John from http://www.growingyourgreens.com visits MIGardener in Michigan, one of the fastest-growing heirloom seed companies inspiring a new generation to grow their own food.
In this episode, you’ll tour the MIGardener store, seed warehouse, and gardens with founder Luke Marion. John reveals how MIGardener provides affordable $1 heirloom seeds, shares insider tips on how seeds are saved, packed, and shipped, and explores Luke’s passion for helping people grow bigger gardens without breaking the bank. You’ll also learn how Luke turned his own health scare into a mission to teach others how to eat directly from their gardens, cut grocery bills, and even slow the aging process with nutrient-rich foods.
The episode dives deep into Luke’s philosophy of putting people over profit, donating fresh produce to local soup kitchens, and inspiring gardeners to transform their harvests into full meals instead of side dishes. From practical hacks like making soup bases from zucchini and peppers, to rare seed varieties you won’t find in big-box stores, this tour shows how MIGardener is more than a seed company — it’s a community movement dedicated to empowering everyday people to grow healthier, tastier, and more affordable food.
Jump to the Following Parts of this Episode
00:00 Episode Starts
00:41 Inside the MIGardener Store
01:39 $1 Heirloom & Non-GMO Seeds – Free Shipping $20+
02:49 Greenstalk Vertical Garden on a Patio
04:54 Tour of MiGARDENER VEGO Raised Beds
07:44 Why You Don’t Need to Worry About Brussels Sprouts
09:50 Taste Test – Eating Straight from the Garden
14:40 Greenhouse Tour – Trialing New Crops
16:05 Custom Fabric Pots by MIGardener
18:00 Cucamelons – What Do They Taste Like?
19:30 Why Supporting Small Seed Companies Matters
21:00 Best Thornless Blackberry to Grow
23:45 Blueberries – Are They Worth the Effort?
25:24 Grapes in Michigan – Pest Resistance
27:15 Wild Lambsquarters – Summer Spinach
28:18 Orange Heirloom Eggplants
30:00 Trifecta+ Organic Fertilizer Review
31:50 The Best Soil Blocker Ever Made
33:00 MIGardener’s Hands-Off Gardening Book
34:15 Disposable vs Reusable Seed Trays
36:15 Seeds $2.00… Right Now Only $1.00 Each
37:15 Why I’m Collecting Purple Tomato Seeds
38:30 Cooked Tomatoes vs Raw – Lycopene Explained
39:30 Why Orange & Yellow Tomato Seeds Matter
42:40 15 Types of Basil – My Favorites
44:45 Rare Herbs & Leafy Greens
46:50 Dragon Fruit Seeds – Best Variety
48:20 Perennial Vegetables Worth Growing
48:55 My Favorite Bean Seeds
51:20 Best Corn Varieties You Must Try
52:08 My Go-To Cucumbers
54:14 Heat-Loving Okra Pick
54:34 Eggplants That Always Produce
56:10 Sweet & Buttery Squashes
57:20 Winter Squash That Stores for Months
59:08 My Favorite Watermelon Seeds
59:55 Kale Seeds I Rely On
1:01:30 1000 Seeds for $1 – No Better Deal
1:02:00 Lettuce Varieties I Keep Growing
1:03:55 Best Leafy Greens
1:06:25 Best Pepper Varieties
1:10:20 Grow this Radish
1:14:27 Saving Tomato Seeds – Fermentation Method
1:16:15 Walking the Seed Warehouse
1:21:55 Interview with Luke Marion Starts
1:22:30 Why Luke Started a YouTube Channel
1:27:40 The Health Scares That Changed Everything
1:29:30 Can Food Really Slow the Aging Process?
1:30:40 Turning Garden Harvest Into Full Meals
1:32:10 Pepper Soup Hack – Make Any Veg a Meal Base
1:38:00 Grocery Store as Ingredient, Garden as Meal
1:39:17 How to Cut Your Grocery Bill with a Garden
1:45:30 How Energy & Passion Inspire Gardening
1:50:00 Why Luke Started the MIGardener Store
1:52:15 Stop Powdery Mildew with Baking Soda
1:53:00 Stop Aphids with Simple Bar Soap
1:55:16 Why Profit Comes Second to Helping People
1:57:42 The Real Story Behind “Grow Big or Go Home”
2:10:50 Final Words of Wisdom
2:14:12 $1 Seed Packs – https://www.migardener.com/
Referenced Episodes
String Trellis Growing Cucumbers
Kakai Pumpkins
Armenian Cucumbers – How to Eat
Harvesting Lemon Cucumbers
Raw Pepper Soup
https://youtu.be/VcSH3daP6SA&t=1s
Zuchinni Noodles
https://youtu.be/8t5E46rS-Mo&t=2s
Tribest Backspin – Make 100% frozen fruit sorbet
Bolting Lettuce Salad – Freeze Dried
How to Live Healthy with your Garden Dr. Jeff Pierce
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https://www.youtube.com/user/growingyourgreens/videos
Connect with MIGARDENER
Buy $1 Seeds at https://www.migardener.com
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@MIgardener
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MIgardener/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/migardener
[Music] All right, this is JohnCola with growingyour
greens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for you guys and I’m so excited about this one
cuz this is somebody I’ve been wanting to visit forever since I heard that he opened his own
store. Anyways, where I’m in the world is right across the little river there. This is the St.
Clair River. I think on the other side is Canada. Are they our friends or our enemies? Well, it
depends who you ask in the United States. To me, I love Canadians. They’re my friends. The reason why
I’m here today in the United States, just across the river from Canada, is because I’m at the MIG
Gardener Seed and Supply Store here. The address is 1426 Oakland Street. You guys don’t understand.
Like, I’ve known Luke since he was like a little pup. Like, seriously, a little pup. Like, he used
to work for some uh, you know, orchid company place in a greenhouse and make videos for them.
And then he’d like watch my videos way back in the day when I started my channel 16 years ago. And
to like literally see how he has grown over the years, not just in height and stature, but also
his family and more importantly a family business here in Michigan. You know, I rarely get out to
this side of the country. So, I’m so excited to be here today to show you guys what he’s growing here
at his little store. and then I’ll have a separate e episode at his newly purchased farm. But
anyways, I want to share with you guys and bring this out to you guys first that at MI Gardener,
they have the lowest price on seeds. And because you guys are watching this now when this video is
airing in September, his seeds are now 50% off. So that makes them $1 per se packet. Guys, this
is the best deal on seed packets for heirloom and non GMO seeds you’re going to find anywhere. So,
if you guys want to stock up now, buy the seeds that I’ll show you guys inside. And if you guys
order 20 packets right now at a dollar each, $20 or more, it’s free shipping on the seeds, guys.
So, I want you guys to buy your seeds for next year. Now, be forewarned. The reason why they are
on sale right now is because all the seeds he’s selling now are packed for 2025. But, let’s face
it, guys, these seeds are still going to be good in just a few months for your 2026 season. And
so in this episode, we’re going to show you guys what he’s growing outside his greenhouse setup.
And then we’re going to head inside the store and show you guys the seeds. And then I’ll even give
you guys some behind the scenes shots you guys won’t see anywhere else how he literally packs the
seeds uh with some heirloom machinery as well as picks them and then ships them out to you guys.
All right. So when you get here to MI Gardener, you could come in the main entrance here. They
are open Monday through Friday 9 to 5:00 and on Saturdays 10:00 to 2. And we’re not actually
going to head in yet. We’re going to show you guys around. So, actually, right on the patio, they
have a nice place to hang out. On the patio here, they’re growing in these green stock gardens.
This one just has the flowers, but you know, uh I have a green stock. Actually, I haven’t
set it up yet, but you can see in a green stock, you know, it has basically makes vertical garden
easy. So, even if you don’t have like a large space or if you just have like an apartment, you
could grow in a green stock. you know, they’re on wheels, so you could turn it so they get different
areas of sun. This is planted out really nice. It has herbs on the top, including different basil,
sage, has some cabbage that, you know, once again, this is being grown for show. Um, but all these
leaves are completely edible. And you can see here, leak rose it all organically cuz we got some
bug holes, a chard, some lettuce down there that’s bolting as well, you know, and then uh, you know,
so I would prefer if you guys got one of these green stocks to grow things like the herbs and
leafy greens. To me, they’re a lot more valuable, but I know some of you guys don’t eat your greens,
but you should. So, let’s show you guys how Luke is actually growing fruing crops in a green stock.
So, you guys can see in this green stock, he’s got some maragolds that may help with bugs, but he’s
got lots of peppers growing, which is really nice. And then, if we go close to the bottom, he’s got
some eggplants, which are doing good. And then, look at these zucchinis, guys. These zucchinis
are like growing out and hanging over. Look at that. He’s growing the zucchinis in the green
stock there. Crazy. and I think he even had some tomatoes on the other side. But yeah, the
green stocks, you know, they are an amazing tool you can use to grow vertically. That being said,
if you guys have like acreage, like personally, I would say don’t waste your money on a green
stock. Um, you know, uh, cuz if you have space, I would always build a raised bed first before I
bought one of these. But, you know, these are kind of nice. You could actually roll it in in the
winter time and kind of try to keep your plants alive using indoor lighting and whatnot. So, I
just wanted to show you guys this cuz he does have this as a gardening example, but I really want to
show you guys some other ways he’s growing here, including in containers as well as in some raised
beds. All right, so you guys see behind me one of the first ways Luke is growing and started growing
literally in raised beds. So, he has his own VGO Mi Garner raised beds that come in specific sizes
that he loves to grow in. And I would concur, one of the sizes is like a 4×4, which is like
the perfect size for raised bed gardening. That’s actually the size that I started out with
myself and would encourage you guys as first-time gardeners to start out as well. It’s enough
space to give you guys a lot of area to plant, but it’s not too overwhelming. Slowly but surely,
keep adding on more raised beds over time. Or if you’re like me, you could just convert your whole
front yard and build all raised all raised beds and grow just grow big or grow home. Actually,
we just want to grow bigger these days. So, uh, nonetheless, let’s share with you guys some of the
things that are growing here in Michigan. um right now. All right. So, first up, I mean, probably
one of my favorite plants to grow that I love even more than tomatoes, cuz I know a lot of you guys
love your tomatoes, but I really love my peppers. And it looks like Luke does, too. It looks like
he likes these little pimento peppers. As you guys can see, this is like decorative to me. To me,
this looks like a Christmas tree with all these little ornaments on here. And uh you know, I would
encourage you guys like peppers generally sell for more money in the store than tomatoes. You ever
shop for like peppers, like hot house peppers? They’re really expensive, so I encourage you
guys to grow a lot of peppers. We’re going to go ahead and try this one. Wow, [Music] that’s
good. That’s a really thick wall. Lots of seeds in there you could save. Definitely good. Love
my peppers. Now, besides the peppers, you also got things like the cabbage growing. Of course,
I always encourage you guys to grow when you’re growing cabbage or picking seeds, I want you guys
to choose the deeper, richer, darker colors. So, instead of buying green cabbage seeds, I want you
guys to grow the purple or the red cabbage seeds out. The seed packets are the same price, but
you’re going to get significantly more nutrition when you grow the purple. Plus, also, many people
don’t know this because the plant is purple. Think of it like the a light-skinned person versus a
dark-kinned person. Darkkinned people are much much less likely to burn in the sun. That’s
why the plant creates the anthocyin pigments so it could have protection from the sun as well
as protection from other environmental factors including pests. Of course, also he’s growing the
dinosaur kale. One of my favorite kales. This is probably the best kale to grow as the weather gets
warmer. Uh you know, this is like originally from the Mediterranean. Super rich in nutrition.
It has the isothiocyinates which are good for um cancer protection as well as helps with liver
detoxification. Then over here he’s got some cats Brussels sprouts. You can see you can see them
starting to sprout up right here, but they’re kind of like opening. So, you know, like here’s the
thing, guys. Like I tried to grow Brussels sprouts so many times I never get those Brussels sprouts
like in the store. But am I mad or I’m upset? Absolutely not. Because I don’t really care about
the stupid sprouts. I just want to eat the leaves, right? So, I encourage you guys, even if your
Brussels sprouts don’t make the sprouts that you want, all these leaves are super delicious.
They’re equivalent to like kale or collard greens in nutrition. And you know, sometimes plants don’t
do what you want them to do. They do what they want to do, especially if you don’t plant them
at the right time or you have an abnormally hot summer or whatever. So, I want you guys always
to roll with the punches no matter what happens when you are gardening. But remember, when you’re
growing leafy greens, right, unlike some fruing crops, once a plant grows the leaves, you can pick
and harvest the leaves. You don’t have to wait for this to like make a flower and then get the
flower pollinated, then make then make a fruit, right? So, that’s why I’ve always shared with you
guys on my channel to grow your greens. They’re so important for our health. They’re very rich in
protein. And a matter of fact, if you think about it, where do most animals get their protein from?
Well, they should be getting it from grass and other plant foods like the leaves. And that’s
why it’s so important for us to eat plenty of leaves in our diet as well. All right, guys. So,
I’m getting to show you guys Luke’s potato plants when they’re not looking 100% perfect cuz I tell
it like it is. But nonetheless, he’s about ready to harvest these guys. You guys can see they’re
dumping over. They’re getting big. And the cool thing about Luke and Mi Gardener that, you know,
he’ll sell you small little seed packets, but he’ll also sell you seed for things like potatoes
and things like garlic actually what are probably on sale right now. And so here he just planted
potatoes and potatoes are a new crop for me cuz I never used to grow potatoes but I started growing
them. My favorite ones to grow are like the purple ones that are like deep rich purple color cuz
once again they’re purple and they’re more rich in anthocyanids. They’ve been shown in studies to
be healthpromoting. But let’s see if we could like dig some of this up here. Oh, look at this. We’re
unearthing one of Luke’s potatoes right here. Oh, look at that. Look at that nice potato he grew.
I’m going to take it home with me. All right, guys. So, I’m going to tell you guys this.
Maybe he doesn’t want me to tell you guys this, but if you come to his garden, like, you know,
he grows this for you guys. It tastes out like, and if you want to know the variety, like, “Hey,
man. I came out to your garden before you opened and I tasted some of your tomatoes.” Wow. Wow.
And they really tasted good. And if you ask one of his staff like, “What’s that tomato you grow
out there?” Cuz I want to buy the seeds and they have them inside the store. They’ll help you out
with that. As you guys can see, these tomatoes, all he grows literally, so how he grows these
tomatoes in all these raised beds, he uses compost, perlite, his trifecta fertilizer that
I’ll show you guys in a minute inside. But also, he adds azimite and worm castings to the things
that I’ve been recommending since I started my gardening channel. Maybe even he even learned it
from me. So, I want you guys to, you know, make sure you guys are using things like worm castings
and the azamite or the rock dust that’ll increase your soil fertility and then you could have
bountiful harvests of tomatoes like this. I mean, these I mean, they’ve been picking these like
every day probably for the last month here. So, it’s it’s slim pickings, but I could find a bunch
of like little cherries. And to me personally, I like to grow cherry tomatoes more than the
larger tomatoes cuz you always seem to have some ripe small cherries. Whereas, if you grow
the large ones, maybe a bug eats one of your large tomatoes and then you have like only a
few of them on your plant. Whereas cherries, the bugs can’t get them all. They’re guaranteed
good eating from your garden. All right, so Luke was like, “John, you should have been here like
a month ago because we had tons of strawberries for you to eat.” And I’m like, “All right,
well, I missed it.” And I’m like, “Well, Luke, how many pounds of strawberries did you get off
this bed, which is 4T by 4T, right?” He’s like, “John, we got about 10 lbs of strawberries.” Like,
“That’s like a lot of strawberries.” I’m like, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a lot of strawberries
and that would have costed a lot of money in the store and you, you know, saved a lot of money. But
even better than the money you’re saving from the store is that the quality from the strawberries
in the store are garbage.” Like, they’re picked, they’re shipped probably from California, maybe
even Mexico, depending on what time of year you’re buying them. And they’re just picked too
early. They don’t really taste like anything. I’ve gotten strawberries from the store, taste like
nothing. I’m sure these tasted really great. But another another part of me said, well, hey, wait
a minute. I invested 4 feet by 4 feet in a raised bed. The strawberries are perennial plants. They
have to grow year round. And now for dedicating this much space. I have 10 lbs of strawberries
for the entire year to show. And okay, maybe you could eat some of the baby strawberry leaves in
like a salad. I mean, technically they’re edible, but you probably wouldn’t want to eat them.
So now you’re wasting that much space to grow strawberries. Then if we look to this bed,
which is a little bit larger, it’s a 5 ft x 6 ft, but you could have planted this many tomatoes
in a 4t x 4t if you want to overcrowd them like I would do anyways. And then this bed for part of
a season because once again, the tomatoes grow in the summertime. So they they’re they would only
grow for like half the year, for example. You could get 60 lbs of tomatoes from a similar amount
of space. And then you could even grow this well, I could grow this off season in the winter time.
You probably couldn’t do that here when there’s snow. So to me, you know, growing something
like tomatoes, which yield a lot more fruit uh than strawberries if you have limited space.
So I always want to encourage you guys to, you know, grow what you like the most. If you love
strawberries and you love the flavor and the and the strawberries you had as a kid and you hate how
you go to the store and they taste like garbage, then grow strawberries and you’re good with
investing the space. But if you’re like doing it to maximize your nutrition or grow more out
of your garden, then hey, you may want to think about growing something else like tomatoes or
other crops that are going to be more productive than simply the strawberries. All right, this
last raised bed I want to share with you guys real quick are the green beans. And you know,
I think it’s really sad if you go to the store and you buy green beans. Like most often I’ve seen
them imported from like Mexico and they’re picked when they’re like old and like really mature. like
these big tall beans that you basically got to cut off the ends and you got to cook them to eat them.
Otherwise, they don’t taste so good. One of the joys of the green beans to me is when you get them
and they’re like just emerging out of the plant, you know? So, they’re like little little small
babies like this compared to like the larger green beans like this, right? I love to just snack on
these little baby green beans right off the plant. I mean, this is one of the reasons why you guys
should grow your own food is because when you grow your own food, nobody dictates to you when you’re
going to eat the food. If you go to the store to buy green beans, they’re dictating to you.
You’re buying them like this and you’re buying them probably weeks old cuz they probably picked
them, shipped them. They’re probably looking all messed up cuz they got cold damage. But when you
grow them yourself, you could pick them, hey, I want to use them when they’re more mature to can
them or whatever. Or I could just pick them young, tender, eat them in salads, or eat them fresh
right off the plant. Nothing better than that. All right, guys. So, next up, we’re going to go in
the greenhouse. Right now, the greenhouse is kind of closed up for the season because it is normally
open from April to June, and that’s when they sell the transplants. So, you know, I know a lot of
you guys like the seeds, and the seeds honestly are the best way to grow plants. If you’re good at
germinating seeds, me on the other hand, I’m like iffy at germinating seeds. I’d rather just throw
the seeds out in my garden, see what happens. But that’s why I b I personally buy a lot of my
transplants. So if you guys want Luke to start your seeds for you and buy healthy plants because
that’s always an easier way to start gardening than growing things from seeds cuz if your seeds
could get too leggy, they may not make it if you overwater, underwater, don’t use the right seed
starting mix. Um so anyways, he’s selling the plants here uh from April to June. But now I want
to go in after the fact to see what he is growing in the greenhouse. Basically, what you’re going to
see inside is that he has some plants that didn’t sell for the season. And then also, he’s doing a
lot of experiments. He’s also growing out plants. Also, this is kind of like a fun area for some of
his employees to grow some food. So, inside here, basically, you can see we have some of his plants
that actually didn’t sell that if you were here at this time. Um, they have nicer plants than these,
but he’s selling them for literally 75% off. That being said, when you come, they’re probably not be
75% off. they’ll be at full price cuz this is like way after the season when normal people would
not probably buy these at all. But he’s doing some different trials, you know, with different
squashes, um, you know, in some of his fabric pots. And so that’s cool. The cool thing about
Luke is that, you know, like he’s been gardening so long, he’s tried so many things and he’s tried
other fabric pots and like all the fabric pots he found out, they dried out so quickly. So he’s
like, “Well, hey, I don’t like how that fabric pot dries out so quickly. I’m going to go and go out
and find a supplier that could make me a fabric pot to my specific specifications with the right
weave, the right thickness of the weave. Also, of course, with nice handles. I hate the fabric
pots. They don’t have handles. The handles make it so easy to carry. I love the fabric pots
more than the standard plastic hard pots, uh, depending on your climate zone. So, these ones
are more thick. They don’t drown as quickly. Also got the nice handles. And so yeah, so we have
these custom made for him. And while he does use them here to grow, you guys could also buy them
on his website, migguarder.com. All right. So you guys can see here he’s doing a trial with 10,000y
old cave bean. That’s just like the name of it. I don’t know if they’re really 10,000 years old,
but he just put up this uh you know nylon trellis. And you know guys, like this nylon trellis, do
not underestimate it. I have videos like links down below. Like 15 years ago, I was using this to
grow like melons. I grew melons up this and this supported the weight of the melon when it was on
like I made it on a PVC like kind of arch thing. These days I use this uh nylon string trellis to
grow the sweet potatoes up my wall of my house in Las Vegas. So it like covers my whole wall.
So now the sun doesn’t hit my wall of my house and heat up my house. So now my cooling, you know,
costs are lower. And also I have lots of basically sweet potato greens to eat. So, yeah, he’s growing
a lot of uh string beans. Oh, and he’s got these guys. If you’ve never grown these before, you guys
have to grow these. He sell this. He sells the seeds for sure. And right now, they’re probably a
dollar a pack. These are a little bit undermature, but we’ll harvest one anyways. These are called
little cuc melons, and they look like little baby watermelons, but really they’re more like a
cucumber. They crunch. They have little seeds and if they’re fully ripe, they kind of have like
a little They kind of taste like a little bit of pick. Like they’re pickled, but they’re not
pickled. They’re fresh. They’re super abundant. You can see here this plant is not super old or
anything. And there’s already like tons of little cuc melons on here. These are one of the funny
funniest uh you know cucumbers to grow. You don’t even need to cut them up for a salad. Just like
throw them in hole. They taste amazing. They’re so productive. And also, they’re a little bit
more disease resistant, I found, than standard cucumbers. All right, over on this side, they’re
also doing just standard cucumbers. And they have all different kinds of varieties. Um, market, I
hate that one. Wisconsin, I think I saw a lemon, that’s one of my favorites. Uh, Sumpter Cuke.
Anyways, you know, he trials all these varieties and actually all the seeds that he sells, he grows
them out to see how they’re going to perform, what the fruit tastes like or what the plant, you
know, grows like so that he can help you choose the right plants for your specific situation.
You know, I really think that there’s been a big consolidation in seeds and that big seed large
industrial seed companies are basically narrowing our choices where I think our choices should be
greater and that you know every seed heirloom seed that is sold has a story and that it’s important
for us to embrace the seeds of yester year that were saved for some certain reason. And why did
people save this specific seed? because oh maybe this cucumber grew like a lemon and it kind of
tastes like a little acid when it you know grows big. I mean every different seed is different
and I mean the world is full of possibilities and there’s all different kinds of seeds and I
think it’s really sad that most Americans when they go to the grocery every week for shopping
they’ll get their standard Markmore cucumbers or they get their standard, you know, iceberg
lettuce when there’s so many different amazing types of lettuce. they’ll get their standard, you
know, slicing tomatoes that taste like nothing when there’s so many different colors and shapes
and sizes and tastes and experience of tomatoes, right? That’s where I really love seed companies
like Mi Gardener that provides you a whole wealth of different seed packets and especially when
they’re on sale this month for a dollar each, you know. So, I mean, he’s even still some
of his employees are still starting little tomatoes that they’re going to grow here in the
greenhouse, which is actually kind of hot. So, I got to get out of here. um up and then also too
they grow a lot of things for experiments like they got lemongrass growing here. They have all
these different you know um maybe they’re triing and sampling seeds to see the germination rate of
different kinds of basil which are my favorite of course I love the purple basil. This is called the
red rubin. Love that one a lot. But check it out guys. You see what’s behind there? He’s got some
berries. So let’s go raid Luke’s berry patch. So like we can’t really get through there. So, I’m
going to squeeze through his through his rack so I can steal his berries. All right, guys. So,
you guys can see in the back here, he’s got some uh blackberries that he planted. And I want
to bring this up for two reasons. Number one, um he planted the blackberries here. These
are all the thornless blackberries. This is the only kind of blackberry I would recommend you
guys plant. Don’t plant the ones with thorns. I have gotten stuck so many times with uh thorn
blackberries. So, these are all the thornless variety. He has four kinds here. We know the last
one is the Nachez. We got the Triple Crown and the Primark Freedom right here. All right. So, I
haven’t actually had breakfast yet. So, let’s go ahead and try some. Let’s see if we can get the
ripe ones here. H. How do you know a blackberry is ripe? Well, when you pull it, it should
separate pretty easily. This is pretty ripe. Got a thumbs up on that one. How about
this one? All right, the next one. [Music] I like that one better. I think this guy is truly the winner
for yield. Look at this, guys. I mean, these aren’t ripening yet, but
look how productive this plant is. I guess there’s a few ripe ones
underneath here. Triple crown. [Music] They’re good, too. You know what I would
say? I would say is buy one of each of the varieties like Luke planted here because then
you’ll know which one does best in your area, right? Because your area may be different than
this area. They all taste good. And also too, you’ll see that they fruit at different times.
Like this one to me appears to be more late because we have a lot of berries that are not yet
ripe. And that’s good because some of the other ones that are ripening now, you know, may not
have fruit later. And this one will. All right, guys. So, there’s only a few left in
the nachos. I think we got two left. Oh, this one’s half eaten already,
so I’ll eat the other half. So, these berries are bigger. I mean, I
don’t know if they’re any better. I mean, to me, any blackberries are good. And
I’ll ask you guys why. Cuz, you know, cuz they’re purple. You know, I love my purple
foods. So, I’m going to go raid more of these uh blackberries around the backside
cuz there’s a lot more ripe. All right, guys. So that’s almost a little carton
of blueberries that we picked from Luke’s all in that one cup. So guys, one of the things I like to do is I like
to learn from other gardeners besides me. Right. So when I visit like Luke today, he’s like, “John,
I planted these like blueberries, I don’t know, couple years ago and they’re really just not
growing that good.” Right. Right. Okay. Okay, so blueberries a bit more difficult to grow than
the blackberries you need an acid soil and all this kind of stuff. And if you just throw it in
the ground and expect it to grow huge. I mean, some of the plants looks like maybe they didn’t
do so good. Maybe they’re not even alive anymore, right? And I know some of you guys love your
blueberries. And hey, I respect that. I love blueberries, too. But to be honest with you guys,
blackberries are far more nutritious. They have a lot more anthocyanin content than the blueberries.
And the other thing I want you guys to notice, too, is this. If you have tons of space, yes,
experiment with some blueberries cuz you love them. But if you guys just want to grow some
food and eat from your property sooner rather than later, right, I will say you blackberries are
way easier to grow than the blueberries. Look at this. I mean, think about it. Blackberries grow
like wild. The thorn varieties, which you don’t want to grow, just like on the sides of rivers
and streams where I’m from. But you could see these guys just push out canes vigorous growth.
Also, of course, uh you could eat the the baby tender leaves of course are edible. You could also
make teas out of them. But you guys can see these plants are just loaded with berries, whereas
these blueberries are struggling. So, you know, for me personally, I always encourage you guys to
grow things that are easy, unless you really want to have your blueberries or maybe you live in a
place where the blueberries are going to really kick butt and the blackberries won’t do so well.
Um, if you know a place like that, let me know cuz usually the the blackberries are literally like
a weed that you want to get rid of. And that’s been my personal experience as well. All right.
So, being from California and my other property is in the wine country. So, I know my grapes and
I’m like, “Wow, I came here to visit Luke and to see all his grapes that he’s growing. He’s got two
different varieties. He’s got the uh himrod here, which actually kind of like a seated grape, and
then he’s got the St. Croy grape back there.” I was like, “Wow, he’s actually growing grapes.” So,
he chose these grapes. Like, I would choose grapes on the flavor and the sweetness. He grow he’s
growing these actually for their pest resistance and disease resistance because he visited a winery
locally that was growing these two varieties and they did well for them. So, you know, these are
ones that have been easy for him to grow. He’s got some grapes down here. You guys can see they’re
looking pretty good. Now, these are not table grapes, guys. These are like the table grapes to
me are like just I hate them. They have like zero flavor. They’re just these huge grapes you buy at
the grocery store that taste like nothing. Like I’m used to eating like wine grapes that actually
have a good flavor and actually a good sweetness because the wine grapes have to be sweet. Have to
have the good flavor because when they ferment it, the flavor is what remains and the sugar
is fermented into alcohol of course. But actually right now I think the St. Croy grapes are
just about ripening up if we look here closely. So we’re going to for the first time eat some
Michigan grown grapes, which is totally odd. You guys can see some of these are getting a little
bit of color. This is still green. This is getting whoa a little bit uh yellowish. And actually
when I picked it, it came off pretty easily. So we’re going to grab a couple of these grapes
here. And then try some Michigan grown grapes. They got a good flavor. They’re seedless. I prefer
the seed ones. And I want to encourage you guys to chew up the seeds. They’re rich in prothyanidins
or like a picnoginal basically. So yeah, definitely tastes good. growing great here in
Michigan. All right. So, like I’m like, “Luke, are you growing this purposely?” He’s like, “Nope.”
I’m like, “Good.” So, actually, this is what I grow in the desert actually for my uh summertime
spinach. This is known as a lamb’s quarter. And actually, this is super tender here that compared
to what I’m used to when it grows in 110°. It gets a lot more like fibers and stuff. Um, there’s a
really cool variety that both Luke and I like. It’s called magenta spring cuz it kind of has
like a purple kind of like I would call it like um purple like a makeup cuz it’s kind of like like
a powdery like kind of like I don’t know stuff. Anyways, you can just harvest the young tips to
eat. He grows all organic here and while he didn’t plant these, he’ll harvest these actually for
salad. Now, these are high in octid so generally I don’t recommend eating a ton of them. If you do
want to eat a lot of them, then I would definitely recommend like boiling them or steaming them. But
yeah, lamb’s quarter is still one of my favorite greens to eat. All right, guys. So, I can’t escape
all the plants here. Look, look, here’s a lot more tomatoes. I know. I want to point this out. If
you look at this plant, you’re thinking, “Oh, those are some nice tomatoes, John. Look, these
look like little cherry tomatoes.” But you would be mistaken cuz these are not tomatoes. These
are like heirloom eggplants. They’re like little um small like orange eggplants. This is the
Turkish orange eggplant. So, yeah. Most people think of eggplants as like those like you know
um black eggplant things. They even got like other eggplants. This is the rose bianca eggplant.
You guys could see it’s like uh you know it’s got the white and the purple. So you know there’s many
different kinds of varieties of plants. And I mean if you just go to the grocery store you can only
ever usually find those big purple eggplants. I mean they got like long skinny Japanese eggplants.
You’ll probably never find these Indian ones unless you go to specialty Indian market. And
that, you know, to me is the power of the seeds, guys. So, I think next up, let’s go into the seed
store and show you guys around the seed store and show you guys what seeds I’ll be taking home
with me today. All right, so let’s head inside the Mi Gardener store. All right, it’s a lot
cooler in here for sure. All right, so first up, I’m going to give me a basket cuz I’m going to get
a lot of seeds today. But before I actually share with you guys the seeds, I want to show you guys,
you know, just around the store here, right? Uh, you know, Luke has a lot of products that he just
resells, but also he has some specialty products that he either creates themselves or gets made
to his specifications, such as those fabric pots that you guys saw earlier. Of course, you know,
one of his claim to fame and actually, you know, one of the first times I interacted with Luke
was when he made his trifecta fertilizer, like I don’t even know 15 years ago, he sent me like
a bag of trifecta fertilizer. looked like it was like like a hand printed label from his printer
out of his garage or something. These days, he’s got a lot more pro. Look at this. This is his
trifecta plus uh fertilizer for organic gardening that he’s been perfecting over all these years.
So, the trifecta fertilizer is basically a 5104. This is an all organic. This does have all kinds
of really good ingredients in it. Uh this is not a vegan mixture. I know some of you guys may
not be concerned with that. does contain bone meal and blood meal. And you know, the community
Luke community spoke out and said, “Hey, Luke, we want something that doesn’t have the bone in
the blood meal cuz that’s like associated with like slaughterhouse animals and those products
can be contaminated, right?” So, he’s like, “No problem.” For those of you guys that don’t want
to use the slaughterhouse contaminated products, then you guys could get the Vega Grow. So, you
know, I’m really happy that actually Luke has this option for people. And look at this. This is a
5104. This is a 536. So that’s pretty similar. And this is a basically a vegan version that contains
no products from the animal slaughterhouse. So I know a lot of you guys in their conscious may be
better with this. And this is the product that I personally would prefer to use between these
two. So yeah, cuz I mean I know Down to Earth used to have a a vegan like fertilizer that they
discontinued from what I hear. So, I’m glad that Luke has a similar product that’s going to work
great in your garden for those of you guys that concerned about that. Of course, he also sells
other different products such as the humic acid, separate blood and bone meal, um, bulb plus, Epsom
salt, azamite, worm castings, and a beneficial bacteria booster and root enhancer that he’ll
sell. Like, these are all in basically like packs to that’s easily shippable, right? I think for me
the most valuable one would be either the trifecta or the Vega Grow. Personally, um I might source
some of these other things somewhere else. It may be a little bit more cost effective. Of course,
he also sells the trifecta in the larger pack. All right, next up, he also has some soil blockers,
you know, and I’ve seen soil blockers like all over the place. But, you know, Luke has used many
different soil blockers over the years, maybe over a half dozen actually. And over the years that
he used them, he like found that like, oh, I like this about this one, I don’t like this about this
one. And like he didn’t find like the perfect one. So, actually he found a manufacturing partner that
would make it to his specifications. So, it has a nice spring. It also has a nice little divots
here on the bottom. So, it has like a little hole you could put the little seeds in. And this also
has like a nice plastic dip on here. So, it’s not like it’s going to be soft when you have to like,
you know, push this thing down. And so, yeah. So, we had these built to his specifications. So,
that, you know, I would think they’re definitely higher quality than just some standard ones. Also,
you know, these are ones that he uses himself and he’s been gardening for a long time himself. So,
I definitely trust him that he has probably some of the best soil blockers out there. Um, and then
of course also in his store, he has other random things like uh seedball kits, MI Gardener uh
shirts, merch, um gloves, scissors, um hats, um I know Oh, his book. Look at his book. Look
at that handsome guy there. long. He wrote that a long time ago. It looks like a kid. Well, he still
is a kid to me. But yeah, uh the autopilot garden, a guide to hands-off gardening. And that’s
what I tell you guys. I mean, in this episode, I share with you guys like, hey, you guys want to
have hands-on like grow blueberries or you guys want to grow hands off like the blackberries are
just totally super abundant, right? So, that’s the kind of tips you guys are going to find all in his
book. And I really like actually I just flipped out of the page that said remmineralization
because remmineralization is a part of having a hands-off garden because when you create a good
organic matter, good microbes, good bacteria, good different soil nutrients such as the minerals,
right? You’re you could walk away from the garden and it’s basically going to be self- sustaining
versus like trying to keep throwing fertilizer which is the normal way to garden. So all the
tips are in the book here. He also has, of course, a garden planter for those of you guys that like
to do planting. He has different kinds of organic sprays like copper, neem oil, whatnot. Even has
some mushroom growing kits, his garden tape, and other little accessories here. But I think the
creme the creme of this whole place are the seeds, which we’ll get into a minute. But before I do
that, I want to talk about these guys. You know, one of the things I hate in gardening are
all the stupid little plastic trays that are literally disposable. These black plastic trays,
not these ones, but the ones that are super thin, they’re designed to crack, to break. They’re
really inexpensive. You need to basically throw them away and then buy new ones, right? So, I’m so
glad that Luke here, because he sells the seeds, you guys could also throw these into your order at
the same time. This is actually some of the best seed starting pots and containers you guys could
grow. And this is the Bootstrap garden products. So you guys can see these trays, right? These
trays are like super thick and durable. These are actually the trays I like to grow microgreens
in cuz of the half height. And you guys could just throw like one of these trays in. Bootstrap
Gardener has good stuff, but when you buy it direct from them, you got to like order 20 at
once, like large quantities, right? Lucas set up so that you just order one or two trays or some of
these other little seed starters that make it easy to get your plants out cuz they got holes in the
bottom. So like you could just poke your finger through there, right? to basically pop your plant
down instead of trying to squeeze these things and then damaging your container and then you got to
throw them away. So, really love that he makes all these available uh to you guys just like all these
different pots and you know um different pack sizes so you could start your seeds in some of the
best containers that are reusable. Very important instead of disposable. They may cost more in
the get- go but you will use these season after season after season. In the long run, it’s gonna
be a lot more convenient and more cost-effective, and you’re going to save more money because you’re
investing in something good rather than something cheap, which I know we all like to do sometimes.
All right, cool. Another thing I learned about the Bootstrap gardening uh pots, while they
are reusable, uh Luke also puts them in his dishwasher. He’s been using these for 5 years.
Puts them in the top rack in his dishwasher to sterilize them, which is really cool, right? Cuz
normally you got to sit there and scrub. And who wants to scrub all these out? So, just throw them
in your dishwasher. Uh, they’re dishwasher safe. Top rack. Amazing. Don’t put them on the bottom
rack. They’ll probably melt. All right, guys. So, now we’re going to share with you guys the seeds.
And right now, the seeds are a dollar a pack in September only. Of course, if you’re watching this
at a different time, the prices may vary cuz they are on sale because once again, if we pick up
one of these packs, you can see on the back it says pack for 2025. And the cool thing about Luke
here is, you know, instead of like, you know, um, reselling these or repacking them for next year,
he wants to get them out to you guys so you guys could garden and afford to garden. So, I mean, his
normal prices are insane. They’re like $2 a pack, which, you know, I mean, this even beats Walmart’s
prices, guys. These are better quality seeds than you’d find at Walmart, cuz they’re like $2
plus a pack at Walmart. But nonetheless, right now September, because he’s trying to get
rid of all these packs that are packed for 2025, he’s going to start packing for 2026. These
are a dollar off the $2 price. So, $1 each. So, stock up now for this upcoming growing season. So,
let’s see. What am I going to get? So, actually, you know what? I’m just going to go and get all
the purple tomatoes cuz you know, some of the purple tomatoes are purple, but then they don’t
have a good flavor. So, like this way I get to experiment with the purple tomatoes to find out
what is the sweetest, tastiest, most delicious, most purple tomatoes. So, I’m getting the
purple bumblebee, the per uh blueberries, the black cherry, we got the uh Ukrainian purple,
the Japanese black uh trifle, and let’s see what other purple ones are there. All I want is the
purple ones. Oh, and then I’m going to actually I’m going to get the Paul Robi Sun, the black from
Tula, the black creme, as you can see. I love my black tomatoes, the black brandy wines. They have
actually a smoky flavor some of these guys. Black Prince, the Drew uh Drewzba tomato, the carbon
tomato, and it’s got a little purple shading. Oh man, look at this. This one’s beautiful. Chocolate
stripes tomato. I love that so much. Oh, and then the of course being from California, pink Berkeley
tie-dye tomato has looks like it has some purplish streaks in there. So, purples are my favorite.
But then after that, this is an interesting fact, guys. I know a lot of you guys may have heard
that like, hey, it’s always really good to cook your tomatoes because you get more lycopine when
you cook your tomatoes than when you eat them raw. And if you’re talking about standard red tomatoes,
that is completely true. But I look up the science and what does the science says? The science says
that there’s different kinds of lycopine. There’s like trans lycopine and cisycopine. When you grow
the red tomatoes, you are growing the lycopine that is the trans lycopine that then when you heat
process it turns into the cis lycopine. And I know you guys didn’t think you’re going to science
experiment this video, but the thing is when you grow the yellow tomatoes and not every yellow or
orange tomato has the cis lycopine directly. So, if you guys want to get higher lycopine uptake
and not cook your tomatoes, you could actually get more lycopine from some of the heirloom
yellow and orange tomatoes raw. Don’t cook them. Don’t cook your yellow ones. Eat them raw.
Maybe the red ones are better to cook. But if you guys get the yellow ones like uh you know, we’ll
get some yellow and orange ones today. Actually, I know the pimmen tomato had it. The amount of
tomato had it. Let’s see. I don’t know. I mean, cuz yellow could be from beta carotene or could
be from the cis lycopine. So, what am I going to do? I’m just going to shotgun and get a bunch of
the orange and yellow tomatoes so that I know I’m going to have the cis lycopine and I could eat
my tomatoes raw and get more lycopine than even cooking the red ones. So, yeah, we got the Jubilee
Dr. Witchies yellow the yellow stuffer the beef steak yellow brainy wine yellow sunray jubilee
brainy wine yellow Kellogg’s breakfast gold medal orange oxart pineapple tomato ama pimmen and azo
chaya now of course I can’t stop here oh wait I didn’t get the pork chop look at that pork chop
tomato actually that’s kind of a stripe one that’s Can’t stop there. I got to get one more. As you
guys can see, I’m actually avoiding red tomatoes. But this one’s one of my favorite tomatoes of all
times. You guys have to grow this. But the flavor is excellent. The green zebra. That is always has
a place in my heart. I love the green zebra. So, some of my other tomatoes are the cherry tomatoes
that I like so much. And Luke has a whole variety of different kind of cherry tomatoes. I don’t
know. I don’t I mean, there’s so many kinds. Which one you grow? That’s a good question. Um, once
again, I’m going to go for the yellow orange one. So, one of the cool tomatoes is a tropical sunset.
This tomato is kind of rare. You don’t find this too often, and that’s the cool thing about Luke
is he’ll go out of his way to find this, you know, some of the, you know, crops that are not found
other places, and I know this is definitely one of them. Uh, the other thing is that, you know, these
are sold for gardeners. These aren’t sold for like farms. Farms shouldn’t come to MI Gardener and buy
their seeds because these are sold in pack sizes that are realistic for home gardeners, right? This
seed packet, right, has actually only 10 seeds, which is not a lot of seeds. And that’s because,
you know, these seeds cost more money. So, we can’t put as many in a pack. Of course, you know,
there’s other seed packets like if we pick up the pineapple toatio, which I would also recommend
you guys to grow. I think this I call this the cave gooseberry. This stays alive year round in my
zone 9 greenhouse, right? This one actually has 50 seeds. So, if you’re really tight on money, you’re
like, I want to get the best value, man. Hey, go for the seeds that have a lot higher pack count
or seed count than the lower. That being said, you know, for me, the count is not important cuz how
many tomatoes you going to grow anyways, right? You’re not probably going to grow more than 10
of one kind. You’re going to grow, you know, two of these, one of these, one of these, right? So,
yeah, I love this. And also, of course, $1 pack right now, guys, you’re not going to find seeds
any cheaper. All right, so I’m here at the next rack. in this next rack is basically mostly herbs
with some random fruits there and then basically the cut flowers. So, we’re going to start out
with the herbs. Um, you know, so for me, one of my most important herbs that I grow in the desert
because it grows so well, so easily. It loves the heat and as things get warmer, right, this plant
is going to be easier to grow for you guys in the summertime. It is basil. And at MI Gardener, they
have like I think 15 kinds of basil. So, I’m going to get one of each. This is the dwarf Greek basil.
Uh the picolino basil. It’s like a small the spicy globe basil. We got the standard Genovese basil.
And that’s what I want to show you guys. Look, if you guys buy the Genevese basil, right, you
guys are going to get 500 seeds, right? But if you get like the holy basil right here, which actually
I prefer more than the genevese. I like I really hate the Italian basil. It’s just so common and
normal. You get the holy basil, which is one of my favorite. It’s more intensely flavored, strong,
medicinal. You get 100 seeds. All right. Don’t let that dissuade you. Um Oh, the lime basil. I heard
the lime basil is particularly good if you just basically finely chop the lime basil, put it on
top of watermelon, and then drip some lime juice on your watermelon. You guys all got to try that.
I got to try that when this grows out. We got the blue spice basil. We got the cinnamon basil. I
love the taste of cinnamon basil. Then we got the Thai basil. I learned that the Thai basil is
a little bit more cold tolerant than some of their basil cuz some of the other like the Italian basil
will just like croak out, but the Thai basil will hang on a little bit longer if it gets colder. And
then we got the uh lemon basil. So we got a lemon and lime basil. Now we got a licorice basil. All
right, do not underestimate the basil. Of course, my favorite basil are the red rubin because
of the nice purple leaves. Also the dark opal basil. And then of course we got the mammoth basil
there. This is more like a lettuce style basil. So this is like more mild flavored for those of you
guys that don’t like strong flavored basil. Then I think the last one we got is the Italian large
leaf. Once again this is another count of 500. So I’m getting lots of seeds here guys. And right now
if you guys want to buy seeds get them from Luke. A dollar a pack. Buy 20 of them. You get free
shipping. You’re not going to get a better deal anywhere else. And these are all definitely good
seeds. Look at my haul so far. All right, so just going down here further. I mean, he has all kinds
of cool different herbs. Oh, man. I would get this one, but he’s out right now. Oh, this one’s cool,
too. The epizote. He’s got moringa. Actually, that’s a really good deal for a dollar a seed
pack. Oh, can’t forget this one. The spalanths are toothach plant. You eat those little buds there
and they’ll make a nice interesting sensation in your mouth. I love that one a lot. Of course, next
up is stinging nettle. And I know the for those of you guys that are herbalists, you might appreciate
this. For those of you are regular gardeners, you’re like, John, why would I buy sting? Man,
it just comes up everywhere in my garden. It’s a weed. Well, this is special varieted stinging
nail that actually has larger leaves. You know, for those of you guys that don’t know, stinging
nettle, while it is a weed, it’s also one of the easiest crops to grow because it’s a weed.
Literally, you can neglect this. It’ll grow. Oh, so if you can’t grow sting nettle, maybe you
shouldn’t be gardening cuz this will grow in cracks. This will grow up anywhere. Just plant it
in soil, give it a little bit of water. Of course, it’ll go to seed and get kind of crazy. I love to,
you know, for fun, I just love to pick the sting in the leaves, fold it over, and then just put it
in the back of my mouth. Of course, if you like, you know, blend it or juice it, right, or just dry
it and make tea out of it, you won’t have any of the problems with the stingers. But sometimes for
fun, I just like to get stung cuz it kind of makes me feel I’m alive again. All right. And of course,
let’s see. Keep going on. Lots of different herbs here. Maragolds, borage, vias, Johnny jumpups. Um,
some of those flowers I I grow to eat myself. It looks like the rest of this rack for the most
part is flowers. Oh, except down here. This is a kind of a cool plant. I remember taking my
girlfriend at the time went to like some place in the Caribbean and like she seen the leaves there
and she touched them and then they folded up and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is a mimosa plant.”
cuz this is like non-edible. Don’t eat this. But it’s like it’s a sensitive plant. So, I think
this is like a tropical. He also has goji berries, which you know, honestly, guys, you should just go
to the health food store and buy goji berries to eat and just like take the seeds out. Sorry, Luke.
And then, but the other cool thing is actually has dragon fruit that actually he collects the
seeds himself here, which I’ll show you guys in a minute. He has a the yellow dragon fruit,
which actually um is a lot sweeter. And honestly, the best way to grow dragon fruit is actually
honestly from cutings, not from seeds. But some of you guys can’t get cutings from these. These
are tropicals. They don’t like the cold. Maybe you could grow them inside as a house plant. Um, they
are beautiful plants though. And if I do re Oh, on the yellow ones, they’re the sweetest tasting, but
these seeds have a laxative effect. So, don’t eat too many of the yellow dragon fruits. And if don’t
blend the seeds up, cuz the more you crush up the seeds, the more laxative effect you’ll have.
So, if you eat this, just like don’t chew the seeds up. actually try to spit them out and regrow
them. But of all these three, I I personally would grow the ones that are purple flesh. They’re a lot
more of course nutritious and they generally taste sweeter than the standard white flesh. But for the
sweetness, the yellow dragon fruit rules them all. Of course, he also has strawberries, which these
are more like alpine style strawberries. And you know, these produce little small berries, but
these berries are 10 times more flavorable than anything you’ll get at the grocery store. And of
course, actually, I remember Luke cuz one of his videos on his channel was he grew coffee inside
his house actually back in the day. Um, so yeah, he’s selling actually coffee uh seeds to grow your
own coffee indoors or in the tropics. Okay. All right. I think we’re down to the last seed rack,
but this one is a doozy. Hopefully I’m not here too long cuz look at it. It’s super long. So, I’m
going to probably just try to get some of these things. Um, yeah. I don’t tend to grow a lot of
beans. So, let’s let’s see what beans I want. Oh, he’s got artichokes and asparagus, which I would
definitely recommend some staples for a perennial garden. Very important for the artichokes and
asparagus. You’re going to plant them where they are and let them grow year after year after
year. Obviously, it’s better to get little roots uh if you’re going to plant those instead of
getting them from seed cuz they’re going to be done, you know, grow and be more productive
faster. But, of course, seeds is an option for a lot of people cuz of course they’re a lot
cheaper. If I was going to grow beans, of course, my favorite beans are the purple ones. So, we got
to get some more purple beans there. That was the royal burgundy bush and we got the purple potted
pole. But actually, what I really want are the long beans. So, the red noodle pole beans and the
oriental long beans are the best beans to grow in the tropics or in hot climates like Las Vegas.
They really don’t mind the heat. Actually, they grow better uh with the heat than the standard
regular beans do that can literally peter out. He’s got like adsuki beans, yelloweyed bush beans,
red kidney beans, all different kinds of bean. Oh, he’s got soy beans here. Uh limema beans. Let’s
see. Oh, here’s my bean. This is one of my staple beans that I grew back in the day. The scarlet
runner beans. I love these beans. This is a native heirloom um Native American bean that depending
on where you live may be perennial. So like in California where I grow these, the roots will
stay alive and I just clip them back the ground and they could come back year after year. Plus
also of course these beans are amazing. I could eat the young baby beans like as like snap peas
when they’re young, but if they get more mature, you should be cooking them before consuming them.
And of course I love them because they’re purple and they look they look so decorative. All right,
guys. So, next up, you know, I started eating dry beans recently. Like, I cook them pressure cook
them in the Instant Pot. And I was at the heirloom expo. I met somebody that had the Rio Zap Bush uh
beans. She was actually selling beans by the pound to actually eat, which you could also buy and tend
to grow. But if you just want to buy them in a, you know, so that you could grow them, you could
get these guys. These are the Rio Zap bush beans. These are like an heirloom bean, guys. These
are like a cross if you had to describe between like a kidney bean and a black bean. They’re
quite buttery, quite delicious. So, actually, I’m going to get a pack of these, too. Um, yeah,
beans definitely for the win. High in protein, really good for you. Next, we’re getting into
the broccoli. Uh, so, of course, I’m going to go for the purple sprouting broccoli. Nice purple
head. Next up, of course, I got to get the purple of Sicily cauliflower. Anything purple I love. Uh,
the mammoth red raw cabbage. Look at that. That’s almost like a purple red. Next up, purples. You
guys love, you know, I love my purples here. Uh, Red Bull Brussels sprouts. I’m not a big fan of
corn myself, but of course, look at this corn, guys. Some of the corns could have actually
really deep rich anthocining content. This is a blue hopy corn. Besides a blue hopy corn, he
has like a glass gem corn. He’s got the oxa green dent. I think actually Luke got in trouble with
his like his professor in school because of the green dent. Maybe I’ll ask him about I’ll ask him
to share with you guys that story. Um I think oh the red double sweet. This guy is the one you guys
should really grow right here. This one is a sweet corn but also it’s red. So now you not only get a
sweet corn but it’s red. So it has those anthosin pigments that I love so much. Plus it just looks
super cool. And unfortunately a lot of these more deeper color corns are more corns you got actually
got to cook. Whereas this one is actually a sweet corn. So this is probably the one you guys really
want to get. And actually because of that I’m going to probably get two packs of them. All right
guys. Next, we’re in the cucumber section. So, he has lots of different cucumbers. Like a lot of
these are just common style cucumbers. Of course, for the heat in the desert, I would recommend
the Armenian yard long. And this is actually the striped Armenian. It also comes in a light green
color. But I like the striped Armenian cuz they kind of look like a snake. And actually, if you
harvest them young, they’re quite delicious. And but you can also harvest these when they’re really
old. I’ll put a link down to the video where I harvest them young or old. And I showed you guys
the difference in actually how I use the more mature ones. Actually, the day before this uh trip
here, I actually cut open an Armenian and saved the seeds from it actually myself. Um let’s see.
So, lots of different common cucumbers, but the other ones I like a lot are the lemon cucumber. I
grew up with this in California. It’s it’s really common cucumber out in Northern California.
Unfortunately, most of the country doesn’t know about it. This is a really nice cucumber. It’s
more like a roundish cucumber. Really delicious flavor. um kind of gets a little bit sour when
they’re older. If I remember, I’ll put a link down below from a long time ago where actually I pickle
these or lactic acid ferment them. And of course, the other cucumber I’ll talk about, oh, two more
actually, is the cuc melon. So, you guys saw this in the greenhouse. I still love these little
cucumbers. Um they’re a lot more tolerant of the weather, a little bit more co little bit cold,
more cold tolerant, too. And then I just saw this one here. I love things that are oddities. And
this is like a oddity. This is like the uh little potato cucumber. So, if you look at the skin
there, it almost looks like it’s potato, like it’s rusted, guys. That’s crazy. I haven’t ever tasted
one of these yet, but this looks more like a lemon cucumber style. So, I got to pick up one of those,
too. And then going to the eggplants. Once again, the eggplants for me do really well in the desert.
And they got standard eggplants, long purple eggplants, little finger eggplants. Actually,
I’m growing the little fingers this year. We’re going to get the Casper cuz it’s white. It’s a bit
unique. I got to get the Turkish orange cuz it’s just orange and just totally different than any
other eggplant. And then let’s see. Then we go to the amaranth and the chia, the tray, broom corn,
rice, sesame. We got the okra. All right, got to stop on the okra. That’s another crop, guys. I
really I mean okra is underestimated. It’s so good for our digestive system. Also, it really loves
the heat. It’s, you know, if you have problems growing things in in your heat like I do, okra and
eggplants grow better, way better than tomatoes. And then peppers grow still better than tomatoes,
but okra and eggplants grow the best. So, I got to get the red burgundy, which I actually am
growing this year. But this is a new variety that I haven’t seen before. Uh, this is called the Hill
Country Red. So, it’s kind of like modeled red. And then of course he has a standard uh Clemson
spineless which is the most common variety but then I haven’t seen this one before actually the
long pod Perkins. We don’t get that where I live. And then he’s got some clovers. And then also
too I want to encourage you guys you know in the spring or summer you guys could grow this. This
is like one of the most popular salad greens in Europe. You can just go to any grocery store and
find the mosh or corn salad for sale. Um I love this green. It’s like it comes up in the winter
time when not many other things are growing. It loves the cold weather. Um and it just tastes so
it’s like so delicious. Like it has a nice buttery flavor. I’m so glad he or uh is selling that.
Oh, and then this one. The shinguku. Actually, I got to get like four of these. Actually, this is
how much I like this one. This leafy green tastes like no other leafy green. Of course, this plant
will also make some edible crosanthemum flowers, but it’s grown for the green. Very popular. in
like Asian cultures, but Americans wouldn’t really know it. But you guys got to grow this green cuz
like it’s also I grow this in the over the winter time. It has just like such a unique flavor that I
love so much. So, I’m glad he sells that cuz it’s not quite common. Oh, and then he has also another
he has another mosh, a vit mosh. All right, guys. Next up, we’re with the zucchinis. And actually, I
want to get this one. This is a koozie squash. So, if you have like problems with squash bugs,
this maybe is the solution cuz this is not like a traditional standard squash that we would
know cuz it’s a little bit different variety, but you could see these grow really long. So, I’m
going to try this cuz I never seen this before. But the bestselling variety here is actually
grown here in the Midwest. Actually, I’m going to get I’m going to get three of them actually
myself. This is called the uh Bianca D Trese. This is actually grown in Indiana. The grower
grows these in Indiana for MI Gardener here. And these are the sweetest, most butteriest, most uh
productive squash that Luke sells here, right? So, this is the one you definitely want to try. I’ve
never seen this variety before myself. So, while they’re on sale for a dollar, you guys get a pack
or two to grow next year. And I’m going to try to grow them out myself to see how sweet they are,
cuz Luke says they are a crime to cook them cuz they’re so sweet as they are. And that is my kind
of summer squash, guys, that you just could pick off the vine, eat them straight, or maybe even
dig them in some hummus, some guacamole, or put a little salad dressing on them. Just eat them fresh
out of the garden. The best way to go. All right, guys. So, next up on this rack are basically more
winter squashes, which I would recommend you guys grow here in the Midwest cuz you guys, you know,
get snowed out in the winter time. So, if you guys grow these in the summer, they get the size, you
could store them through the winter, and still eat out of your garden instead of buying things,
you know, imported outside the country, even from California during the winter. If you guys
grow your own different kind of winter squashes, which Luke has a huge selection from, actually,
one of my favorites is the honey nut. Actually, I think that was kind of bred more locally
here. They’re tend to be a bit sweeter. Uh, I also like the kabochi squash, another common
one. Oh, and actually this one I got to get. I haven’t grown this in like many years. I’m so glad
Luke has these seeds because this is not a very common seed. Now, this is a pumpkin. You could
grow the Kakai pumpkin, which you can cook and eat like a pumpkin. You could also eat it raw. But
more importantly, the Kakai pumpkin actually has the holeless seeds or the papitas. And I actually
have a video down below. Brought me back memories of growing the um kakai pumpkins like up a nylon
string trellis. Actually, I remember that. And I just harvested all these pumpkin out all these
pumpkin seeds that tasted nothing like the stupid ones from the store that are like imported
probably from Mexico, right? These taste amazing. So, I definitely would recommend you guys grow
some of these kakai pumpkins. Man, I have fond memories of this from growing it from many years
ago. And then, of course, aides from the different kinds of standard pumpkins you could grow grow
for of course um Halloween, jacko’lanterns are just to eat cuz they are all edible. He gets into
some gourds. She also then gets into different um musk melons like cantalopes. Uh charaze actually
that’s a good one. Um green flesh honeydew. I like that. That’s a more common melon. Uh krenshaw
canary. He has all the different watermelons. If you guys get watermelons guys do yourself a favor
and get some of the cool watermelons. He has like the orange glow uh the tender sweet orange and the
sweet siberian watermelon. You know, I really love things that are different, right? And if you just
go to the store, you could buy standard like red watermelons, but it’s very hard to find the orange
ones. If you do go to an Asian market, you can find the orange ones, but they’re at least like
sometimes four times more expensive than buying the red ones. But of course, the seeds are the
same price. And then, of course, now we get into um some other melons. Actually, the pod sapo I’ve
had a few pod sapos this year that were actually really tasty. He has some other different melons
that I’m not familiar with. We get into the bitter melons. And now we get into the leafy greens. Um
he’s got uh kale abanga. He’s got premier kale, lactoino kale, dinosaur kale, red russian,
blue curly kale, scarlet kale, of course, is my favorite cuz they are purple. Oh, we get
into the bare necessities kale. Look at that. This is a decorative kale. I’ve seen this before
and there maybe different names, but actually I got to get two of these packs cuz they just look
really cool. And then he’s got a black magic kale, which is a dinosaur kale, but maybe a little bit
darker. He’s got different kinds of mustards. Mustard greens are great to grow for me in zone
9 in the winter. They are the fastest growing, most mature, fastest maturing, and you
give you the most production. Of course, I also like my mazunas, which are like a very
mild mustard. Of course, he also has a tad soy toky bakana. I’ve also grown that many years. Uh,
Georgia southern collards, uh, standard collards, slowboat arugula, endive fris, redikio. I got to
get a redik. I mean, this I I have basically got the redo to grow in my garden. This will grow year
round in my garden, even in the summer. Actually, I just I just probably aired my video of my
summer tour where I’m like toured what I grew in my garden in August. 100° plus. This guy,
I have them in stages of bolting. I also have them in stages where they receded on theirelves
and they just have basically all green. So it’s like I basically have like bitter lettuce all year
now because I have my redikio growing pretty much year round in Vegas. I love that so much. Red vein
soil, large leaf soil, upland crest, dan line. I mean I want to encourage you guys to grow as many
of these greens as you guys can while they’re a dollar a seed pack. And look at this. These are
some incredible values, guys. We want to look at this lettuce here. This is the prize head lettuce.
Look how many seeds you guys get there. You guys get a,000 seeds right now for $1. So what is that
like? That’s like onetenth of a cent per se. Like there’s no better deal on the planet right now
than when these seeds are on sale. Once again, this is September when he’s going the clearance
sale um to clear out his 2025 seeds. But yeah, once again, the red lettuce there. Let’s see. I’m
also going to get the uh bronze lettuce here. The uh Marvel of Four Seasons head lettuce if they got
any kind of red tinge. The C the uh Simmeron Roma lettuce. Another red lettuce. The Pablo crisp
crisp head lettuce. Oh, my all-time favorite lettuce right here. I grow this every single
year. In my opinion, this picture does not do this lettuce justice. This lettuce should be a
lot darker. You shouldn’t really see any green in this. This is the Lola Rosa lettuce. My favorite
rolls off the tongue. Red sails. I think sometimes this does good, sometimes it doesn’t do good, but
also like growing this red ruby lettuce. Buy all the red lettucees, guys. Forget the green lettuce.
Salad bowl mix. Paris Island C. Some standard. Oh, the freckles lettuce. Man, I I haven’t grown
this in like 3 years. This is just a decorative lettuce. I love it a lot. Of course, we got the uh
romaine red lettuce. And I got the look at this. This is a new kind for me, actually. The super
red Roma lettuce. So, this is even more red. So, I got to get actually a few of these packets. Super
red lettuce. Um let’s see. Uh let’s see. Standard spinach. New Zealand spinach. That one like I
have like that’s a weed in my garden. New Zealand spinach. If you guys live in a zone 9, you should
be able to buy this once and keep this growing year round in your garden. I know it grows well
for me year round. Um, it is high in oxalates, so I only recommend you guys eat it in small
quantities or uh boil it or steam it to cook. He’s got different kinds of spinaches, which is great.
Oh, the red Malbar spinach. Oh, I’m so glad he has this next one. So, the red Malbar spinach. Um, I’m
growing the green Malbar and the red Malbar this year, but one of my favorites. I probably don’t
need this, but I’ll get anyways. More more genetic diversity. And this guy, I’m so glad that Luke is
selling this one. This is the Egyptian spinach. This is the best green for the heat, right?
These these seeds when you germinate them, you need to basically I hope he says on the back
you should heat up the water like you know he put soak these in hot water overnight guys and then
and then plant them. Otherwise the germination may may not be that good but then these will
grow like you’ll put them in the ground they’ll germinate they’ll be really small they’ll take
like a month they’ll be like that big after a month right but at 2 months they’ll be like this
big and 3 months they’ll be like that big. So, like once they get started, they grow. And like
this is this is one of my favorite ones to grow in the heat. This one easily handles the heat. So,
for the heat here, the red Malbar and the Egyptian spinach so far. And actually, the radikio actually
I’d say is the other one. Swiss chard. Also, the uh kale should do good in the heat as well. He has
actually he has a big variety of Swiss chard. I’m quite impressed actually. I normally just see the
rainbow Swiss chart, but he has like a pink, he has an orange, he has a rhubarb, he has a magenta,
and he has the actually red ruby. She actually has the deepest red vein which I like. I’ll get that
one too. So he also has a pers lane. So the cool thing about persane like perslane is a weed in
my garden but this is actually the large leaf perslane. So I’m going to actually take a bunch
of these seed packs is the large leaf pers lane cuz I want to establish this as like my dominant
understory cuz this kind of grows as a weed like underneath my tomatoes underneath my peppers like
kind of covers the ground. And so right now I just have like these small pers. So, this is the larger
leaf variety. Like, this is the kind more that was is is like grown intentionally versus the one that
I just have growing, which is like just randomly. All right. Wow, look at all these seeds I got
so far. So many. All right, we’re down to the last rack, guys. So, now we’re down to the peas.
We got all different kinds of uh snap peas and shell peas. So, of course, got to get my favorite.
Actually, this is an interesting one. It’s the uh blue shelling snow pee. I don’t know if I’ve I’ve
I’ve grown snow peas that are like the purple pod, but I don’t know if they were this variety.
Hopefully, these are going to be sweeter. He’s got all different kinds of different uh snow peas and
snap peas. Oh, here’s a golden sweet. I like this one cuz also it’s yellow. I like things that are
different. I don’t like just growing the standard stuff. Blizzard snap. Avalanche snap. Sugar ant
snap. Sugar snap. That’s just a common one. Sweet gem snap. All right, that one sounds interesting.
We’ll just buy cuz it sounds cool. Now we’re down to all the peppers. So, I love the peppers. I
think the dumbest peppers to me are like the stupid bell peppers. Like, don’t waste your money.
My personal opinion. Big red peppers, chocolate, they just don’t do good in the heat. Maybe they do
good here where it’s more mild. Um, miniature bell peppers. That’s interesting. But p uh pimementino,
that’s actually I tried them in his garden. These were good. And actually the best ones for the
heat are the sweet banana peppers. I’ll get one of those, too. So, my favorite peppers actually are
these peppers. These are a havandada. Basically, these look like they’d be super hot peppers,
but they’re not hot. They’re actually sweet. So, I’m going to get like a few packs of these cuz
they’re they’re going to be good. I really love to grow the small peppers because they’re more
productive than the large peppers. And then, I mean, I like some spice, but not too spicy. Oh,
then these I heard this I haven’t actually seen before. This is the uh Benhin Quino red pepper.
These like have a little bit of spice, but look at how cute they look. They’re like small peppers.
And generally when you’re growing these peppers that are small, they make a lot of peppers,
right? So, you’re always going to have some. And even if they’re super spicy, just put like one
or two in a recipe and you’re totally good. So, I’m going to experiment that for the first year.
First time I’ve seen them. Oh, and then another of my favorites. I love the peppers, guys, more
than tomatoes. All right, guys. So, let’s see. Um, normal people like to grow the jalapenos,
but actually I like these ones, which are the natapinos. So, they look like jalapenos. Uh they
harvested these when they’re green, but I like to wait till they’re red. So, we’re going to get a
couple of these packs here. These are actually the no heat jalapenos, believe it or not. Right. So,
they still have the flavor of a jalapeno, but zero heat. So, that’s my favorite. Um and then also
too, if you want it like not as hot as a jalapeno, I’ve also grown these many years. This is the tam
jalapeno. So, they’re like a little bit of heat, not as much as a standard jalapeno. Let’s
see here. What else they got? Um, Tabasco, firecracker, chili doll, lemon drops, serenos.
Uh, this is cool. Pumpkin spice jalapeno. So, they’re like like a yellow ripening versus like
a red ripening. Uh, cayenne. And then, of course, Luke has some hot hot peppers, Jamaican yellow
mushrooms, uh, Caribbean orange, and of course, one of the super hottest ones are the boot jelloia
peppers. This is if you want like to burn your mouth and your other side when they’re coming out,
too. Of course, don’t forget your leaks. Leaks are really nutritious. I like to grow leaks every
year. Actually, I just I’ll get some more leaks cuz I’ll just spread the seeds out. Actually,
I found how I grow leaks is really cool because like I have a bed of mint. The bed of mint just
takes over. I can’t get rid of it literally. But then in the winter time I cut it back and then at
that point when I cut it back I’ll put leak seeds down in the bed and then the leak seeds will grow
up and then the mint will grow around it. So then like the leaks will be tall and the mint will kind
of be like the ground cover you know. So I like to do that in the springtime. Um usually I let my
leaks like go to seed and drop seed but like this last year like only one re one or two receded
whereas normally I have like at least a half dozen. So we we’ll we’ll get some extra seeds.
Then he has like onions, which I do recommend growing. Uh the bunching onions, believe it or
not. Oh, dude, this is so new. I never seen this one before. This is Redbeard bunching onions. I
normally only see never green bunching onions. So, actually, I got to get a couple of these packs
cuz I like I like to grow bunching onions cuz the bunching onions technically are more nutritious
than the bulb onions cuz you could eat all the greens. And then we got um let’s see. Uh standard
other kinds of just bulb onions you could grow. Uh let’s see. I like to do my uh onions not
from seeds but from the bulbs. And then we got a walawal are nice ones are sweet. Oh here’s
Utah Spanish sweet. And then he’s got oh kurabi. Excellent. U winter vegetables to grow. Rhubarb.
The he got the radishes. So he’s got the standard radishes. What are the seed counts? 250 on the
radishes. Oh, and then of course guys, if you guys are going to get radishes, get some like
these. The watermelon radishes. They’re like red on the inside, so they look a lot more decorative
and they’re more nutritious. And then let’s see here. White icicle. Oh, then you got parsnips,
which is cool. That’s That’s a forgotten crop. Not many people grow. Rudabaggas and turnups.
Let’s see. Oh, he’s got peanuts. Hikima, beets, carrots. Oh, you know I got to go for the purple
carrots here. Oh, and then even better than the purple carrots are the black nebula carrots. So,
look at the difference on those. I want you guys to go with the black nebulas or deep rich purple.
Oh, and the atomic red, too. Like, I really love things that are just totally different than the
normal like orange carrots that I think are pretty stupid. And then this is another one you guys
got to get. Like this one I’ve basically got naturalized in my California garden. It comes
back with a vengeance year after year. Every winter time I have so much of this uh clatonia
or miners lettuce which I don’t need to get cuz I have seeds just dropping out of my planters
everywhere. Another cool one I’m growing actually also is a shiso in my Vegas garden. This one grows
the shiso really loves the heat. It’s kind of like related to the basil. All right. So yeah. So we
ended at the red shiso, guys. And check it out. I’m going to bring home all these seed packs from
Mi Gardener today. And you know, I’m bringing all these home, but you guys don’t have to be here to
get these amazing deals, right? Mi Gardener. If you guys order $20 or more, you guys are going
to get free shipping. So, that is right now in September. That just means you just need to order
20 packs, guys. I don’t even know. I probably have about a 100 packs here. But this is the best dog
on deal you guys are going to ever find on some seeds to grow in your garden. Now, before I sign
out today, I want to take you guys back into the warehouse to show you guys how fast he will ship
you the seeds and how he packs up the seeds. And then we’re going to go ahead and sit down and do
a short interview with Luke about the MI Gardener um himself. All right, guys. I want to take you
guys behind the scenes here at MI Gardener. And this is in the back room where they actually are
seed saving right now. Uh this season they’re seed saving the dragon fruit seeds. So they basically
get the dragon fruits, they mash them up and do whatever they’re going to do. And then they
basically uh like they’re fermenting the tomatoes, right? Cuz you got to get that like all the stuff
off the tomato seed. So they basically just lay it out on literally wax paper to basically dry out
uh all the dragon fruit. This happens to be the yellow dragon fruit, which you guys saw earlier.
They also do the same thing with the white dragon fruit flesh that has the um red on the outside
and then also have the purple flesh which is my favorite. All these are sourced from Florida.
Um so US grown and then they have to save the seeds because nobody really you can’t just buy
like dragon fruit seeds. They also will do this with other crops such as pumpkins and peppers and
tomatoes that they just can’t buy the seeds for. They just actually get the plant or they get the
fruit and they basically say the seeds here in this little area. So, they really go through a
lot to make some of these more rare and unique varieties available for you guys. Next up, let’s
show you guys the heirloom machines they still use to pack up their seed packs. All right, guys.
So, I mean, as much as they are high-tech and they have a website that you guys have probably visited
already, migrer.com. You know, unfortunately, packing seeds up, I mean, Luke has a few kids,
but he’s not making them count the seeds that get in every packet. They actually have these
machineries. They actually have a few of these machines. This is an original Ballard uh seed
packing machine that’s literally 70 years old. So, this is like an heirloom and antique that actually
hard to get parts for. I think there’s only one place you could buy parts for this thing. And you
know, they have several of these machines as well as a new newer machine that makes packing a lot
more easy. But I mean, this is like a 70-year-old machine that they’re packing seeds. And I mean,
to me, that’s simply amazing. I mean, this is like 2025 now. You would think in 2025 there’s
some kind of like AI like thing with cameras that could sort seeds and count seeds with the fingers
cuz I mean they got almost got robots that could like like uh wash your floors and cut your lawns,
maybe even do chores for you pretty soon. They still we’re still using like 70-year-old seedpack
machines which are like the best of the best. Unless you want to spend like $80,000 or $100,000
on these new automated things. You would think somebody be able to invent something like even
better. But I’m glad they’re able to do this. And basically, you know, their goal when they pack the
seeds, and as you saw on some of the seed packets, they put the approximate seed count. So, you
should get that seed amount or maybe even a little bit higher. Not guaranteed, but you should get at
least that amount of seeds in each packet. And uh this is the machine that makes it all happen. All
right, guys. So, I’m just walking along behind the scenes in the warehouse here and check it out. I
found all this stuff. What does this look like? These are basically they’re fermenting the tomato
seeds. So they got a fan here, couple fans here running. So they’re basically just basically um
fermenting it. So it takes off that little like coating so that the seeds will actually germinate
for you. So they got all different kinds of seeds going on here. So you know, this really means
a lot to me because other seed companies that I’ve visited in the past, they basically just buy
whatever seeds they could buy and then just like resell them. They’re not there like trying to
like buy the fruit to dry the fruit to then dry the seeds and then sell the seeds, right? This is
a lot of work that Luke goes through to get you guys the seed packets for like $2 is the normal
price. But once again, right now, this month only, they’re a dollar each. So, you know, buy some
of the rare seeds that actually he will actually uh create and pack up himself. All right, guys.
So, this is behind the scenes at MI Gardener. If you’re just a retail customer, you never
get to see this place. But I wanted to show you guys cuz these are the seeds you guys are
going to be ordering. And this is the thing, guys. Like right now, once again, like I said,
the seed packets are on sale for $1 a pack, right? When they’re gone, they’re gone. So that’s
why as soon as you watch this video, right after you’re done watching this video, go to migger.com
and order the seeds because like this one, uh, sea shell cost, which is a flower, they’re out
of stock. So now you can’t buy that for a dollar, right? This these are carnations here. Ntoriums.
Let’s see. I want to go down to some some like vegetables. Okay, let’s go to this side. Onions,
right? If you want the guardsman bunching onions, right? They’re going to run out soon. But look
at this. The Lincoln P. They have tons of plants, tons of seeds, and they even got the overstock
here, right? So this they got more of the golden sweet peas here. These packs, guys, are guaranteed
to sell for a dollar, right? While they still got them. So go there now. You get the best selection.
All different kinds of onions. Oh, they’re out of the spring blush peas right now. But they have
these all these other ones, right? So once again, I think this is an amazing deal. I mean, this is
the kind of business I would run if I like had seeds that are marked like, oh, best for 2025.
Hey, let’s sell them before the end of the year before they they don’t expire, but of course they
may not germinate as much, but they should still be fine for like half the price. So, like I’m I’m
so glad I showed up here at MI Gardener today. I could show you guys the best deal on seeds in the
country, right? Even better than the dollar store or Dollar Tree where I’ve gotten seeds before cuz
some of these seeds are super rare. You’re never going to find them anywhere else. And actually,
Luke probably is actually losing money at a dollar a pack on some of these seeds. Really, honestly,
guys, from what I talked about. So, anyways, yeah, some of these peppers are already on their ways
to running out. Oh, the havanada seeds are almost out, guys. Sorry you won’t be able to get those.
But he still got plenty of the Oh, these ones are almost out, too. These are the other ones I
picked. See, guys, the ones that I’m picking out. I know they’re the super rare ones. They’re the
ones you should be getting, too. I know my seeds, man. All right. So, anyways, they got lots of
different beans here left. Lots of stuff for you guys to get. Oh, and then I want to show you guys.
Oh, here’s all the basil. Actually, let’s see what basil are selling good. Oh, wow. That’s cool. The
Italian large basil they’re almost out of in the Genevie. So, like that to me is super funny.
Like I hate these, but they’re the bestselling cuz they’re the most popular. Cuz that’s what
people know. I want you guys once again to grow the uncommon ones. And that’s why I love seed
companies. Like if you just go to a standard, you know, like big box store, they’re just going
to sell like this the regular basil. You’ll never find the lime basil. You’ll never find the holy
basil. You’ll never find the lemon basil, right? You won’t find the licorice or the Thai basil
or the dwarf Greek basil, right? So many cool varieties. Oh, and look, holy basil. Another kind
I got. They’re almost sold out of these, too. All right. Anyway, so once they pick all the seeds,
all the seeds get picked and then they basically go into a little bin like this. So, we won’t say
whose bin this is, but they live in Sheridan, Illinois. They got a bunch of seeds. So, they
have a person, not a machine, that picks these seeds for you, employing American workers. I think
Luke employs like over two dozen people here. Um, they get the seeds picked and then they basically
take it over to one of these machines. All right, guys. So now I want to share with you guys how
Mi Gardener makes sure you guys get all the seed packets you ordered. And they will never short you
or send you more than what you ordered. They’re going to send you exactly what you ordered.
So when the order is picked, which is all done manually, they’re going to go ahead and then
uh take out your order sheet. We want to say who this is. We’re going to go ahead and scan the
order sheet. And then it basically pulls up the order. It says scan verify package contents. So
now what we need to do is we need to take each of these seed packs and we put it under the barcode
reader and it scans one. So then once I scan it, it says one of 13 lines verified. So now I got to
scan each additional seed pack. All right guys, so as you scan this basically it takes these
off. All right. So now I scan them all and it says uh 13 of 13 lines were verified for this
order. Mark as contents verified. So yeah, these are all the seeds. I could press contents
verified. And then now we’re ready to basically um put all the seeds in the bubble mailer packet.
All right. Now we got all the seeds going in. And then of course we got the last one which is
basically they give you a free seed envelope. So you guys could save your own seeds in here. This
and then you can label like the seeds that you’re saving. Also of course acts as their business card
and tells about the MI Gardener philosophy. So we’re just going to shove this in there. And then
we’re going to take off the sticky thing. Stick it down. All right. I should sign this pack cuz I I I
I pack this up myself. We won’t show the person’s address. And then this is go going out in today’s
mail. So then they have these big bins where they basically just drop in all the packages that go
out. On some days they could do 1,000 packages a day. So that is how they pack up the seeds at
here at Mi Gardener. you guys could get them. So, of course, the best time to order seeds is right
now while they’re having their sale. So, you guys are going to be ready for the next year’s growing
season. And maybe if you guys are like lucky like me to live in a zone 9, you could be growing some
of these out and still planting them this year. And they’re going to do great over the winter
time. I think the last part of this episode, we’re going to sit down and interview Luke from
MI Gardener and talk about gardening and his amazing store here in Michigan. All right, guys.
So, now the pleasure of introducing to you guys Luke Marian of Am I Gardener. We’re going to ask
him some questions about the Mi Gardener business, but also more importantly, Am I Gardener YouTube
channel? So, me personally, how I learned about Luke is not because he started a business, Mi
Gardener. Actually, I learned about Luke and what I thought originally of MI Gardner is his YouTube
channel because that’s how far back I go with Luke. I’ve been watching him since he was a kid
and he started making YouTube videos on YouTube. Um, so Luke, the first question I have for you is
why did you start a YouTube channel to help teach people how to grow food? Because that’s what I
learned about you first. Really? Yeah. So, um, so when I was starting out, uh, I was in high school
and I basically had a passion to to encourage kids my age about learning where real food came from.
Um, I grew up in a family that was a family of farmers. Um, maybe farmers that you and I would
both disagree with their farming practices, but like they were a family of farmers and so
they grew up around plants. I grew up around plants and I grew up in a generation where ketchup
was considered a vegetable. As crazy as that is, uh, French fries were considered a vegetable
because though it’s a potato, it’s, you know, it’s a vegetable. You know, it’s a, it’s a part of your
healthy foods. And furthermore, you’d ask someone, you’d ask a kid where a tomato or an apple came
from, and they’d say from the grocery store. And that was like, oh my gosh, there is such a
disconnect between people and where their food comes from and what is real food. And so I just
set out, made it my life mission to show people that growing your own food wasn’t that difficult.
And that was actually where I stumbled across your channel. Um, you were undeniably, and I will
say it publicly, I’ve said it publicly before, you and two others were literally the foundation
for what made me not only confident that I could show people how to garden, cuz you were already
doing it, but also you educated me on some unique varieties. Um I mean you talked about the the
scarlet runners I know you probably but the Kakai pumpkin yeah that pumpkin we started carrying
that probably 7 8 years ago specifically because I came across a video where you were talking about
eating the seeds right out of the pumpkin cuz it was holless. I thought oh my gosh that’s amazing.
That’s absolutely incredible. We should go find that. So we found a local farmer that wanted to
uh wanted to grow that for us. And so like your your presence has been a big reason for a lot of
the varieties we carry, um the information we talk about and encouraging people to grow their
own food because like um I’ve said this too, the best way to increase your your standard of
living without increasing your cost of living is because it’s getting more and more expensive
to eat healthy is by growing it yourself. And so I just I wanted to make it a way for people to to
to digestibly say I could do this. I can make this happen. And so from basically from early on when I
even when I was in high school, I realized like I have a passion. I want to encourage people to grow
their own food and I want to uh make it accessible accessible for people to be able to kind of learn
how to grow their own food uh via the internet because um YouTube was just I mean well you know
too YouTube was just just starting out. So, like aside from making dumb videos and and just kind
of uh they call it brain rot instead of watching, you know, brain rot and dumb stuff, it was like
I’m gonna I’m gonna add value into someone’s life. And that was that was the start of of YouTube. And
it was also the start of like my passion of eating healthier, trying to eat cleaner. And um that was
also where you kind of come in, you know, QU as well. When I was in high school, I was eating
a very standard American diet. I was actually, believe it or not, I was 225 lbs. Wow, that’s hard
to believe. I was 225 pounds. Um, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure uh in college as a
junior in college. Um, even though I had a garden, I was not I wouldn’t say I was I was I was growing
the food and but it was supplementing your diet, not making up your diet. Right. Exactly. It was
it was it was a small portion of my diet. It was a big portion of my lifestyle, which was weird.
And so ultimately went to the doctor and he said, “Luke, I’m going to see you in here in 6 months
if you don’t change something radically.” And I don’t want to tell you how I’m going to see you,
but you might be under a white bed sheet. That’s what he told me. He said he said, “You might
be under a white bed sheet.” Well, I mean, that’s the first sign of a heart heart attack and
stuff is like you don’t get a second chance. You get a heart attack and you’re absolutely flatlined
and you’re not here. Absolutely. And so, uh, discount juicers, I was watching your videos on
juicer comparisons, and I picked out a juicer, started juicing, started running, uh, ate
completely plant-based for a solid year. Um, still eat 90% 80 90% plant-based. Um, I do my
very best to, you know, with your inspiration, the information that you pro provide on
your channel to to change my lifestyle. Um, and so that was like that was a fuel for like,
oh my gosh, not only can I grow my own food, but this actually is it’s not an ingredient of my
food. It actually is my whole food. You know what I’m saying? Like cuz like so many people,
they grow a tomato and they’re like, well, what do I do with it now? It’s like eat it. Just
just eat it. Make a meal out of, you know, make a meal out of sweet corn and potatoes, tomatoes, and
and little, you know, bush beans and like eat eat a eat a whole plate full of color. And that’s what
we really like to do even at our house. Like when stuff’s in season, we’ll make a gigantic salad
and you should eat super clean and healthy. And um and so that’s the the passion behind the videos
too is cuz I I was there, you know, I know that you you talk really openly about your health scare
and what made you go raw. And so my health scare was very much the same where like I had a doctor
staring me down in front of my face saying, “You are on a path that is very dangerous and you’ve
got to change something.” So I went I went fully in. I just just dove right in. It taught mental
fortitude cuz the world nowadays tells you, “Oh, your food has to be this and this and this.”
You have to buy it all pre-prepared. You got to stop at a fast food joint. Like, it’s not set
up for somebody like us that wants to, you know, make make meals out of what we grew, right? Like,
and make stuff at home. Like, before I was coming here, I was picking my figs off my tree and
prepping them for freeze drying. Yeah. You know, like there’s no breaks. Like, I I there’s
always stuff I need to harvest and deal with, and I’m I’m so far behind. Yeah. And so like
so that like when someone stares you down in your face and doesn’t give you an option besides
change something radically. Yeah. Um it’s like you you have this fuel that just gets you I mean it
gets you up in the morning and it’s like it’s like that’s what’s going to keep me going, but it’s
so radical that that it’s like the world looks at society doesn’t agree with you. Oh my gosh,
the amount of people that would talk to you like you can’t do that. Like my mom tried to talk me
out of my changing my diet and all these things. the amount of people that look at you and go,
“Well, what about this? Are you getting this? Oh, that’s crazy. Oh, I could never.” And then
but they then they see me and they’re like, “Maybe there’s something to that.” You know, my
like I I was a I was a catalyst even for my own direct family that thought I was crazy. Absolutely
crazy. And I said, “What’s crazier? me continuing doing what I’m doing or changing something which
is like you know John Kohler hasn’t aged in in 30 years you know you haven’t aged in 30 years I
look pretty much the same I mean people comment on that a lot like yeah it’s true cuz I mean I I
I live this I eat once again guys I don’t just say eat purple stuff cuz I don’t do it I do it and
look what happens like you could like we could severely minimize the aging process by eating high
phytonutrient- richch foods foods. Even better than eating them is growing them and processing
them in the best ways, which is what I share. And Luke, I want to give you a hug here cuz I’m so
glad that you know, I mean, this is the reason why I make my videos so that people like Luke, right,
could be saved because the doctors aren’t going to tell you the way to do it. They’re not going to
tell you to eat healthy. They’re not going to tell you to like make meals out of your garden. And
I see so many gardeners, made me so sad, Luke, when I see so many gardeners, people probably
ordering seeds from you all the time. Most of the people they just like, “Okay, yeah, I got a
couple tomatoes for my garden. This is great.” No, we want it to be not just your lifestyle, like
gardening lifestyle, but we want you also maybe we should make we should both work on making more
videos and showing people how we use the food to make a whole meal out of our gardens. Like just
yesterday actually before I came here after I after I prep figs, I went around my garden, picked
basil tops that are that are almost flowering. I picked all the different greens, like two of each
green I grow, all different kinds of greens. I basically put it in the blender with some tomatoes
and then all my greens and then I put a onion in there, all like, you know, local and homegrown.
And then I put in like some cashews. Actually, they’re actually they’re fermented almonds last
night with some different herbs and spices and blended it up under vacuum. And then I basically
just ate it with a spoon. So, it’s just like my blended greens with tomatoes and onions. Sometimes
I’ll put some zucchini in there, too. Like it’s just basically a it’s like a blended salad. It’s
like a salad, but then I’m too lazy to chew it, so I just vacuum blend and then I just eat it
while I’m watching my Netflix. But it’s like that meal. I’m like totally full. I don’t need to eat
anything else, right? And it’s like this is how you could use your food even if you’re not growing
a lot, right? It’s just I did onions, tomatoes, and greens and with maybe some nuts and seeds.
If you have your Kakai pumpkins you’re growing, you could use your your Kakai pumpkin seeds,
right? M and it’s it’s and some spices. I use some turmeric. Actually, I’m growing tumeric. I
could actually I put a turmeric leaf in there. So, you know, which is something most people would not
eat. And it’s it’s easy just to eat what you grow, right? Every day at least make it a goal to eat
one thing out of your garden. Hopefully make a whole meal out of your garden or most of what
you’re eating in a meal is from your garden. And think how can I be creative? Like if you have
a lot of peppers, like I like to juice a ton of peppers, make pepper juice, and then use that as
my soup base, which you could heat. I don’t heat my soup base. I just blend it with some nuts and
seeds and then pick additional vegetables and then put put that in. I’ll put a link down below to my
video on how I do my uh pepper soup like minimally processed to maintain the most phytonutrients
so I can have the best health benefits, right? But yeah, I think that’s very important,
Luca, to address like how do you use more than just a tomato on your burger that you’re buying
from caffos and you know make meals based around the food you’re growing with. Yeah. Okay. Maybe
you want to add in some fish or some other foods in there. Not all plant-based, which is fine,
but we should really eating mostly plants like like you’re doing. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s
that’s been that’s been a huge thing that we have continually tried to strive towards is like
educating people on the fact that like you said, when you add a tomato to a burger, there’s the
aspect of you’re not getting the full nutrition, the full potential out of your garden.
you’re adding like an ingredient to a meal, but it’s also changing the mentality where we see
again society has all of these I would say like meal inspiration ideas that it’s like when you see
what a meal like oh that’s spaghetti that’s what spaghetti should look like that’s what a burger
should look like those are meals but then you tell someone oh I made a you know I made a I made
a a beet soup I made a beet soup from my garden I added in all these fresh ingredients to it. Um or
or even likewise like we we will sometimes take uh we’ll take spring leafy greens. We’ll throw
in some fresh chopped strawberries. We’ll throw in some uh we make some some micro greens. We’ll
throw some micro greens on there. Um we’ll make uh like a cashew uh salad dressing. We’ll make
like like a cashew nut salad dressing or um some type of like raw salad dressing or even some just
lemon juice and v uh and olive oil or whatever and just make like a simple little like a vinegarette
and like that’s our meal. We have a huge salad, a whole thing, but that would be someone’s side,
right? You that’s someone’s side. That’s our meal. And um you know, zucchini noodles. We’ll make
zucchini noodles. Zucchini noodles. I was going to say like you spiralize zucchini, make the
zucchini noodles. I have other videos where I share the equipment to do that. And then you
could use your tomatoes to make a, you know, sauce or then use your basil to make a pesto and
that goes on top. It’s basically all out of your garden. You didn’t have to buy pasta from a store.
Absolutely. And see people people see that and they go, “That’s that’s not spaghetti.” And it’s
like this whole idea of, you know, we we go to the we go we do still go to the grocery store. Um,
and you’ll see uh like a like a a nutmilk, right? And and and it’s always I find it so interesting
how the food industry has lobbyed to almost attack healthier, more plant-based options because
you’ll see someone like um uh there was uh I think it was Just Egg is something that that I
saw like recently. Um, I don’t personally use it or whatever, but I just saw like the the brand
Just Egg, and it’s like a vegan, it’s like a plant-based egg substitute, and they put on there
that it’s it used to be Just Egg. And now it’s like it’s all it’s all branded. It’s all marketed
to basically dissuade someone from saying, “Well, it’s not egg. It’s, you know, whatever.” Or
like like ice cream, like dairy ice cream. Now, it’s like they make sure it’s almost like
warning labels where it’s like warning, there’s no dairy in this. It’s not actually ice
cream. It’s completely it’s plant-based. And so if you’re someone that’s that’s waiting into
this this lifestyle of eating cleaner, eating healthier, or trying to minimize your your your
animal products in your diet as much as possible, um you get these you get all these warning signs
thrown at you because they’re trying to make their food seem like, you know, they’re trying to
they’re trying to make their food seem like what we have come to know and love with like ice
cream or butter or whatever it might be, but it’s plant-based versions or healthier versions left.
Well, I don’t even I would disagree with you, Luke, on that. Like, sometimes even these
plant-based versions are even worse than the real version because they have all these additives,
extra sugars. They’re processed with different ways. And like, we just need to start eating real
food that you grow. I mean, go kill a cow or kill your chickens. If you want to eat some meat,
go fish, right? That’s better than all these, you know, like man-made things and things
that you buy in the store that are basically ultrarocessed. I completely 100% agree with you.
Actually, we don’t disagree whatsoever. Or like to make frozen like instead of making like instead
of buying ice cream, man, freeze some of your, you know, peaches and then put them through the
Triest backspin vacuum blender to make it into ice cream 100% peaches that are fluffy and amazing.
Yeah. No, completely agree. Completely. I’m only simply saying like in in the example of when
you’re making spaghetti, if you make spaghetti with zucchini noodles and like a homemade pesto,
someone would look at that and say, “That’s not that’s not spaghetti.” because it doesn’t it
doesn’t fit that that well it’s not traditional spaghetti it’s not traditional spaghetti and it’s
like well do I need to give you the fine print do I need to tell you that it’s not really spaghetti
but kind of spagh it’s like it’s spaghetti if for all intents and purposes it’s a different form
of spaghetti you know what I mean the the the noodles are not made with wheat products they’re
made with vegetables and the pesto it’s the same pesto you’d have but it might not have it might
not have parmesan cheese maybe it does or maybe it’s just it’s an alternate version. And um that’s
something that I think a lot of people struggle with when they’re looking at the stuff coming out
of their garden is they might see an ingredient, but they don’t see a full meal. And so that’s
what I would encourage people to like, hey, how can I turn this into something that I used to eat
so I won’t quote unquote miss what I used to eat, use the same herbs and spices and seasonings,
so you get the flavor, same textures, but now you’re eating out of your garden. It’s going to
be a lot healthier than buying processed foods. And the big thing too, they all say, “Yeah, my my
I have a garden, but my food bill keeps going up.” The how why is that? Yeah. Like they’re doing
something wrong. How how is that? It’s because they’re using them as ingredients and they’re
supplementing most of their grocery budget still from the store. They’re, you know, they’re getting
burger buns and burger patties, but they’re using a tomato. Yeah. So, use all your tomatoes and put
them in a blender and make a tomato based soup and then add in other ingredients to flavor up your
soup. Now you have a tomato soup all out of your garden. Okay. Maybe you want to buy some pasta
shells and cook those. But use use the grocery store stuff as an ingredient. Yes. Instead of
your garden as the ingredient. That’s what I do. Okay. Like I use most of my garden. Then okay,
I bought some fermented cashews or some nuts and I add that in as an ingredient to the base
of what I grow. And that’s how you’re going to get the most money saving capability out of your
garden. Absolutely. Because rather than rather than an ingredient coming from your garden and
you’re supple your meal from the from the store, you’re getting immediately the meal is from the
from the garden and you’re supplementing from the store. Absolutely. And that’s where you’re like,
oh, that’s where the light bulb pops on and it’s like, oh my gosh, my grocery bill has plummeted to
like next to nothing because I’m actually eating meals from my garden. So that that goes back
to increasing your standard of living without increasing your cost of living. That’s a huge
mantra of mine. I just I I constantly say that because once people realize it and once people
start seeing that, they’re like, “Oh my goodness, this really can become a sustainable way of
living.” And I mean, and you’re just talking about money savings. I’m not even going to talk about
like money savings in terms of your food bill, but in terms of your health insurance or your health
bill, if you have a co-ay or if you’re don’t have insurance like I do, right? I I really like you’re
like investing in your health by eating more out of your garden instead of the processed foods out
of the grocery store because now you’re going to be healthier because of it. It’s going to save
you guys a lot of money with health care cost and future health problems down the road. Like for
example, I was just thinking zucchini. You know, we went over some of that one of that sweet
zucchini you guys are trusty, right? Yeah. That that zucchini here and zucchini produces a lot.
And I know all you guys have probably zucchini you give to your neighbors. But if you sit there and
you juice the zucchini, which I’ve made zucchini juice before, and now you could use your zucchini
juice as your soup base that then you add other ingredients to, right? You could use virtually any
vegetable as a soup base or, you know, whether you want to juice it and remove some of the fiber
or whether you want to like vacuum blend it, which I also, you know, share with you guys on my
other channel, discount juicers. You can process all your plants and just concentrate them. So now
you could make that the base and then add other ingredients just to make it, you know, taste good,
flavor better or whatever to make it more of a meal. Add your add add beans. Maybe you grew your
beans. I mean, Luke has a lot of beans he’ll sell you and you could grow your own beans, too, and
add that to your salad. Make beans the main staple and have a little green salad out of your garden
as well. You know, I love to eat just b I like to eat actually a meal of the fava beans. You want
to share how you eat the fava beans, Luke? So, I like to honestly just boil them in salt water
or I steam them and I spritz them with salt water and it is the simplest, most amazing way to eat. I
we just a a super quick simple snack or even a in the case of some it might be even a meal because
they’re just so filling filling and delicious. We also will sometimes we’ll soak them in salt water
and then we’ll throw them on the grill and grill them and then that kind of steams them inside the
pod. And then once you just you chuck them open, it’s almost like when you eat sunflower seeds, how
sometimes uh the the salt water kind of penetrates in and you get that kind of salty salty flavor
on the on the actual seed inside the sunflower. It’s such a great summer snack. I mean, when you
sit down at a a a bowl of of fava beans and you had a bunch of people that have never tried them
before and then they try them for the first time, I like to I love to give people new foods or
foods that they might not have thought of or ways food is cooked they might not otherwise have
thought of. And it’s those light bulb moments that that’s that’s really exciting. Maybe I’d have
cooking classes here now. Yeah, maybe. I would love that. and how to incorporate this as your
meal instead of an ingredient in your meal. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s the next level.
I think there needs to be definitely needs to be more information, more education about
that online and actually offline too because I think that’s a really I’m glad we really talked
about this cuz it’s not often talked about and this is also very important because this is how
I live my life, you know, and but it’s like I I barely rarely explain this to people out there.
Yeah, it’s definitely something that the I live for the light bulb moment for sure. I love like
showing people how easy gardening is, they say, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize it was that easy.”
I I like feed off of that. That’s great. Or when I give them something like I give them a steamed,
you know, a steamed fava bean um or like a grilled fava bean and and uh they might have heard of
fava beans, but they never thought of trying it. But then you put a bowl in front of them
and it’s like, “Well, I don’t want to be rude, so I’m going to try one.” And then they try one
and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is actually really great.” you know, and it’s like, and
so it’s like we as also going back culturally, I see time and time and time again, people that
that they’re self-proclaimed picky eaters, but they forget that old saying of how do you know you
don’t like it if you haven’t tried it? You know, people just automatically think they don’t like
something and then it’s sometimes it’s in the way that it’s prepared. Like I growing up, I hated
Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts were the most disgusting thing in the Well, they’re also bought
from the store and just either frozen, thought out, or didn’t know any better. Um, growing up in
a in a in a simple Midwest family home, she’d buy them frozen and they just tasted like farts. They
just tasted they tasted horrible. They tasted like a dirty sock. Well, probably cuz they’re harvested
too old and then they get frozen and they get more damaged and then the cell walls break open.
Then they kind of have a stronger flavor. And but you you take them you take them after the
first frost. Yeah. Well, then they get sweeter after the frost. First frost they get sweeter. You
cook them in the oven rather than boil them. You cook them in the oven with like a tiny I mean
tiny bit of tiny bit of like oil or or um some type of of fat to kind of richen them up a little
bit. And we would use like uh we take um balsamic uh vinegar, drop drizzle a little balsamic vinegar
over top of them. And in my personal opinion, there’s there is not a much better way to eat
a Brussels sprout. And people say, “Where’s the bacon?” And it’s like, you can add bacon if
you want. If you’re the type of person that eats bacon, we don’t eat a lot of bacon. I don’t recall
the last time I’ve actually eaten bacon. But, uh, there’s there’s so many amazing flavors that come
out of properly cooked vegetables that the the, um, the the supermarket system has just you’ll
just never get because it’s not convenient or maybe the shelf life, it’s not set up for fresh
food and keeping the quality fresh or harvesting them at the right time for the best taste or
flavor. It’s just set up for financial profit. Absolutely. and you you give someone that amazing
food experience and then they’re like, “Wow, I get it.” And I I live for that light bulb moment. It’s
great. So, yeah, I’m just glad he got to come out and and see what we’re doing because I think a
lot of people, they see us online or they they know about us, but they don’t, you know, I think I
think it’s kind of fun to get to to feed off that energy cuz I think you and I we have very similar
passions, very similar energy. And I love that. I I think it’s great especially just because I think
also energy and passion is what encourages other people to to do that to get excited about things.
Exactly. Because if you if you just if you just seemed very impartial to it or or this is my job
cuz this is my job. I mean I’m not this is my this is my hobby. Luke, this is not my job. So this
this is this is my job. This is my job. But it doesn’t to me it doesn’t seem like it’s a job for
you cuz you’re happy and actually everybody here is happy cuz if they’re not happy they’re going
home. Yeah. Absolutely. So like we yeah you know like this it there’s not a there’s not a day that
is not enjoyable for me and so uh I love it and I think for other people like it’s it’s that passion
that keeps me going and when that uh spills over in other people then they can become vessels
to like spill over into other people and that’s what creates that and that what makes a change.
Exactly. Yeah. So, like I’m glad I played a part in you starting a YouTube channel, gardening
or growing more and then eating healthy and now even doing this to even reach more people. And
actually, you know what? Like in the olden days, I was like, I’d watch your channel. I’m like, yeah,
I’m ahead of Luke. I got more subscribers than him. And then I seen like Luke’s channel go and
he’s got like the million subscriber plaque. And I’m I’m almost there, guys. So, if you if you’re
watching now, click the subscribe button. I’m like 55,000 people away from a million subscribers on
my YouTube channel. Help me out, guys. Subscribe and hit the little bell now. Oh, and then other
things I wanted to comment on like Luke. So, I mean, you cook five beans the hard way. I
basically just harvest them fresh when they’re still tender and young, not like old mature. I put
them in the Instant Pot with some water underneath and just steam them for 3 minutes. And actually,
I’ll sit there and eat the shell out, not the strings on the two ends, but the middle. And
then I just eat the beans out. And then, I mean, I eat them plain. I like them plain. Maybe, you
know, some people like salt on them. If you if you need some salt to eat the fab beans, I’d say do it
cuz that’s a that’s a good thing. A little bit of salt gets you to eat your fava beans, but I just
steam them. It’s way simpler, way easier. They don’t burn. It’s all automatic cuz I’m like the
bachelor guy. Just Instant Pot, 3 minutes, walk away. It beeps at you when it when it’s done. Oh,
and then you talked about like Brussels sprouts, like the best way to eat Brussels sprouts.
Like I know you put them in the oven and yeah, different different cooking techniques will give
you different var different flavors. Um, but the best way I’ve tasted Brussels sprouts actually is
I basically just cut them in half and I freeze dry them. And then when I freeze dry them, they just
like when you eat them, they melt in your mouth. So, actually, you gave me the idea. I’m going to
cut them in half and then drizzle them with like balsamic vinegar and then freeze dry them. Oh,
that’d be awesome. And then like it’s going to be just like the crunchy snack that you could just
like like when I travel, right? Actually, I have a whole freeze-dried, you know, suitcase full of
stuff actually that I’m selling at the event I’m going to. Um, but it’s an easy travel food also
for preparedness. You know, if you don’t feel like making dinner that night, like I have freeze-dried
full recipes of my soups and things for my garden from like 2 years ago for my actually I’ll put
a link down below how I use my excess bolting lettuce to basically freeze dried it. How I have
like lettuce in a myar bag that can store up to 25 years now that I could eat what anytime I travel
or whenever I’m feeling lazy. I don’t want to make dinner or whenever, right? or or if like the
grocery store shut down like I’m still good. Yeah. So, it’s like Yeah, I think food preparation
techniques is very important so you guys could eat more of the food. I would always encourage you
guys to do the minimal processing as possible so that you will eat it. Um, of course, you know,
some of you guys may want to do more processing, but the less processing the better because
when you do process less, you retain more of the valuable plant phytonutrients and components
that will then give you the health benefits you’re looking for. But of course, eating some Brussels
sprouts versus none is always better than that. But, you know, I I get into the fine detail.
Actually, I did a really good video with my friend Dr. Jeff Pierce. I’ll put a link down below where
he talks about how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and all the different because he’s a medical
doctor um tenants to that and then I share with you guys how to take it to the next level cuz you
know I’ve been doing this like for 30 years now. All right Luke, so we’re here at the MI Gardener.
So we talked about why you started your YouTube channel, your passion about eating healthier
and getting people out there to eat healthier, but why did you transition from a YouTube channel
now into a store and actually a business? like what what spurred you on? Really? Honestly,
it just came down to me being a gardener first and then realizing that when I looked out at the
products being offered, there was there was there was gaps. There was just there was stuff that
was either being corners being cut, there was unnecessary profitering. I’m all for free market.
I’m all for, you know, businesses being business. But the problem is is that they were masquerading
as businesses that cared. But then when I got when I looked underneath the hood, I realized that they
didn’t really care about the consumer that much. It was all just smoke and mirrors. And so I was
like, well, okay, if if me trying to buy seeds or me trying to have access to a wide variety of of
heirloom non- GMO vegetable seeds is is difficult, maybe other people are struggling with that
as well. um fertilizers. Like I was, you know, I was looking for a way that I could fertilize
my plants, not have to go back and fertilize and fertilize and fertilize constantly and create
a dependency cycle that allowed me to fertilize once and and be done. Um whether be, you know,
garden products, just stuff that didn’t last or stuff that was that was cheaply made, stuff that
was not truly intended to to serve a purpose. It was more or less intended to make a profit. And so
I like to say that we are gardeners taking care of gardeners. That’s been my my whole mantra is when
when you experience the MI Gardener difference, people stick around because our quality is great
and our price is great, but it’s because they get that that that feeling. Whether you come into the
shop or even talk to one of our staff on the phone or send us an email or come on to our website, you
experience that that welcoming we are here to help you. There have been many times where someone’s
come into the shop, they’ve asked questions, they’ve left the shop with nothing in their hands
because I told them, “Look, the solution you’re looking for, you can do it at home with homemade
ingredients. You don’t need to buy anything here. I’m not here to spend your money. I’m not here to
spend your money. I’m here to help you.” And then they build that trust. Um, I had a lady actually
just just about a week ago, she had some powdery mildew coming on her squash. And I told her, I
said, I said, ‘Look, we sell copper fungicide. That’s fine. You can use copper fungicide if you
want, but you’ve got one plant on your patio. You’re going to spend $18. You’re going to spend
$18 on copper fungicide. Look, go home, take a spray bottle, mix up, take a gallon of, take like
a gallon jug, take one gallon of water, put in 2 tbsp of baking soda, a drop of dish soap, shake it
up, sprit spritz down your plants with it every 3 or 4 days. It’ll it might not completely remove
it, but it’ll slow it down, allow you to enjoy your your squash for longer. And in some cases,
if you catch it early enough, preventatively, you you don’t you don’t even get powdery mildew
for a long time. And um I had another guy. So she walked out. She was she was she was just in
disbelief that she wasn’t forced to not forced to buy something something wasn’t pushed on her.
I had another guy uh he had uh an aphid problem. And I told him I said I said, “Look, you know, we
do have we do have different products to take care of aphids, but you’ve got one tomato plant and one
one pepper plant on your patio. One tomato plant, one pepper plant.” He had a he had an apartment
not too far from here. And I said, “Honestly, do you have any like do you have like bar soap?
Like do you have any like like actual bar soap? He said, “Yeah, no, we have we have bar soap. Um like
like Castile soap.” And I said I said, “All you need like Dr. Bronner soap. Just get yourself some
soap. Lather it up in your hands. Just lather up a bunch of soap. Put it in your water. Spritz it
down. Spritz your plants down with that that that soapy water. And that is all you need. All you
need to remove those aphids. A lot of them will just be gone. Or you could spray them off with a
high pressure water. Don’t even need soapy water. Just spray them off with some high pressure water.
Just keep doing it every day. And and stay up on it. Stay up on it. And I told him, I said, “The
final thing is your plants are attracting aphids because they’re telling you something. They’re
stressed. So, it’s been hot. It’s been dry. Water them a little more frequently. Maybe maybe put
like a little mulch around the pots. uh keep them keep them nice and well watered. Your plants are
going to respond to the better growing conditions with less stress and they’re less likely to be
susceptible to pests. And he said, “I cannot believe the amount of garden centers that I have
been in where I cannot walk out without something in my hand that I purchased because because I I
feel pressured to buy a certain thing.” He said, “You not only informed me, you taught me, but
I actually saved money in the process.” And so he said, he said, “I’ll come back next spring and
buy some seeds from you.” So like that’s my thing is like I’m not here to spend people’s money. I’d
rather teach them and help them than to, you know, we’re gardeners for gardeners. It’s when we
look out for each other. The the the profit comes later. It’s that’s that’s an afterthought
because when profit’s the only thing in front of your mind that’s it blinds you. You’re so blinded
by profit that that your that your your moral compass becomes more focused on on how do I make
my next dollar than it is how do I you know how do I take care of gardeners and truly change people
and uh and change the way we think about food. So that’s that’s my whole driving force is just
helping people to grow more food. Yeah. No, it sounds like how me I am in my business. you know,
I’m like solution based. So, like I want to know people’s problem. They always like write in John,
what’s the best equipment or juice or blender to do this? I’m like, well, I want to understand
more about what you’re trying to do cuz and then what equipment do you have already? Cuz maybe the
equipment you have already might be already good and you don’t need to buy extra equipment. Like,
why should you buy extra equipment? You don’t have to. And some of the equipment you buy will last
a long time. So, it’s like why should you upgrade if the current machine now and machine you bought
10 years ago will make a similar quality juice, which which is true. Yeah, you know, but I mean
there is new equipment that will up the game, but nonetheless, I’m always trying to help people
out with a minimal cost because I mean that’s the kind of person I am and I unfortunately Luke, I
wish more people in the country, including people that are in charge of the country. We’re, you
know, not not quite as profit- based or profit driven and just living for the heart that like
literally this is what I think. I think help thy fellow man, right? That’s why we’re all here to
just help make the world help people in the world to make this place a better place. And you know,
not like that we’re we’re against profit. Hey, I love selling stuff. I got to sell stuff to
keep alive and keep doing what I’m doing so I could have my hobby and spend my time to drop by
Luke’s place like you know um for fun. You know, this is to hanging out with Luke today is like the
funnest thing I could do today, man. seeing his place and showing me, giving me the back, back of
the house tour and letting you guys see all this stuff cuz there’s probably never been a video
like this on Luke’s Place before cuz I have my own style and I do long content which YouTube
doesn’t like either and my channel’s not even monetized anymore. So, if you want to support me,
please join my Patreon at patreon.com/growingyour green since I got demonetized because of YouTube
did not like some of my content. Anyways, uh Luke, so I remember one of the sayings you would
say after every episode and I always really didn’t get it or I didn’t particularly care
for it. You always said grow big or go home, which I thought like if you’re not going to go go
for it all the way then don’t even bother growing at all. And now I know you’ve changed your you’re
saying to uh grow big as you can see the big sign behind us. What’s what’s a why did you what’s the
change and what’s going on? Yeah. So the when we first started it was not necessarily like we
didn’t think about we didn’t think about the the dissuasion of people to grow a garden like
if you can’t grow if you can’t go all in don’t do it at all. That’s that was never really the
intention. It was like anything anything that you should do you should at least put 110% effort in.
If you only have a room, if you only have room on your your your apartment patio or your fire escape
or your, you know, your backyard, you only have enough room for so many beds. If you’re going to
do it, you should give it 110% effort because if you if you do something with 50% effort, you’re
going to get probably less than 50% results. You know, it’s like the universe has a really funny
way of just of of showing you how much effort you put into something because it’s very indicative
of the results you get. And so when we we thought about that, we we had a lot of people that wrote
in saying, “Yeah, I I don’t I don’t like that saying, grow big or go home. Just kind of seems
like kind of seems like if I can’t be my best, I shouldn’t be anything at all.” And uh and so I
said, “No, no, no.” I said, “You don’t understand. It’s not not it’s not a it’s not a challenge. It’s
not a competition. It’s not that’s what it sound like to me. I mean, plus you’re you’re a young
kid and you’re kind of more maybe idealistic and you’re getting more wise. So So the whole point
behind grow big or grow bigger like that’s our our saying is grow bigger. And grow bigger or grow
big is just about you pushing yourself to be the a better version of yourself every day. Whether
it’s trying a new variety you never tried before, it’s pushing you outside your comfort zone because
if you’re not if you’re not continually growing, you’re not continually adapting, you’re
dying. You you’re you’re stagnating. And there’s so many things to be said about that. And
um and so from like from a business perspective, like we’re always trying to do better, always
trying to to be better. And cuz if you stagnate, you die. But also like within your garden, within
your lifestyle, if you’re not eating healthier, if you’re not uh running, like I I run I run about
I’m not the world’s best runner, but I run about 12 miles a week. Um about 3 miles a day, 4 days a
week. And uh so like I I’m I’m running more. I ask me 3 years ago if I ran, my answer would be no. I
run if someone’s chasing me, you know, you know, like like like uh now I run because it’s my way
like as I start to get older, like I want that physical activity. I want to feel I want to feel
I want to feel 10 years younger all the time. Um you know, when I eat, can I eat healthier? Can
I can I cut out some of my processed food? Can I cut out sugar unnecessarily? Can I cut out um you
know, what lifestyle changes can I do better? And um and then completely overarching, how can I do
better for my community? How can I do better for my my fellow man, my fellow, you know, brother and
sister, right? How can I take care of those people that might not be as fortunate? So, like we take
a lot of our excess produce from our garden, our our farm, um that I think we’ll see later maybe.
um that that all that extra produce we donate to our local soup kitchen and food pantry because
they a lot of them they don’t have the ability to even have a garden. And so they’re eating
a lot of processed food, a lot of boxed food, um a lot of food that is very highly shelf stable.
Um and because of that they don’t experience what it tastes like. Um, in fact, I uh I dropped off a
bunch of zucchinis because talk about zucchinis, I mean, we we had we had we had like 50 zucchinis
and we had eaten so many. We’d frozen them. We did so much with them. And so we dropped off like
30 at our local soup kitchen and a lady that was a lady that was uh helping out there, she said,
you know, it is so awesome. So it brings so much joy to her to be able to serve fresh fruits and
vegetables because she said we don’t get fresh fruits and vegetables unless they are donated
by someone. She said a lot of time she said a lot of times and she said a lot of times we serve
people what we what we can get. It’s a nonprofit so like she said we’ll take some of the donations
and we’ll go out and get get stuff. But she said, “We try to serve food that is going to be healthy
and nutritious, but there’s a lot of times I serve people food that I know is not as nutritious as
it could be.” And she said, “When I’m looking at your your fresh zucchini, I’m thinking of all the
ways that I could feed someone fresh zucchini. How can I get fresh zucchini into all these people’s
hands?” And how did she do it? And so so she said she said, “I’m probably going to use part of it to
make some zucchini muffins cuz that’s kind of a a hot topic. people love, you know, cooked zucchini
muffins. It’s a way to stretch the zucchini. But she said, she said, you know, we’ll probably
end up just slicing it up and and just serving it as a side, like, you know, fresh zucchini cuz
most of these people like you, they’re hungry, they’re going to eat. When they’re hungry, they’re
going to eat any food that’s given to them. But when they when they’re given a nice healthy side
of some fresh, you know, cooked zucchini, yeah, like tay or whatever, dip it in some dressing
or sauce. Not to mention like fresh tomatoes. Like when we get fresh tomatoes, we’re we’re
giving them like a bushel of fresh tomatoes. And uh uh a different a different lady, this is about
2 years ago. I remember this story. She said she said we when we get like a lot of gardeners and
farmers will drop off fresh tomatoes when they’re in season. When you drop off a fresh tomato
that’s like grown locally, that doesn’t come from the grocery store that’s not like ripened
with ethylene gas and shipped hundreds of miles, there’s there’s an audible response that people
have when they try a fresh tomato. And most people waiting, they they’ll be happy to eat anything.
But if if they’re freely given option A or option B and option A is a fresh garden tomato and option
B is a greenhouse tomato from the grocery store, they’re going to eat either, but if they’re given
one, they will always have a better reaction over over the other. Yeah, there’s like better
flavor compounds and smell compounds and yeah, just and and that that little kind of that
little glimpse into what a healthy lifestyle is is sometimes I believe is all it all is what
it takes to encourage encourage them to to say, “Oh my gosh, I I never would have bought a fresh.”
Cuz like sometimes farmers markets are like, you know, grocery stores don’t always have fresh
tomatoes like that, you know, at least not around here. So you go to a farmers market, but you’re
paying like $4 a pound, $5 a pound. Well, someone who’s living here, that’s all they’re that’s how
cheap they are here. Go to Sanfell, California, man. It’s like $8 a pound for some tomatoes down
there, man. So imagine, so they’re about they’re about $4 to $5 a pound here. Imagine someone on
food stamps or or someone who’s living paycheck to paycheck. They are not going to go out. That’s
like a luxury. That’s a luxury of luxuries to buy a tomato. They would never justify that. But then
they’re giving it for free and it’s like, well, it’s free. I don’t have to. I might as well just
try it. And then they try it and it’s like, oh my goodness, this is this is this is what it’s all
about. So we you’re giving back, growing bigger is like how do we grow the community? How do we help
the community? How do we nourish the community? How do we give them inspiration to eat healthier
and be healthier and meeting them where they’re at too? Because so often so often we try to change
people to fit our mold, you know, where it’s like look, they are living, they are a product of their
environment. You put a tomato in an environment, it’s its nutrition and how it grows is a product
of its environment. You come from wine country that what they say about wine. Wine tastes the the
soil terois. Yeah. The soil the soil dictates how those grapes taste, how that wine what the
yield of that wine is. And so these people, they they are in an environment where they are in
a highly processed, poor quality food environment, but they’re in a subsistence environment. And so
rather than say, well, we well just eat healthier. Why don’t you? The answer is a lot of them can’t
afford it. A lot of them can’t can’t even conceive just eating healthier. It’s like it’s like someone
who’s super in shape like yourself. And I like Oh, thanks. I’m super in shape. You look at someone,
but you look at someone you look at someone that that might that might be more more heavy set,
right? Or more more obese. And you say, “Well, just run a mile.” Well, he can’t run a mile. You
got to start off with two steps. Absolutely. Then three, and then four. Look at Look at a newborn
baby. And can’t you can’t you can’t you make your food already? Can’t you can’t you got everything?
And I guess this maybe taps into like like what I think culturally we lack empathy. Culturally I
lack empathy. I completely agree. You because we’re not raised we’re not taught this. I
mean we’re taught like reading, writing, arithmetic. We’re not we’re never taught empathy
and unless your parents taught you which I think is rare cuz I mean like my parents they both
worked. They left us kids home alone to do our own thing and then we got into trouble. Yeah. So
we’re all about meeting people where they’re at. It’s like come you just come in whether you’re
growing in a whether you’re growing in a a a planter in your your house or whether you got
10 acres and I I don’t mind. I don’t care. We’re meeting people where you’re at. If we have extra
produce, we’re going to take that to the local soup kitchen. We’re going to meet people where
they’re at. And it’s all about growing bigger. Um, so that’s like a long winded kind of story, but
that’s like that’s that’s the that’s the reason why we changed from grow big or go home. Uh, to
cuz that like again too like that if someone if someone could not afford to eat healthy like well
I might as well not even healthy eat healthy at all. Grow big or go home like go big or don’t
don’t do it at all. Whereas like this is grow bigger is just it’s meeting people where they’re
at and being like look could you make could you make a go to the next level? Could you make
any any improvement at all. Even if you can’t, I will meet you right where you’re at so
you don’t have any excuses of why you can’t. I’ll just I’ll just give it to you. I’ll just
take, you know, you just take care of you. So, um yeah. So, that’s that’s the meaning behind Grow
Bigger. I’m so glad you changed your your tagline now. And of course, my tagline since I started has
always been keep on growing. And that’s just not willy-nilly, right? Cuz like grow bigger, keep on
growing, right? Keep on growing more plants. keep on growing your brain. Keep on expanding beyond
what you currently are. You know, I’m constantly learning and looking up published studies which
all kinds of things like I shared earlier in this video about like the lycopine, right? The cis and
trans lycopine. But like I’m always learning cool stuff and then I learn about new plant varieties
when I come to visit Luke here and you know I get to hang out with him and learn all kinds of new
stuff. So I always want to encourage you guys to you know take it to the next level. And actually,
Luke, I want to give you a challenge actually cuz you since you donate to the soup kitchen, one
of the soup kitchens or whatever places I went to in Portland, Oregon, right? So, that’s like
a nonprofit, but not only do they, you know, get people to donate things, but actually on the
property, which I know maybe this property may not do it, but they started actually using part of
the property to like grow a garden and then teach the people how to grow them foods themselves.
So instead of giving, you know, fe you give a fish a person to feed them for a day, teaching
them, teach them how to fish, feed them for their lifetime, right? Maybe this could be like the next
level for you to think about on how to maybe even, you know, take people to your farm to get them
to grow to teach them a new skill or maybe work with the nonprofit to get them to grow a garden
in the season and even to grow winter squash so they could store it and have fresh fruits to
give, you know, during the off season in the winter time when when you got snow on the ground
here, which I’m totally not used to, you know. So that maybe I just wanted to throw that out
there because I’ve seen some of some cool places on the West Coast, which I know I don’t know how
often you get to the to the West Coast out there, but um that’s where I’m from. So, um this is the
kind of things they’re doing out there, you know, and I really appreciate those things a lot. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for for coming out and uh yeah, hopefully
hopefully uh you got a lot out of it. I know. Well, you got to get you got to get your uh you
got to get your seed packets all uh all boxed up, but we’ll we’ll uh if you can’t fit them in
your suitcase with all your freezed goods, we’ll we’ll mail them to you one of the way you’ll
get them. So, yeah, but but thanks for coming out. I really appreciate it. Oh, yeah. It was fun,
Luke. So, any final words of wisdom you’d like to share with all my gardeners who watch this today?
Yeah, honestly, I I I think we covered so much of it. I would just say just start where you’re at.
Start Start where you’re at. Um don’t feel like you have to overextend yourself. any any positive
movement forward is movement forward. Uh you can’t possibly be moving forward and backwards at the
same time. So even even if it’s something small, that tiny little step, that tiny little movement
forward keeps you from going backward. And u and so I would say start small, start where you
can. And um yeah, you know, and I just want to say thanks thanks to you. Thanks to you for uh for
encouraging me, teaching me, um inspiring me and um you know, I think if anyone else is watching,
obviously, you know, subscribe to John’s channel. Um but I know I know uh I know that um so much of
what we do, the products we carry, the messages we we convey, um they say, you know, um uh cop uh
like copying or or um uh replicating is the most sincere form of flattery, right? So, um in a lot
of ways, like we’ve adapted so much of the stuff you talked about because like you were so integral
in our start. So, um, you know, so we there’s there’s been a your your presence even has been an
influence your your presence has been an influence in everything that that we’ve ever done. Um, so
thank you for that. Yeah, I I appreciate that. I’m glad I could be an influence and I’m glad you
could like literally keep carrying the torch and making, you know, rock dust and worm castings cuz
those are two of the things I use. And then as I, you know, checked out your seeds, I’m like, “Ah, I
know that one. I know that one.” And and I’m like, “Maybe Luke picked it up because of me or
whatever.” So, I’m so glad for that. Yeah. Yep. And our room casting is actually completely
random, but our room castings are produced only 5 miles from here. So, yeah. All all local. So,
we actually went and toured the facility and and uh it’s all all really cool. I love anytime
we can go local, we we do cuz it’s it’s we’re we’re hyperfocused on quality. But that’s yeah,
different conversation for a different day. But yeah, but thanks again for coming out. I I really
appreciate it, John. It’s honestly so cool. you get to kind of I feel like I’m when you reached
out to me I said I told my wife I said I feel like I’m not only meeting my mentor but I’m kind of in
a way like meeting my hero like you you know you Thank you Luke. Yeah yeah yeah you definitely have
showed me like so much about how to you know how to eat how to grow and just uh make it accessible.
So yeah I was super stoked really stoked when you when you reached out I I was like I’m going to any
way possible I’m going to make this happen. So, yeah, huge huge uh huge props to you. All right,
Luke. So, once again, I want to thank you for having me out today. And it was a pleasure to hang
out with you for the day. And actually, next up, we’re actually going to head to his farm. So,
make sure you click the subscribe button. Help me get to a million, please. Guys out there, I
need you guys click the bell so you get notified because one of the upcoming videos will be me at
his farm that he literally just moved into. So, I’m going to get to check that out and see what I
think. But yeah, meanwhile, don’t miss out on the amazing seed deal he has going on right now.
September only. If you guys are watching this after September, probably his prices are back to
the normal $2 a pack, which is still amazing. So, don’t miss out on that either. But right now, for
those of you guys that are watching this video when it is airing in September, you know, help
him get sold out of 2025 seeds. We’ll have his new seeds for 2026 at $2 a pack, which is still
lower than anywhere else. I’m sure. All right. So, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode learning
about MI Gardener here in Michigan and how he can ship you his seeds anywhere in the United States.
We we didn’t even get to talk about like most of the seeds he sources are from like I think it’s
like 50% from the West Coast, what is it like 20% from uh the Midwest, 20% from down south, and 10%
from New York. Yep. Or uh you know the East Coast region. Um you know, which is amazing. So they’re
all like mostly US source with a few things coming from somewhere else. But yeah, so support Luke’s
small seed company that is growing bigger every single day. And once again, it’s migarder.com. If
you guys enjoy this episode, want more episodes with Luke in the future. Please be sure to give
this a big thumbs up. More importantly, share this with other gardeners right now so that they could
find out the best deal on seeds so that they can start growing affordably. And once again, order
20 seed packets, guys, and you get free shipping. No better deal than that honestly. I mean I’m a
frugal gardener and this is the seeds you guys should buy. So be sure to click that subscribe
button right down below so you miss my new and upcoming episodes coming in five seven days you
know short we’ll be learning and I don’t want you to miss that upcoming episode I have at Luke’s
farm that’ll be filming right after this. Make sure you click the little bell so you’re notified
as my new videos come out. And finally be sure to check past episodes. My past episodes are wealth
of knowledge over 1700 episodes going back I think 16 years now. And some of my favorite episodes
that I talk about, some of the unique crops that I share with you guys today in the seed packets,
I’ll put down below, including that episode on the Kakai pumpkins I love so much and I miss those
plants. With that, my name is John Kler with growingyour greens.com. We’ll see you next time
and until then, remember, keep on growing. [Music]
20 Comments
Jump to the following parts of this episode:
00:41 Inside the MIGardener Store
01:39 $1.00 Heirloom & Non-GMO Seeds with Free Shipping over $20
02:49 Greenstalk Vertical Garden – How to Grow Food on a Patio
04:54 Why I Love Growing in VEGO Raised Beds
05:44 Rare Pimento Peppers – Taste Test Coming
06:35 My Honest Thoughts on Growing Brassicas
07:44 Can’t Grow Brussels Sprouts? Here’s Why It’s OK
09:00 Harvesting Potatoes Fresh from the Soil
09:50 Taste Test – Eating Straight from the MIGardener Garden
11:20 Should You Grow Strawberries or Something Better?
13:30 Why You Must Eat Green Beans Tender and Fresh
14:40 Inside the Greenhouse – Trialing New Crops You Haven’t Seen
16:05 Custom Fabric Pots Made to MIGardener Specs
17:10 The Strongest Trellis I’ve Found – Nylon String
18:00 Cucamelons Taste Test – What Do They Really Taste Like?
19:30 Why Supporting Small Seed Companies Matters
21:00 Growing Thornless Blackberries – Best Cultivar Revealed
23:45 Blueberries – Are They Too Difficult to Grow?
25:24 Grapes in Michigan – Beating Pests and Disease
27:15 Growing Wild Lambsquarters – The Forgotten Spinach
28:18 Heirloom Orange Eggplants – Should You Grow Them?
29:10 Touring the MIGardener Storefront
30:00 Trifecta+ All Organic Fertilizer – Does It Work?
30:41 VegaGrow – 100% Plant-Based Fertilizer Review
31:50 The Best Soil Blocker Ever Made
33:00 MIGardener’s Hands-Off Gardening Book – Grow the Easy Way
34:15 Disposable vs Reusable Seed Starting Trays
36:15 Seeds are $2.00… But Right Now Only $1.00 Each
37:15 Why I’m Collecting Every Purple Tomato Seed
38:30 Cooked Tomatoes Are Healthier? Lycopene Explained
39:30 Why Orange and Yellow Tomato Seeds Are a Must-Have
41:00 Seed Packs Made for Home Gardeners, Not Big Ag
42:40 15 Types of Basil – Which Ones Do I Grow?
44:45 Rare Herbs & Leafy Greens You’ve Never Tried
46:50 Dragon Fruit Seeds – Which Variety Is Best?
47:45 Alpine Strawberries & Coffee Seeds – Do They Work?
48:20 Perennial Vegetables Worth Growing Once for Years of Harvests
48:55 My Favorite Bean Seeds – You Need These in Your Garden
50:50 My Favorite Brassica Crops for Michigan Climate
51:20 The Best Corn Varieties You Must Try
52:08 My Go-To Cucumber Varieties for Crisp Pickles
54:14 Okra That Thrives in Heat – My Top Pick
54:34 The Eggplants That Never Fail Me
55:08 Unique Leafy Greens You’ve Never Heard Of
56:10 Sweet & Buttery Squashes That Win Every Time
57:20 Winter Squash That Stores & Feeds You All Winter
59:08 My Favorite Watermelon Seeds – Sweetness Test
59:55 Kale Seeds I Always Rely On
1:00:20 Mustard Greens That Grow Fast in Cold Weather
1:00:50 Why You Should Grow as Many Leafy Greens as Possible
1:01:30 1000 Seeds for $1.00 – No Better Deal Anywhere
1:02:00 Lettuce Varieties I Keep Coming Back To
1:03:55 The Best Leafy Green to Grow in Summer Heat
1:05:00 Large Leaf Purslane – More Food from Every Plant
1:05:40 My Favorite Peas for Maximum Yields
1:06:25 Pepper Varieties That Always Produce for Me
1:08:50 How I Grow Leeks with Mint – Secret Trick
1:09:30 Red Bunching Onions – Why They’re Special
1:10:20 Radishes That Belong in Every Garden
1:10:58 Carrots You’ll Actually Want to Grow Again
1:12:28 Behind the Scenes at MIGardener
1:12:45 How They Save Dragonfruit Seeds by Hand
1:13:42 Packing Heirloom Seeds with Vintage Machines
1:14:27 How Tomato Seeds Are Fermented & Saved
1:16:15 Walking the Seed Warehouse – Shelves of Potential
1:19:17 How Every Seed Pack Is Picked and Packed Perfectly
1:21:55 Interview with Luke Marion of MIGardener Starts
1:22:30 Why Luke Started a YouTube Channel to Teach Gardening
1:27:40 The Health Scares That Changed Everything
1:29:30 Can Food Really Slow the Aging Process?
1:30:40 How I Turn My Garden Into Full Meals
1:32:10 My Pepper Soup Hack – Turn Any Veggie Into a Meal Base
1:38:00 Grocery Store as Ingredient, Garden as the Meal
1:39:17 How to Cut Your Grocery Bill with a Garden
1:41:20 How Luke Loves to Eat Fresh Fava Beans
1:43:30 Why Most People Think They Don’t Like Veggies
1:45:30 How Energy & Passion Spread Excitement for Gardening
1:50:00 Why Luke Started the MIGardener Store
1:52:15 How to Stop Powdery Mildew with Baking Soda
1:53:00 How to Stop Aphids with Simple Bar Soap
1:55:16 Why Profit Comes Second to Helping People
1:57:42 The Real Story Behind “Grow Big or Go Home”
2:01:42 Donating Fresh Produce to Soup Kitchens
2:09:20 Should Soup Kitchens Grow Their Own Food Too?
2:10:50 Final Words of Wisdom from MIGardener
2:14:12 $1 Seed Packs at https://www.migardener.com/
2:14:30 Where MIGardener Seeds Are Sourced Across the USA
Help me get to 1M Subscribers: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=growingyourgreens
YouTube demonetized me, but I’m not stopping. If you value this content, join my Patreon and help me keep sharing the truth: https://www.patreon.com/growingyourgreens
Referenced Episodes
String Trellis Growing Cucumbers https://youtu.be/3f3KZ_fYdDk
Kakai Pumpkins https://youtu.be/c3o-TwOrsdo
Armenian Cucumbers – How to Eat https://youtu.be/SN0lAVyGQdU
Harvesting Lemon Cucumbers https://youtu.be/6cP6mrlDdAw
Raw Pepper Soup https://youtu.be/VcSH3daP6SA&t=1s
Zuchinni Noodles https://youtu.be/8t5E46rS-Mo&t=2s
Tribest Backspin – Make 100% frozen fruit sorbet https://youtu.be/QjFh-ZEjan0
Bolting Lettuce Salad – Freeze Dried https://youtu.be/OFj9H2HeF7c
How to Live Healthy with your Garden Dr. Jeff Pierce https://youtu.be/6V-RDMEoATQ
Connect with MIGARDENER
Buy $1 Seeds at https://www.migardener.com
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@migardener
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MIgardener/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/migardener
2 hours and 16 minutes of having this guy yell at you? 😉 I've been away, liked his message before, thought I'd check it out again. But, really? Is he worth the punishment? 😉
Dude…. you can plant bushes or trees in your strawberries…. or both…. strawberries are just a ground cover that produces food. Your perspective is a little.off.
DUDE, it’s so amazing to see someone interviewing the person the person the looked up to and we’re inspired by. I remember videos 10 years ago where he recommended other YouTubers to watch where he said he has gained a wealth of knowledge from and I remember him talking abt u. Rly great to see, thanks to Luke and John for an amazing collab, and all the amazing videos and I formation they’ve learned and shared. THANKS GUYS!!!
I do miss the grow big or grow home, no hate luke I love u
What was the name of the squash you said was so buttery?
Go fish.
Loved this video. Thank you for going through all the seeds and showing us your favorites
2 of my favorites ❤️❤️
How do we get you monetized again?? I've been watching you since almost the beginning!
@42:34 sage is sold out online but I store in person? (As of Sept, 6, 25)
❤❤❤
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRt-8QbFOWU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRt-8QbFOWU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRt-8QbFOWU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRt-8QbFOWU
Hey John. Sumthin tells me that your favorite kind of weed is purple weed lol
Thank you John! What an amazing video, love you and Luke 😀
Im picking up my package today! Greetings from Jamaica!
Thank you from Canada, I love your show.