 Hello dear friends. Today I am going to introduce you to the toilet paper plant. The genus and species is Plecranthus barbatus. One of the common names is blue spur flower. It is also called boldo or boldo gaucho in Brazil. It is called kikuyu toilet paper in parts of Kenya. It is a plant that is known around the world by many. It has been used as toilet paper for hundreds of years, has been used as medicine in many cultures and I am so grateful to be a steward of this plant and to be able to bring this plant to you. I have been in relationship with this plant for about five years. It began during my year of growing and foraging 100% of my food and if I was break and free from the grocery store I may as well grow my own toilet paper as well. In this video I am taking you to three different locations that the toilet paper plant is growing. First my friend Michelle's. I gave her a cutting of the plant about four years ago. She took that one cutting home and you'll be amazed at what you see. Second I returned to the place where I originally planted the toilet paper plant where I lived when I was growing and foraging all my food in the tiny house and after three years I am excited to show you how it is after being neglected. And lastly to a toilet paper plant in Miami where they grow big in the warmest weather. Now I want to share as many of you know already this is a semi tropical plant. It grows at its most prolific in zones eight through eleven. Those are USDA climate zones. You can grow it in other places but that's where this is designed and if you are growing in other places I recommend mullin and that is a plant that we offer as well. This is an example of how resilient the toilet paper plant is and how it spreads on its own. My friend Michelle planted one cutting of this that I gave her about four years ago on its own. It has spread into a whole teepee hedge full of soft, minty, many of the leaves even without any care the size of a piece of toilet paper. This plant can handle drought, neglect, minimal soil nutrition, minimal water, has few pests. It's an incredible plant for the garden to break free from the grocery store to break free, break free from toilet paper. This is the toilet paper hall at my friend Michelle's house. She just threw down a bunch of cuttings two months ago from an already established plant and this is less than two months from one plant. This was originally from one cutting so for those of you wondering can you go enough teepee for your butt? Yes it takes a little work. You've got to spread more cuttings out so if you need more teepee you plant more teepee but this right here is the growth from ultimately what was originally one cutting so yes you can grow your own teepee. This is the original toilet paper plant that I planted during my year of growing and foraging 100 percent of my food in Orlando Florida about five years ago. I left here about three years ago. This hasn't been watered. It hasn't been maintained. It has suffered from frosts. It has managed to survive through all of this through all of that neglect. Now the leaves are small right now but if you were to start watering this, you prune it, you give it a little bit of nutrients, the rainy season comes. This will turn back into a huge thriving toilet paper plant. Now this plant started with just two sticks like this and it spread over 10 feet and me living here in my tiny house this was no problem. Far, far, far in a way more toilet paper than I needed. Enough where I was giving cuttings where literally hundreds of people are growing toilet paper from this toilet paper plant. So I've just made it down to Miami which is much warmer than central Florida. It's considered zone 10B and this is the first toilet paper plant or bulldo that I have seen since getting here and it's incredible. So my hosts what they're really excited about besides the toilet paper aspect and the medicinal aspect is that it's actually just a beautiful part of a food forest. So they have a bird bath here and it's created this little oasis of creating an environment for our plant and animal relatives and creating more of an interconnected system. So it's far from just toilet paper. It is a beautiful plant for connecting. Okay when I say that one stick can turn into enough toilet paper for a family of five you can really see it here because this plant was planted from it sounds like one cutting about three and a half years ago and it is probably 12 feet wide. It goes back and then I'm on this little path and it fell over or sticks fell were put over here and you have this whole large plant over here which is easily a supply for multiple people of toilet paper even though this was just what fell over. So we're talking about a toilet paper plant that actually can kind of get out of control where you have really all the toilet paper you need and you will notice that this has still like pretty ideal size leaves but because this is in full sun the leaves are a little on the smaller side than when it's in the shade but still you have a lot of really nice large leaves here. So again this huge section of the toilet paper plant starting from one cutting it's an incredible resilient plant and it's beneficial to other plants and animals and it's just a wonderful plant to have at home. I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to introduce you to my friend the toilet paper plant and I hope that you know the plant and have a stronger relationship to it after spending time with it. Now one thing that I want to share is that if you have received a cutting from us in the first few batches of 2023 you probably got your cutting from one of those three plants so you have just met the mother or met the father or met where your plant has come from. Now on our website we have a detailed guide on how to plant the toilet paper plant, how to care for it, how to get the leaves to be the nice perfect size and soft so we have a care guide that teaches you exactly how to work with it. Also on the website is a frequently asked question section. You have a lot of questions about the toilet paper plant and that's reasonable. It's a brand new plant for for a lot of you. I'm going to answer a few of those questions for you right now. So first is it flushable? My first response to that is this plant is my friend. I don't want to flush it down the toilet. I have a different relationship with the plant so I do not recommend flushing it down the toilet. I have not experimented with it but generally municipalities say not to flush anything except poop and pee and water and toilet paper down the toilet. So my recommendation is actually to use a compost toilet and that's what this plant is really all about. It's about breaking free from these destructive systems altogether and the flush toilet is an incredibly destructive system so I really encourage the compost toilet. If you don't have one and you are using a flush toilet what you can do is just keep a little bin next to your toilet and then place the used leaves in there and then however often needed maybe once a week take those leaves out. What you could do is just dig a hole in your yard like the size of a five gallon bucket. You throw your leaves in there you place your leaves in there and then you put soil over the top of that. You keep doing that until the hole is filled to the top and then you do another one. That way you're returning these leaves back to the earth rather than turning them into someone else's problem via flushing them down the toilet. On that note the next often thing that people say is well why don't you just use a bidet and yes I am a big supporter of bidets but guess what bidets are the system where we're still pooping in fresh water and then once we've pooped in water water spreads and that's where we end up with poop spreading into our water system so bidets I definitely support but I myself use off-grid compost toilet systems and bidets don't work in that scenario it's not the way that I want to use water it's not the relationship that I want to have with water and I want to keep my poop in a solid format rather than adding it to our water systems. Some people have concerns about this plant being invasive and my concern with that is very low the reason why is anywhere where it freezes this plant dies way back so the only areas where I see that as a potential concern is in your zones 11 your you know Miami area your really warm areas your tropical areas so if you're in those tropical areas you want to pay attention to the plant and if you don't want it to spread too much you want to keep it back but through all of my experience I have never seen it be invasive nobody has ever told me it's actually invasive who's experienced it so that's not where I put my major thought into and I feel elated to be sharing this plant with so many of you around Florida and in other parts of Turtle Island also this plant can create a rash there have been people who have told me that they have gotten a rash from it however it's a mild rash it's an inconvenience not a life-threatening problem so what I'm told is the way you can test it is you can rub it on your the inside of your forearm that's a tender spot that is is likely to react you can try it there before wiping it on your butt to see now again the reactions that I've heard of have been mild I think it's worth a try that is up for you to decide only you can decide how you want to take care of your own personal hygiene and if it turns out that you are allergic to using it as toilet paper you can still work work with it as a wonderful tea this plant is used in Ayurvedic medicine it's used in Brazil for upset stomach and nausea it's in the mint family so it's a wonderful mint to work with as an herbal medicine it's also just beautiful it brings in beautiful hummingbirds and it is it's a wonderful plant to have as part of a food a food forest and in a garden as you already know the leaves are soft as can be they come off the plant often about the same size as a piece of toilet paper yet they are very durable you can wipe pretty hard and they do not break through so in so many ways this is an ideal toilet paper plant I've wiped my butt with dozens of different species of leaves but many hundreds of different leaves and this is my personal favorite mullin is the toilet paper plant of the north and we do provide seeds of mullin as well now one thing people often ask is is this Cuban oregano no it is in the same genus but Cuban oregano is brittle and it'll break through and the leaves are smaller wonderful plant not the same Cuban oregano different plant and a plant you're much more likely to end up with needing to wash your fingers after using another thing that I really love about this plant is besides it being soft and durable it actually holds up I've harvested it for up to three weeks before using it setting it next to the toilet and it was still in a state that you couldn't really tell it had been picked off the plant more than a couple days ago so it also can really hold on to that days and even weeks after it's harvested so it's wonderful for camping trips or if you're if you're going somewhere and you really want to take responsibility and bring your own toilet paper with you and of course on dewy mornings the little hairs of this plant actually trap in the moisture and it serves as nature's wet wipe and you could also just add a little moisture to it and that makes it extra soft on a on a light rainy day oh I have never experienced anything quite that nice so I love this plant I'm so happy to share it with you some people have said it's disrespectful to wipe our butt with leaves animals poop on leaves it's all a part of the life cycle I see that as ultimately a disconnection from the fact that we are human animals and those of us who are wiping our butt with toilet paper we're chopping down trees to wipe our butts with it's really no different except in the sense that we've removed the industry we removed the water waste we removed the fossil fuels we removed the money and we're actually taking responsibility so yeah I'm a big fan of not using toilet paper and instead growing my own leaves so this plant we do not sell it I do not sell plants however we do offer it on a donation basis a love offering if you want to make an exchange where you provide some funds and those funds are then going to fund our food sovereignty initiatives we can send you a toilet paper plant so that you can grow your own toilet paper you can break free from the grocery store one step at a time break free from consumerism and turn your two cheeks on the industrialized toilet paper system and even next step turn your two cheeks on the flush toilet system and actually use a compost toilet I love you all very much dear friends and I'm so grateful to share this plant with you