.

But no, I think they're coming along nicely.

As you can see, the leaves are looking really healthy.

They look really great.

Really, really good.

And your beets, they look gorgeous.

Thank you.

I haven't had any.

No.

Have you harvested any beets as yet?

All right, so when you ready to harvest, you're going to have quite a bit of things to harvest.

Yes.

No, I noticed that the lettuce patch looking kind of patchy.

It's patchy.

It's looking patchy.

Well, we have had success with the lettuce again, because this is my first experience with the garden.

Wasn't really sure of the signs of when the lettuce would be ready.

Okay.

So I was able to harvest a few and provided them to the kitchen for a meal preparation.

But then others began sprouting a little bit of a stock and it became bitter.

So I had to pull those up.

Okay.

And I haven't replanted as yet.

So that's why it's looking a little patchy as you see.

Okay, We'll get an opportunity to get you some of the seedlings and get get those going again because so you realize, no, they're they grow fairly quickly.

They go to fairly quickly.

Right now I know what they look like when they're ready to be harvested.

So I would repeat the same problem again.

Okay.

A good lesson learned.

That's great.

The pigeon peas, as I see that you've had here, your coworker planted out here, even though they they're here, they actually they're you're right.

They are too close to the garden at least on this end.

But in some instances they actually serve as a windbreak.

Okay.

Because on this side, they don't serve as a wind, because generally the wind is blowing from east or west.

And with many of the plants, if it gets too windy again, like for instance, with the peppers, if it's too heavy without a windbreak, the wind just comes sweeping right through and then they tend to lean in the direction of the wind with having two pigeon peas here as a wind break.

It breaks the wind up so that it doesn't come through and harass the plants and shake them up unnecessarily.

And not only the fact that the are they serve as a windbreak, they fix nitrogen, which is a is a nutrient that the plant needs.

They actually fetch nitrogen in the sun to wherever they're planted.

They they help improve the quality of the soil as well.

Okay.

So yeah, there are no kind of on the bad side.

I like the idea, but it goes to show that gardening could be contagious.

Yes, very contagious.

Now we want you to become contagious in doing your own home garden as well as as was done here at the Queen Louise of Carlos Point.

Those gardens are wonderful.

The vegetables really are great.

However, I think I'd like to give you some additional tips.

So I'm going to focus.

The saffron are today on sugar, salt and fat, and we're going to really focus on we really do need to read labels.

And so let's start with sugar.

Most of us get too much sugar into our diet, and so we do need to start reading labels.

We have a lot of juices here.

And one of the problems we have with our population is overweight or obese.

And many people say, oh, I don't I don't eat hardly anything.

But in this hot, humid climate, a lot of us drink an awful lot.

And so I've got a selection of juices that I'd like to share with you are beverages that have an awful lot of sugar in them.

And some of those are consuming maybe three or four of these each day.

I'm going to start with one of the littlest or smallest containers, and this is a cranberry juice and it has well, let's see, it has ten fluid ounces and it has on the label, if we read it, 31 grams of sugar.

Now, most of us don't go around talking about grams, of course.

So we have to figure out how do I know what a teaspoon is, sugar and less so.

The formula is 4.2 grams in one teaspoon of sugar.

So simply divide 4.2 into 31 and I get 7.3 teaspoons of sugar in this little tiny container.

Now, I want to show you this container.

This one also, I'll I say this is ten ounces also looks a little bit bigger, but it's not ten ounces.

So let's look at this is an orange pineapple juice.

It has 160 calories.

That's quite a few calories for such a little guy.

And it has 38 grams of sugar.

I divide 30 854.2.

I get 90 sugar.

I want I had and I measured that.

So look at this little container and then look how much sugar you're drinking.

So it's really a sugar drink.

So I think we need to really think about reading the labels and how many teaspoons of sugar are actually in the in the drinks.

What happens with a lot of these juices that have so much sugar it makes you more thirsty.

And in this climate, we don't need that.

We need to try to quench that thirst, replenish ourselves and our body so we have plenty of.

The next thing I want to look at is I want to consider salt.

And we need again, start reading labels and look at the amount of sodium and and different things.

I brought some oats and oatmeal is one of the better things.

We want to get enough fiber in our diet.

And when you buy or buy any type of cereal or juices or whatever, look and see how much sodium is that in this particular type of oats and old fashioned out there is zero grams of sodium.

And that's good.

Some people say, oh, I don't want to cook, I don't want to boil water and cook that.

I just want to pour some hot water over.

I have the instant oatmeal.

Well, the instant oatmeal.

I didn't buy a package because I don't either.

But it has a lot of sodium in at any time.

You have instant anything is a lot of sodium.

The recommendation by the government for the range of salt is 15 to about 20, 1500 to about 2400 milligrams sodium.

And that actually would be one teaspoon of salt per day.

That should be your upper limit.

Well, someone said, well, I wouldn't for a whole teaspoon of salt on my food.

But if you start looking at labels and you start adding up, how much sodium, especially in process foods, or if you go somewhere and have French fries and you pour the salt on, even though there's salt already on it, you cook with salt.

So we get a lot of sodium.

Best to stay away from most processed foods when you cough.

Try to season with something else like cilantro or onions or garlic as opposed to salt.

Pepper is fine, but the sodium is really what we do need to stay away from, if we can.

The other thing I want to talk about is fat in our diet.

And so there's healthy fat and then there's fat that is not so healthy.

Canola oil, olive oil, our healthy fats.

And we should be eating and consuming those.

If you make a salad, it's better to use an olive oil and a canola oil than one of the other oils that we have.

Stay away from frying food, stay away from cooking with lard, shortening, or what we call more saturated fats.

Fat is the find as being solid at room temperature.

So that would be shortening butter, the fat on the rim of the meat.

And then oil is liquid at room temperature course, some of the fats, when you heat them up, they do turn to an oil.

We need to look at that.

They are only the amount of margarine, butter and so forth that we're getting.

But also let's look at the food pyramid and where are we getting fats from in the food pyramid?

Well, most of our fats are coming from the protein group, which is a dark purple color or the milk group, which is the blue color.

Fat comes from eggs, although eggs are healthy for us and we do need to eat eggs, but in moderation and fat also comes from meat like a hamburger patty.

So not only are you getting protein from both of these foods, but you're also getting fat.

Fat also comes from dairy products, cheese, yogurt and milk.

Anyone over the age of two years old should only drink skim milk.

The 1%, the 2%, and the whole milk shouldn't be because of the amount of fat.

Now, the fat that we're talking about that is in animal products is called cholesterol.

And cholesterol is what causes heart problems.

And that's what we need to cut back on is the amount of animal products.

Now, you can get your protein now from like pigeon peas and rice, and that would be a healthy choice.

I'm not saying do not eat any animal products like meat, but try to go with some other protein sources that don't have the cholesterol and that added fat.

And again, you have to read labels to see how much fat if we eat fresh fruits and vegetables, which I hope we're all eating because of our whole healthy home grown projects that we're been working on, we don't really have to worry about extra fat except for coconut.

We have saturated and avocado, but we've talked about those in other shows and we know how to eat those basically in in moderation.

Now, on the fat, if you were to divide your calories up, you should not have any more than total 30% of all your calories for the day coming from fat.

That's the top limit.

And from saturated fat.

Saturated fat would be from margarine and butter and shortening.

If you happen to eat the fat, hopefully, hopefully not on the steak or something that saturated fat, that should be no more than 10% of your total calories.

We need to have more of our calories coming from grains.

And remember, we want to think about the dark, the browns and not the whites of whole wheat bread, 100%.

Whole wheat brown rice is much better.

58 to 60% of the total number of calories you eat should come from this group here.

So we should be actually eating more from here.

It's about six ounces is what we need.

So a half a cup of cooked brown rice is a serving and that accounts for one ounce.

Then we need to also be eating, like we said, the fruits and the vegetables.

We need two and a half cups of vegetables.

How many of you are doing that and how many of your children are getting the two and a half cups?

Remember, if they're growing the vegetables, they're more likely to eat it to cuts of fruit.

And then on the milk probe, it's usually about three three cups of milk or equivalent to four little cubes of cheese.

If we think about this as a cube of cheese for adults, that would be one serving up to one cup of milk on the meat.

Remember, we want to cut down on the fat.

So you're only having about 12 to 15% of your calories coming from me.

This is the size of the meat that you should be eating that's covering the whole plate.

So because with this protein I like in meat, pork chops, chicken or whatever, it's not only the protein, but that's where you have the fat.

And we have what's called hidden fat.

And we have the fat that you can see fat.

We can see like butter.

Hidden fat is like in pastries, like and cakes and pies and so forth.

But we can't see it and it's there.

And sometimes we don't realize that we're actually getting it.

So we have to be very, very careful on how much sodium we're getting, how much fat we're getting.

And so we need to start reading labels.

So hopefully this information has been beneficial to you and helpful to your eating.

Healthy and home grown fruits and vegetables are the way to go.

And thank you very, very much.

And I must add this also exercise is another key.

So don't forget to exercise where you eat while you're eating the healthy foods from our home grown gardens.

And this side previously there was box area.

Okay?

And once we started this garden, we decided to experiment with this site to see what we may or may not be able to grow.

Okay, so we planted eggplants to variations, the purple and the white eggplant arugula have choice.

We don't move any further.

Do you have there?

Not that I'm aware of.

What?

Eight off the top of these?

No, I did that.

The plants were growing a little bit larger than I anticipated.

Okay.

I did harvest some, used them in the kitchen.

The staff talked about the taste.

A little bitter, a little spicy.

Wasn't really familiar with the peas.

Okay, so what happened is I allowed it to get away from and it over grew itself.

And in order to, I guess, increase the flavor and not have that bitter taste, I cut them down so that they can regrow.

Okay.

So that's why they look in this way.

So trial and error, she's learning and she's gaining experience along the whole process.

Actually, you're right, because they're localized, maybe half the size generally.

But again, that's part of the learning experience.

And now you becoming a regular expert.

Exactly.

And you pop Toy Story.

This is the second go around we've harvested.

Pull them up, cook them in a kitchen on the side as well as combined with rice.

We had that.

And so this is a second plant in for a pop toy.

The empty area.

We had a cucumber vine.

Okay.

And they do really well with local converts.

When they were planted, I would I was told that there is a parasite that would probably impact the the vegetation.

Right.

But we were able to harvest quite a few cucumbers before the vine actually died out.

So I was pleased with that.

So I'm hoping to plant cucumbers again.

Okay.

And then, of course, this is a continuation of the eggplant.

Okay.

And I see you have a nice actually, two fairly large ones on this one.

This one.

Good.

No.

Any other stop want to eat any of the weight.

They were not initially, but I had one person my office manager gave while she picked them.

While I wasn't here.

I took them home and came back on Monday and told me they were absolutely delicious, that she cited them as selfish and they were the best eggplant she's ever had.

So she's converted from the back to the way.

Apparently so.

Okay, that's good.

So there's a lot of learning that has taken place in here.

And for you personally, what has been your learning experience with this project?

I learned that I actually like gardening.

Okay?

I enjoy seeing the future grow.

Like I said, just not recognizing the differences between the soil.

I think we've had more success over here because of the soil quality.

I was told that the soil was brought in right for this area for an initial project, right.

Whereas over here this area needed fertilization to kind of get it going.

Okay.

So we're actually dealing with two types of soil here.

And you've seen a different response from this.

Yes.

As opposed to this.

And again, there's a lesson in there as well.

Even in your own home garden, depending on where you're growing your vegetables, you may have a situation where one side of your garden is flourishing and the other side is.

And then it all has to do with the soil in a given area.

And that's what you are learning?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

And so those are things that you will learn along the way as a home gardener handling your garden, that even though the yard may look the same, situations may be different because, again, as you maybe you are building your home, there would may have been more excavation being done on this side as opposed to this side.

So the soil on this side got troubled a little bit less.

Or if someone was brought in again, it may have been piled here, whereas not by here.

So those are some of the variables that you need to take into consideration as you get into gardening.

As you found out here at the Garden as well.

And again, generally the peppers would have been a much bigger probably if they want this site and the kind of quality of soil.

And you've got that.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

And so it's a nice experiment that you've got going here and with much success.

I'm really impressed with what has been going here.

And I'm sure, as your other staff members have witnessed, they, too, have learned quite a bit.

Yes.

From the staff.

Anything else would you want to tell us about your experience with it?

Not particularly.

It's just been a real pleasant experience for me.

Okay.

I hadn't done this before and I discovered that I like it.

Surprisingly enough, when you keep it going, I'm going to try to do it.

I'm trying to get more people involved and we haven't really won the eggplant, so yeah, no, that's the one who says it's too hot.

It's just too hot.

Well, we get out in the morning, we won't give any, you know, excuse.

What I'm trying to do is to get the children a little bit more involved.

We haven't had a success in doing that as yet because we have younger children right now.

Most of our catastrophe have our issues.

So they come out to take a look at them but haven't really had any hands on experience with it.

So over time I'm hoping to increase the interest in the garden and maybe have them take some responsibility for water and turning on the timer and so forth.

Oh, speaking of time, I want to take a look at that, because that was one of the things that we had introduced initially when we were doing the irrigation system that you can use timers to help.

Again, an efficient use of your time.

Yes, because whereas as you realize, probably from old school gardening, you stand there with the home right now with the timer, as we have here, this is just one of many types of timers.

What has been your experience in now doing this, using the timer?

Well, like you said, initially, I was coming out, turning it on, going back.

I'm supposed to come back in 15 or 20 minutes.

Oftentimes I'll be back 2 hours later because I've forgotten to turn the pipe up.

But since I've had the time, I could just turn it on and go, you know, set the time and it automatically turns itself off.

I don't have to remember to come back and turn it on.

Or if I'm not here, I can have one of my staff members to just come out and adjust the time for me.

So it's really been a good use of time for me in terms of remembering and ensuring that there's enough water and irrigation for the plant.

So it's been it's been a good tool.

Mr..

QUESTION Actually set it up for me, recommended it, send it up for me, and it's been working really well.

Okay.

So there's a tip for you again, for those of you that are busy and want to do your own gardening but don't have the time on water, there are tools available to you to help minimize the amount of time that you spending your garden.

You still need to come out to your garden.

You still need to periodically check and see what's going on.

But one of the timesaver that has been created for you are times like these.

And there are many types and models in the garden.

And as you said, you just set it and walk away.

And again, that's a good thing to think about as you begin to expand your garden as you wind down today's show.

I just wanted to again, just really express my appreciation and for you participating in the program and having the Queen Louise as part of the home grown project for the experiences that you've shared and what you've learned and any last comments you'd want to share with us about gardening in general?

Oh, no, Just thank you for the opportunity.

Good.

I hope more people become interested in the garden.

I'm hoping that what happens at this site a few years ago will not happen again.

I'm hoping that we will be able to keep it going good and introduce different types of seeds to the garden.

Good.

And with working with the children.

One of our experiences has been over the years with the extension service and dealing with schoolchildren is that they get a chance to to do things with smell and color.

It really impacts them as well.

So give the kids a chance to to smell the basil.

Absolutely.

And that may begin to draw them in and probably will come back and see how their experience has been.

Okay.

This has been home grown today.

Again, we've coming to you from seeing great queen Louise home.

We thank you for viewing the show today and we look forward to seeing you next time on homegrown planted lot and I bet iPhone iPhone come up with planted planted plant as I said your phone your phone Mary plant not too content on born on grown come equipped planted planted plant died from the earth did that come back with killer beside below pines from the earth to the dirt come equity plant to know why I see on grown I said it comes from the to say the good food come back we planted we unafraid the good food What food come back We planted planted plant and I said iPhone, iPhone come up with planted planted plant.

And I said your food and your.