 Florida is a state where most people go to the supermarket to buy their food, but they don't realize that they can grow most of their food right at home. Today, I'm really excited to have Pete Canaris on the channel, and he's going to introduce you to 10 different plants that you can grow that are super abundant and resilient for the Florida climate to help you grow a large amount of your food at home and be able to skip those trips to the grocery store. This doesn't just apply to Florida though. Semi-tropical climates exist around the world, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and parts of Australia, just to name some places, are all places where this can be a super helpful video to you. Alright, what's up guys? What's growing on? So Pete Canaris here with Green Dreams, and I'm coming at you from Tampa, Florida. I'm about 20 miles north of Tampa, and we're growing in a semi-tropical environment here in 9B, and I'm taking over Rob Greenfield's channel today. So I'm putting a video together for you all on our top 10 food crops to grow in a semi-tropical environment for self-sufficiency, and these are the top 10 go-to food crops that are super easy to grow, and something I'll tell you guys is, we focus on plants that thrive on neglect, that grow with ease. Most of these crops are perennial crops, and by perennial I mean something that doesn't need to be replanted every year like you would an annual. This is a plant at one time, and typically forget it. So perennial crops are crops that live two or more years. So the first one I want to talk to you guys about is actually right here behind me. This is just over my left shoulder. This is chia or tree spinach, and you can see the big giant leaves off of this tree, and this is a really easy one to get going or established in your garden. This is one that I tell people about all the time, and the first thing that kind of scares them about this one is it has to be cooked. So chia does need to be cooked for about 10 minutes. There's an off-gas of cyanide that comes off of there. You definitely don't want to use an aluminum pot, but this is a staple crop. This is a real big-time staple crop in like Central America. This is a really easy one to propagate and start, so if you wanted to share this one with your friends, you would simply take a cutting like this, stick it in the ground, take off the leaves, and it'll start growing. It's really that easy. The leaves from this are actually quite delicious. I find this tree to be really, really the flavor of the leaves to kind of be like a hearty. You know, they're really filling. They go really well in a soup, really well in a dish. Also known as tree spinach. This is four times as nutritious than typical spinach, and it wants to grow here. It wants to grow here through our hot summer, our humidity, and our full sun. The number two plant I want to talk to you guys about that is a must-have for your garden is sitting here behind me, and this is Moringa Olifera. This one really likes full sun. If you noticed, I had that Chaya kind of in a dappled light understory situation. This one wants to be out in full sun, and I look at this tree as like having a health food store in your backyard. This one is like 22% protein by weight, 68 different antioxidants, four times the calcium of milk. I could go off about all the different minerals and nutrients that are inside of this plant. This one is literally one of the fastest growing trees we also have on the farm, so commercially they grow these trees about a foot apart, they prune off the new growth every week. Most commonly, you would dry those leaves and powder them, but you could put this fresh into a salad, you could put this fresh into a smoothie, you could eat this fresh like this. The tree is also known as the horseradish tree, and that's because the leaves can be a little bit on the spicy side. I prefer this as a supplement. I prefer this in a smoothie. I find it to be a little bit on the strong side, but it grows so well. It is so nutritious, like the powder from this tree goes for 30, 40. I remember when it was $60 a pound, so super nutritious. My number three muskrow crop for Florida would be what Rob would like to call yucca or cassava or maniott. We got a lot of comments on that one from the videos we did together. This is a muskrow crop, a super easy to grow crop down here in Florida, and this is what they would make tapioca pudding from, so cassava is a root crop, and it's really easy to get started in the garden. It's one that you literally, just like I showed you on the Chaya, you take a cutting of, so probably something a little bit older than this. You want like three nodes above, three nodes below the soil. You just stick this guy in the ground, it'll grow. Usually cassava is about an eight to nine month crop. You'll get a root crop off of that, and I just did a specific video on cassava, on cooking it, on harvesting it, on growing select varieties with my good friend Josh from Hart. So if you want more detail on that, head over to my channel and you'll see a little bit more specific stuff with Josh, how they cook it, how to prepare it. I had cassava bread while I was there. I mean, there's many different ways to eat this cassava. Must grow it. The third crop I want to talk to you about today are sweet potatoes, and many people when you think sweet potato, you think that typical just orange sweet potato, but there's hundreds of heirloom varieties of sweet potato. There are white sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, regular typical orange sweet potatoes, but what a lot of people don't know is, you can eat the leaves and the roots of a sweet potato. So sweet potatoes just happen to be one of the most nutritious crops in the world for that reason. So what I really like to do is to pull all of these young leaves off of here, and you could see, I mean, this isn't a very good example of a sweet potato patch. I just have a couple of slips that we planted here maybe a month ago that are starting to take over, but I could tell you is, if I came back in this area in just a few weeks, this would be a solid sea of green. So the leaves are just kind of starting to fill in and you would start sweet potatoes by buying just organic sweet potatoes at the grocery store, sticking them in some soil, letting the sprouts come off and you break those off, and that's what would be called a slip. So if you don't start it from a potato, you actually order slips in spring from one of these sweet potato type companies, and like I said, there's many different varieties and types, and not only do you get this awesome potato at the end of season, which is really fun to dig up to pull out of the ground, you know, you don't have to eat them right away. They can last six to nine months inside of your house, but during that entire time, you can eat the leaves off of the sweet potatoes. So sweet potatoes are super exciting for me because I personally really love the flavor of the greens. They're great sauteed with just a little salt and pepper on them. Make a great dish side, and then you get potatoes at the end of the season. So digging up sweet potatoes is probably one of my favorite events out here on the farm. My number five favorite perennial vegetable to grow down here in the food forest is Ciso spinach or Miami spinach. And this one makes a really nice ground cover. It can take full sun or dappled light. You can see I accidentally ripped a little bit of that root out. I could stick it back in the ground. It'll easily grow. This is one that doesn't need to be cooked. It can be eaten raw. It really has a nice texture to it. It's not too slimy. Goes really great in a salad. Goes really great just eating it fresh or any type of dish. This is a great perennial vegetable that I planted one time that's been here for multiple years. That's here all summer long if I want to come outside and have something to add as a green on a salad or to a plate. So Ciso spinach is definitely worth growing if you're in a subtropical environment. We've got like one or two varieties of this one. It is just great. Like I said, it has a nice crunch to the leaf. It's not too slimy. It makes a great perennial vegetable to add to your landscape. So number five. My number six must have for sustainable garden in Florida is definitely going to be katuk. Katuk is an awesome perennial vegetable. Super high in protein. Very similar to like Moringa where it's like 20% protein. And it tastes delicious. It literally tastes like raw peas. So it's one that really has a nice flavor raw. Kids like everybody I've given this one to they're like, wow, that tasted pretty good. I have a variegated variety and a green variety. They both thrive on neglect. These plants never get watered. These plants never get fertilized. There is no irrigation here. And they live and they thrive on neglect all year long. So with a lot of these perennial vegetables the Ciso spinach, the Moringa, the katuk that young growth, that new growth that's coming off the top is going to be the most tender, the softest. So as I work my way down the plant like these bottom leaves these are going to be a little tougher. They're still great to eat. They can still go in a dish. Probably better in a cooked dish because they'll break them down a little bit. But for eating fresh I find the raw tips are always best. So katuk, grow it. My number six fruit crop to grow here in Florida which probably would not be typically looked at as like a vegetable is papaya. So papaya was something that I really enjoyed spending time with Rob. It's something he commonly made in his dishes. I think my favorite was his Thai coconut curry with the papaya in it. But I personally love green papaya. I think it's great as a vegetable. I love papaya salad at a Thai restaurant and I love the flavor of a good ripe papaya as a fruit. So you know papayas don't have to be eaten ripe. They can be eaten green like a vegetable. You know we're starting to get some little papayas here and you can get these while they get larger and they're green or you can wait until they get ripe and actually eat it as a vegetable. This one doesn't have a lot of fruit on it right now. The other ones I have are tall and I need to cut them back. You can cut your papayas back every couple of years. One of my mentors, the guy I feature a lot on my channel is Jim Kovaleski. He's got a papaya tree in his front yard that's like five or six years old. So these trees can last a while. They can be perennial. They could die back if you're further north but you could start them in your greenhouse and get them outside you know right after that last frost and potentially get a green fruit in like six months. So papayas are definitely worth growing. You know find a good one. Grow the seed out. Really easy to get started. Highly suggest growing it. Number seven. I've been really busy the last couple of weeks with the nursery business and all of my plants out in the ground for these last three have been cut down for cuttings and propagation. So I'm over here in the nursery where I have some better examples and the one I want to talk to you about now is edible leaf hibiscus and that's this big leaf plant right here behind me and this can be used as a wrap. It can eat in raw, chopped up in a salad be used as a green. And this is one that might be a little bit more on the mucinologist side. You know maybe slightly slimy some would say. That's really good. That's good for lying our insides. This variety is actually less slimy than the variety I have over here on this side. This one definitely has a little bit more of the mucinologist to it. I have a couple of different varieties. I have a skinny leaf variety. I have this fat leaf variety. And there's a couple of different common names for this one. I really like to just call it lettuce leaf hibiscus. I really like this one as a wrap. So, you know, you wanted a green wrap, something that's gluten-free. You can grow this for your wrap. The number nine must have for the sustainable garden in Florida. This is one that the kids really like. Cranberry hibiscus. The leaves are beautiful, nice deep red. Some people call that like a mahogany. And these are sweet. They're sour. They're delicious just raw. They go nice in a salad. You can chop them up. My favorite thing to do is like if I'm making a sandwich or I'm packing something for the day, I'm going to be on the road. I come out and I get a handful of fresh leaves. And just like I talked about with the katuk, you know, the younger leaves, the fresh growth, like so this is a really fresh red one. And you can see this is an older leaf. You can see a color difference. You see how that one's pale? That one's dark red. So, the younger growth is always going to be the most tender and the sweetest. Nothing wrong with the old growth. It's just not going to be the best flavor-wise. So, cranberry hibiscus is not only just a stunner in the landscape. It's a pretty-looking plant. It has a really nice edible factor. And I can guarantee if you give it to one of the kids, they're going to enjoy it too. So, this one's definitely been perennial here. It will set flowers. All hibiscuses have edible flowers. So, you can eat the flower on this. But after it's done setting the flower, it's going to set seed that you could save to replant if you're in a more northern-type climate. So, cranberry hibiscus is definitely another must-have. I think if you're gardening down here in Florida and you don't have it, this is one to add to your system. Last but not least, must-have perennial for a sustainable garden down here in Florida or in any type of subtropical climate would be okinawan spinach. And this is one that we've been propagating really hard the last few weeks. This is also one that the squirrels like here that I have a hard time keeping going in the beds. But I really like the flavor of it. It's really nice to eat raw. It's nice to eat cooked. It's nice to put in a dish. And it's very similar to the longevity spinach, which is right here behind me. But I think the longevity spinach is a little bit stronger, a little bit more of like a medicine. The squirrels don't like it as much, so it definitely grows here a lot better. I've noticed that, you know, we plant these two for clients all the time. Longevity spinach, okinawan spinach. And the okinawan's a little prettier. It's got some purplish red to the underside of the leaves. It's hit or miss. Sometimes the okinawan does better on your site. Sometimes the longevity does better on your site. So, I would say both of these are kind of like a tie for number 10. But this one tastes a little better. So, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thank you, Rob, for the opportunity. It's been a blast. I cannot wait till we work with you again. I cannot wait for your next challenge. I can't wait to get back to Florida so we can do some fun stuff. Thank you guys so much for following and what we'd like to do around here. Pounder. I hope that you got a lot of inspiration and education out of this time with Pete. He is a wealth of knowledge. He is an expert in growing food and he helps a lot of people to do this both in person and through his YouTube channel. So, make sure to subscribe to his channel. The links to follow him are in the description. And if you got a lot out of this video, make sure to subscribe to this channel as well where I'll have many more guests to come as well as videos led by me. And also, share this, comment and like it to spread it out into the world and get this information out there to people who need it but don't know it's there. I love you all very much and I'll see you again real soon.