No come that we planted plant to plant.

And I said, we are going to grow and come back.

We planted God to plant and I said, Way forward.

We for one come back with God to plant, to project from the earth to the dirt, come back with pillow beside the pillow beside, from the earth to the dirt come equity plant.

Know why I you see the road I said it.

I'm from Decatur to say the good food make me plant it.

We had the good food on board.

We planted planted plant and I said, iPhone, iPhone, come up with planted planted plant.

And I said, Your phone, your phone.

Come every plant not to plant.

And I said it all born on grown come equip planted, planted got right inside.

00i got a Luis I see.

Get to see you again too.

All right.

I want to introduce to you Dr. Carl Johnson.

Nice to meet you.

Consumer safety for Obama, the Cooperative Extension Service.

And I thought I'd bring her by today because I'm sure she has something to contribute.

In fact, let's talk about your garden, because I see your.

You re preparing something.

Well, actually, I was.

Oh, wow.

I decided I have a lot of vegetables for stir fry and a lot of salad making.

So and maybe even pesto says, well, since since I last saw you.

I mean, the last time we were here, we were when you were harvesting and you had one of those big Katsu.

Oh, cucumbers.

Yeah.

That.

That's the first time because you had grown cucumbers before, but they were never that, so.

Yeah.

Okay.

And what else did we harvest at the, um, probably tomatoes.

Yes, we had to.

We had some lettuce.

Yeah, that is some nice leafy lettuce that had been eaten.

But I have another kind now.

This is our Asian greens, which are a little.

So since then you've added some other things to your garden.

Yeah.

Okay.

Tell us a little bit about what we have here that you're cooking with today.

Oh, okay.

Well, in a stir fry, I like to put in peppers and.

And what kind of peppers these are Bell peppers and bell.

These are Thai peppers which are very heat tolerant.

So they grow well here.

Okay.

Banana peppers.

There's two kinds.

One especially.

And one is smart.

And these are a lot of Puerto Rican seasoning peppers.

I put in everything so everything I cook, they're really colorful.

Yeah.

I like the color of my house.

Color because of the chai and colors at the same plants that I've had since January.

And I just keep cutting around the edges instead of harvesting it when it's large.

So every night I put it in stir fry and the small leaves and salads.

And the good thing about bok choy, it's a plant that's fairly easy.

Very, very.

I mean, when I say easy, if she forgot to water her bok choy for two or three days, maybe even a week, and it's still in the ground, if she threw water on it, it will come right back.

So it looks like you and your husband eat really healthy.

Wow.

I do, Yeah.

Getting to be senior citizen.

Oh, but both of our you know, doctors have suggested that we eat things that will help fend off, you know, cholesterol problems.

So.

Right.

Leafy green vegetables are on that list and and maybe helps with the fiber in the vegetables.

And then also the vitamin A and vitamin C are in most of these vegetables, especially vitamin C and the peppers.

I hope that helps them fight infection.

It also helps with the connective tissue in the body, which is which was which is really good.

And then antioxidants, I am sure you got to talk about anti accidents, especially with a vitamin C, Vitamin E isn't strong and a lot of these vegetables.

But the antioxidant helps with anti-cancer, which is really important.

Yeah, I think as you get older too.

So wow this is really And what about how do you season your vegetables?

I use herbs and I try I don't use any salt in my cooking at all, which is got us now for about three and basically I use, you know, like oregano and different kinds of chives and parsley and I use garlic and tchibo and lots.

I have tons of basil so that seasons my salads.

And same with the salad dressing.

That's what's in there.

And then I do the same when I stir.

If I cook, we tend to have a lot of rice and beans and stir fry.

Let's see how you put all of this together and make a meal.

Oh, you said you had this lettuce.

These are the these are Asian greens because they're more heat tolerant.

In the winter.

When we started the program, they the really large leaf lettuce and once it gets hot it tends to bolt.

Right.

And it gets bitter.

So these are a very heat tolerant and there are some that are spicy, some that are more like lettuce tasting, but they, they're very heat tolerant.

So I have a new batch of those growing and actually these darker greens that you have with the water and some of the other greens are really better for you nutritionally.

Yeah.

Leaf lettuce and especially iceberg lettuce, which is a head lettuce really doesn't have a lot of nutritional value.

So you're better off with the higher value of vitamin A in there.

And then the dark greens also have some a little bit of iron in them, which is important too.

You're going to use the basil in your cooking.

Oh yeah.

So you know it's right and you live around long enough to know somebody is going to be watching this and saying, why is she cooking with.

But it has the way it tastes and t it flavors your meal the same, same way.

Okay.

And it has a wonderful balance.

All that, you know, when you smell this yet allergy but in here smells absolutely great.

You are wild basil smells and we're getting that aroma.

So she's going to ring for me.

So that's a solid.

I usually put my chives in the salad, but yeah, parsley and and all of these are my, you know, flavor and seasonings and notes for the project.

We've been growing the green basil, but she happens to have an awful lot purple colored basil.

Have you found a difference in growing them with your phone.

That's fun.

Okay.

Yeah.

And by the way, I compost everything that I compost everything.

It goes back.

This didn't have any problem with a spot.

I don't know the name of it.

It was a it's an opal type basil because there are several varieties of them that are now coming on the market.

The regular Basil was getting this that last Yeah.

Okay.

And the overall basil does not have that didn't get out.

Okay so in that case you can smell it as a cinnamon.

Yeah.

Yeah that's, that's real.

I like that.

But I always put it in my cooking so.

And tomato sauce is great.

I mean, I had a bumper crop of tomatoes.

The ones on the vine right now are not ripe, but basil and tomatoes is just.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Yeah, that's one of my favorite dishes.

Actually.

It is.

When we have eggplant, it's a slice.

Eggplant, slice, tomato for little cheese, little parsley and basil and put it in the broiler.

Yeah, I've had that.

That's very, very good isn't that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So basically I use everything.

There are different times of the year when I have different vegetables, obviously.

Well, I think this is wonderful because I think too many people go to the store, I need to shop and yeah, and like you like it.

You know, we sometimes talk about waxy vegetables.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's not really good for us.

And all the it are all the pesticides and things that they know that.

Yeah.

That's than everything that I grow.

Yeah.

Is fresh.

Yeah.

And you're not having to worry about the pesticides and that's wax or whatever coloring or whatever they're doing.

But not if you have an overabundance.

What do you do?

Oh, I see.

Okay, good.

What I do with all my parents, if they have too many and they usually do come right on a particular plant, I just slice them up and put them in baggies in the freezer.

Good.

Could In fact, in my freezer, I probably have.

I have a lot of thick bananas and I do the same.

Yeah, I never get.

So while blueberries is continuing to prepare this dish, we're going to go to Saint John now at the home of Athena ZWERDLING, who's one of our home grown participants.

And look at what she did with some beets that she harvested.

Hello, Carlos.

Welcome to my kitchen.

And I'm so excited to be harvesting our beets from our garden and some spring onions to make a refreshing, nutritious is delicious beet slaw.

What I did was I prepared, um, this cabbage.

You take a half a head of cabbage and you grate it.

If you grate it, you salt it with, um, sea salt and let it sit for about a half hour to bring the moisture out of the cabbage.

Then you take one garlic clove and you mix it up very finely added to the cabbage.

You take five, six red beets and you also great the red beets.

You take the red beets now and you mix them in with the cabbage light, refreshing and oh so healthy for you right out of the garden.

So then you mix up the cabbage in the red beets.

Now you're going to make the delicious dressing.

You take a blender or a small food processor, and you add a small orange cut up, or preferably a mandarin orange.

But it was difficult to find that this time of year.

So a quarter of a cup of olive oil and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar.

That's right.

Probably a little food processor would be better than a big brant blender because this.

Mm.

Does that smell delicious?

Pour it over your salad.

You don't need to put sold in it because you've already added some sea salt when you then you stir it.

Well and you have a marvelous refreshing salad that will last for all week.

That's sure look good.

I can't wait to taste that parsley I think.

Well it look really good.

So now we're going to proceed as we now on this meal.

Are you getting ready to prepare the salad?

Yeah, we're going to start.

I'm just going to to the one thing about this meal is very quick.

It really only takes 5 minutes, which is why it's after a hard day of work.

It's a nice easy meal to make and it's all fresh.

So that's and you can add in whatever you have around.

So if you have a little lobster, a fish, you can put it in or a meat or if you want to vegetarian, it doesn't matter, you can add nuts.

And we haven't spoken about fiber, but eating all the raw vegetables or even if there's stir fry, there's a lot of fiber.

And we need the fiber to help prevent heart disease, but also help prevent cancer, too.

So the fiber is extremely important that we should each of us could be getting at least 23 grams of fiber a day.

Of course, we have to add other things to our diet, but even the fresh fruits and vegetables, and that's part of why we were encouraging with this home grown project and for those of you that are watching, this is part of an extension of us helping people to grow their own food and by extension, how to improve the quality and quality of life by eating fresh, eating healthy, and not just a craft that you will see at the during the whole growing process with the cucumbers and lettuce, etc..

But all the other things, as you pointed out here today, she grows all of these things that you see here.

And these things can be grown at your own place, in your own small, even in small and small, whatever you have, and you can grow your own and again, adding to the quality of your life.

And that's part of the goal of what we're doing is one more project as well.

So in my salad dressing, basically just use olive oil, squeeze lime, put a little bit of pepper and you just put them in vinegar sometimes and you know, it's in a little water, but it's very natural.

Also, no salt again.

And I put I put my ribs in and I put my oregano and Pressley and Basil in it to see.

So it's all been sitting in here for her.

And I said, what's there?

There's hot pepper sauce to spice up your meal.

So it's just a little bit about that.

Basically, it's a lot of garlic and very spicy peppers.

Oh, open your own risk and I don't want to get my hands on it.

I might try that one, but it's supposedly wrap.

Well, yeah.

Oh, okay.

So basically you can preserve what you can handle.

So.

No, I freeze.

As I said, I freeze what I usually give it away or she memories.

Yeah.

Consume at your own risk and make sure you have plenty of water right.

And some of the stuff you actually grow here except for like the garlic.

Right.

The garlic I remember.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Consume at your own risk.

Look at this.

Oh, this smells like.

Oh, Carlson, the smell.

Yes.

Now, this really does smell wonderful.

Well, that's why I don't mean salt.

No.

Yeah, because.

Yeah, no, no.

A lot of people I work with have issues with salt.

I mean, that's something I discuss all the time.

Yeah, right.

And I.

Well, it's a problem, you know, that the general population sometimes has a because of high blood pressure.

And so we've got an obesity problem on the islands.

And do you like some families.

Oh, that so good.

Yes.

I'm guessing it's.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Wow.

Fresh, right?

Just picked it in the garden.

That's something you can do with it.

The sun and that's all you really need to stir it.

I don't like it.

I know.

My mother says, Look, I know you taste good.

Yeah, It's best not to overcook it.

That do you like some piece of life?

And that's.

Sure.

I like to get a taste.

I'm the official, okay?

And I guarantee.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

I like salt and it doesn't have soap, and it's good.

Mm.

We're going to go to win out and take a look at someone else in the homegrown project, Alex Randolph, and see what he's doing with his fresh herbs and vegetables that he'd been growing in his garden.

Hey, Carlos, welcome to my kitchen.

It's such a pleasure.

We've grown so many tomatoes.

We've grown so much parsley.

I just had to make one of my very favorite things to eat based upon my fresh garden vegetables.

Now we've grown tomatoes, we've grown cilantro, we've grown parsley, we've grown onions, we've grown all kinds of things.

And I've brought some of them here together to make something I call pico de gallo ice cream.

Now, pico de gallo is a mexican dish.

It's a sort of a side sauce that goes along with other it's a condiment, if you will, and it's composed of tomatoes, onions, cilantro and parsley.

Just because I happen to like parsley so much, a little bit of oil, a little bit of balsamic vinegar, and it's done.

But why do I call it pico de gallo ice cream?

Because there's no cream here and there's no ice cream maker.

Well, it's an old family secret here that we know that when you want to have a bowl of vanilla, you eat this stuff instead, you'll live a lot longer.

So let me show you how I go about making pico de gallo ice cream.

First thing you need is tomatoes.

Lots of tomatoes.

And I'm going to take the ends.

Both ends off by just cutting off the the you know, the part that's got the little thing on it that you don't want that and the end where it was on the vine.

But I save this because I want to be able to cut off all the good meat that's available on that tomato, even though you don't want the dirty place where it was on the vine.

But we'll save those pieces and put them in the bowl.

And then I take my tomatoes and cut them into thin slices about, oh, maybe somewhere between a quarter and a half an inch thick.

And I'll take any tomato and turn it into five or six slices and then stand it up in a big pile, line it up and go through that tomato in the other direction straight through, and then turn the whole thing around and go through the whole pile one more time.

In the end, you've got a tomato that's got lots and lots of little pieces.

Each one's about a half an inch on a side, little cubes of tomato plus all the juice, pick the whole thing up, throw it in the bowl, lock, stock and barrel and all the juice, all the seeds, everything.

The only thing we didn't put in the bowl was the place where the stem connected to the tomato.

Now, my beautiful young assistants here are going to help me by turning these two tomatoes into pieces.

And I'm going to take these to this ones right off the vine.

Still has the vine attached.

Is that a gorgeous tomato or what?

It's just spectacular.

This is what you get from Carlos's special lessons and how to grow vegetables when you see what a fresh tomato looks like and how it tastes, there is nothing that is as delicious as something that came out of your own garden.

Same deal.

Take the tomato, cut it up into little pieces, Rotate, cut again.

It isn't about having perfect cut pieces.

That's not what the job is about.

It's really just about getting the tomatoes into pieces.

Anything that's big should get cut up into the bowl.

It goes one more tomato.

We'll save that for the lovely assistant.

I'm going to take an onion and do essentially the same thing.

This is an onion I was already working with, so it's a half an onion.

I do this recipe about five tomatoes to a half an onion.

I used to do it more onions until my wife told me it was too much onion.

And that's when I said, okay, we'll put in less onion.

So about five tomatoes and a half an onion.

Taking the onion, same kind of cuts.

Just rotate and cut.

We're not trying to make anything fancy.

We're not trying to make the pieces look a certain way, although I'm sure some of you will want to have all of this look better than mine does.

I just want to eat the stuff.

I don't care what it looks like.

And after I've got my onion cut up, I did that quickly so I wasn't going to cry over the onion.

There's no point crying over spilled onion, picked the whole thing up into the bowl with it.

Oh, end of the bowl.

Everything goes except the little pieces left.

Now, the thing that really makes this pickled onions.

Tomatoes.

Yeah.

There you go.

That's a good start.

But the thing that really does it is cilantro and parsley.

So I'm going to take cilantro.

We were growing this.

Carlos didn't even know I was doing it.

We stuck this in the ground.

We gruesome cilantro as well.

I take a big batch of cilantro as much as I can stand and cut it up.

Essentially the same thing.

I'm not going for beauty.

The stems we send out to the bunnies, take the cilantro chop, chop, chop right down through the middle.

Just keep turning it.

Anything that looks like a large leaf gets cut.

Anything.

It looks big.

Pile it up to turn.

Just like working a compost pile.

I think you just keep turning it and chopping until the cilantro is all in tiny, tiny pieces.

You want them.

You don't want any leaf, you just want the flavor, but you want a lot of it.

And the more you put in, the better it is.

My opinion.

And Sandra, why don't you take some of the parsley and do just exactly the same with that, and we take the cilantro and throw it in lock stock and barrel.

Everybody goes in and I'll take some parsley.

Now, this is one you adjust to taste.

I happen to like the parsley.

I know it's loaded with great, great vitamins and nutrients.

Parsley is one of the best foods in the world.

They always put it on meals and restaurants as though it's just a little thing on the side.

And I can remember when I was a child going to a restaurant to be a little sprig of parsley there, and people would take it off and put it on the side, like it's just there for green pretty well.

I found myself eating that parsley and going, This stuff's really tasty.

It's got a wonderful flavor, and if it's fresh, it's even better.

And I now know that the parsley contains just an infinite number of wonderful nutrients.

This is one of the most vitamin rich things there is.

So Parsley is really good for you.

Grab a whole lot of it, throw it in the bowl.

Nothing fancy, Nothing about pico de gallo.

Ice cream is done to make it pretty or handsome.

It's just about getting the goodies in.

All right, ladies, have we got everything in it?

Onions, tomatoes, parsley, cilantro.

I'm going to take a spoon and just stir it up.

Just up and down.

Start around.

And after it's stirred up, I'm going to add some olive oil.

Do you notice me measuring all this very carefully?

Do you notice that everything is done with precision?

No.

I am a man.

And the way I cook is to put a bunch in bunch.

It is one of my favorite words in food.

You put a bunch of cilantro in, and if I find myself later, I'm going to use that batch.

Said too much cilantro that had too much onion.

Change it the next time, but you don't change it this time.

And after you've got oil on everything, then this is the expensive part.

Balsamic vinegar, really good vinegar, but it's a vinegar that has a delicious, strong flavor and it gives the pico de gallo ice cream a particular zest that you just can't get out of a package anywhere.

And then again, I stir it up and after it's stirred up, looks like that onions, tomatoes, cilantro, parsley, oil, vinegar.

That's the whole deal.

Now, how do you serve it?

This is kind of funny because if I eat this stuff by itself, I just put this in a package and take it to work and open it up after I do the news and eat the stuff and everybody thinks I'm kind of crazy to do it that way.

Then I discovered if you take tortilla chips and break those up and throw it on top, that adds a kind of a crunchy zest to it.

Then I discovered that this with a bag of Doritos.

Now we're talking perfect.

So watch this.

This is my favorite lunch.

Small bowl peek of the guy.

Ice cream.

I've got a bag of mushroom up.

I don't want big chips.

I'm not looking for that.

I'm looking for little tiny stuff.

More stuff with the bag still closed.

Open the bag for Doritos on top.

Call it man food, if you will.

It's the easiest food in the world to make.

Took me a few minutes, young lady, pick of the guy ice cream.

And there you go, Carlos.

We started with seeds.

We put them in the ground, we drip, irrigated them.

We took care of them, We pulled the weeds.

We let the sunshine do its work.

At the end of the season, we're eating food.

That's the freshest, the tastiest and the most delicious.

There is.

And it's fresh right here in the United States.

Virgin Islands.

That looks as good at what we're eating here.

But, Luis, let me ask you this.

What has I mean, you've had this gardening experience.

What would you recommend to other people who maybe look at this for the first time and say, can I garden?

Oh, anyone can garden.

I mean, I've been in apartments and I just had a little little trees or a little plant pots, and I grew my herbs at one tomato plant in a five gallon bucket.

So you can you can grow something pretty much anywhere as long as you have sunlight, you have to have light, and as long as you have a source of water and you have some soil and a container.

So, I mean, I'm lucky to have a space where I can spread out my garden and have different boxes.

I can grow different things, but you can grow something in any in any condition, really.

I mean, your your area here has had its challenges because you're on the north side, right?

We got to shade in the winter.

Right?

In the winter, Yeah.

So what do you do?

You accompany you.

I do.

I have different garden beds and one is in the shade and I grow cool crops up there usually.

So I tend to grow things that like different types of greens that don't like to be in the hot sun as much.

Okay.

And I alternate.

When the sun comes around, it gets very, very hot down in the lower part of my garden.

So that's why I plant a hot type of crops like peppers can be baking in the sun and they don't care.

And so I put peppers and eggplants and tomatoes like a hot hatch so they can go down.

So I have a little bit decided what to put where, depending like the lettuce tends to go up in the shady areas where it doesn't bolster stuff like that.

I have herbs in containers because we do get a lot of rain here as we've had in the last week.

So sometimes it's good to have some plants elevated and if that's an issue, at least I always have something that's made it through point.

That's a good point because again, if you're in an area that rains heavily and with the clay stores that we have here in the Virgin Islands elevating the soil level, in fact, if you have to do a raised bed, yeah, that helps for the water to drain off.

And at least you seem to have got some herbs in particular time.

Yeah, there's not I don't have time for sitting water.

All of mine has been is running.

Okay.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Just because so those are some things and what I'm, I'm hearing from you is that over the time that you have been doing your gardening you have learned what your situation has been like.

Look at your environment, look at what goes on at different times a year.

And you have adapted your growing to those conditions and also try to rotate crops.

So that last year I had the cabbages and you know, another crop should follow it and beans might precede another crop.

So I'm trying to rotate my garden beds and I do mulch them and use all my compost so that each season I hope to have refreshed soil too.

So I do put them to bed.

The peppers keep growing.

I mean, I have five year old pepper plants, but other than that, other plants, you know, I let them die down and I really mulch over the garden and cover it for a few months and start again.

So that's good.

That's good.

So you can see you need to start somewhere.

I mean, you started somewhere.

Yeah, I did.

I knew right.

The place to day where we're eating from your garden, right?

Every day.

Every day.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

We're eating from her garden every day.

She started somewhere.

But not only that, she's been doing it long enough.

No way she's been able to adapt her garden practices to the conditions where she lives at certain times of year.

Right.

So pretty much she's doing something all year round and feeding all year round.

And that's I that should be encouragement to you that you can do it with a little bit of information, a little bit of help.

You can do your own garden and have a feast like we are happy to do.

We thank you for being on the program.

Oh, it's a pleasure.

It has been a real treat to wrap up, at least from your end, the homegrown project with eating something from your garden.

And Carol, thanks for the information that you know.

I learned, I've learned and it's been a real treat.

And for those of you at home, we want to encourage you to eat healthy.

And it starts with growing your own garden again.

I'm Carlos Robinson, a home grown project.

And we'll see you next then come back.

We planted planted plant and I said or grown or grown.

We planted planted plant and I said a way forward.

We born we planted planted today from the back to the dirt come back with killer beside and below designed from.