AdAgrA Conference 2024: Growing Better

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Special Interests

Darren Greenfield

Irresistible Basil

We're going to start the class for irresistible basil.

In this class, it's about growing sweet basil.

If you're a beginner grower, you'll learn something.

Keeping it fairly basic, but it's primarily focused on the commercial grower.

And I'm going to share how we grow it, but I'm also going to share some benefits of Sweet Basil, the health benefits.

You know, when you are growing it and marketing, you want to know why people should buy it and tell them why they should buy it and then the sales will pick up.

But before we begin, I'd like to have a word of prayer.

So if you would just bow your heads with me.

Dear Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to be at Adagra and to learn some valuable things that will help our growing experience.

And we thank you that you give us wisdom.

And I pray, Father, that you'll give your Holy Spirit to us today in this class.

I'm looking a little bit bloodshot in the eyes and a little bit slow.

I'm slow normally but slower today because I just flew in.

I arrived yesterday from New Zealand on a very long trip so I'm trying to get my head working so I appreciate your patience with me.

So how many of you are actually farming commercially?

How many of you just grow a garden at home and that's why you're in this class?

I hope it's a blessing to you and maybe you'll be inspired to get into growing it.

I'll tell you, you don't need a lot of space to grow commercially with sweet basil.

It grows in very small area with a high return with a very low input.

So it's an excellent crop to get started.

And as the title says, Irresistible Basil, people, especially ladies, get 1 whiff of the smell of the leaves and they want it.

So we'll start off with this scripture, Hebrews 6, 7, For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated Receives blessing from God.

And so we want that blessing and God is so good in giving it to us generously.

In fact, it's interesting in the Bible that his blessing, when you read about it, especially in the Old Testament, his blessing was always manifested in agriculture.

His blessing with the rain and abundant crops.

So sweet basil, it's known as Osimum basilicum, and it's considered to be originally from India, and it's known as a royal plant, and it's called the Queen of Herbs.

So some of the other names that it's also known by is St.

Joseph's Wort, Great Basil, of course you say basil but excuse my English and New Zealand accent, European basil, French basil, common basil or sweet basil.

And there's some interesting trivia that you might not have heard before.

In Judaism, traditional stories advocate the use of basil for increased strength during times of fasting.

In various Orthodox churches, basil is often used to either sprinkle or prepare holy water.

As well, pots of the herb are often positioned below church altars to pay reverence to the belief that it was found growing around the grave of Christ." So that's interesting, We don't know if it's factual.

But when you look at the health benefits of it, it's an amazing herb that you'll probably want to include more in your diet once you see these.

So I got the information from the Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, September 20, 2023.

On each slide I don't have the scientific citations.

If you go to their online article, you'll have all the links to the scientific studies that it's referring to.

I was just in the class, Lucia Tiffany's class, called Cultivating Country Cash, and She said this, revenue generation is the result of value you create for others.

So knowing the health benefits and sharing them creates value for others and they're going to want it.

Basil leaves are chock full of antioxidants, natural compounds that protect your body cells.

Your cells get damaged by oxidative stress when they have too many free radicals.

Your body makes free radicals in response to stress and inflammation.

Left unchecked, oxidative stress can lead to health conditions that include cancer, cardiovascular disease, cataracts, inflammatory diseases like arthritis.

Several studies have demonstrated sweet basil essential oils potential to ward off certain cancers.

In 1 lab study, sweet basil prevented the growth of human colon cancer cells and test tubes.

In another study, scientists found that leaf extracts from 6 different types of basil all had anti-cancer properties.

Basil got in the way of the cancer cells ability to grow and divide, ultimately destroying them.

Now once this is researched more it could be a huge breakthrough.

Researchers need to do more human studies to confirm these promising results and understand how much basil people should consume.

So in traditional Chinese medicine, they know that it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, so it's been used for a long time.

Basal improves blood sugar levels, So diabetes is pretty big in this country especially.

And so in both human and lab studies have shown basil special ability to manage blood sugar.

For example, scientists observed that basil extracts contributed to significant reductions in blood sugar levels in lab models of diabetes.

Another non-human study showed similar effects with holy basil extract.

And holy basil is different from sweet basil, but it's in the same family.

But the holy basil will have more of the properties that they're talking about.

Human studies are in the early stages but have shown some exciting potential benefits for blood sugar management in type 2 diabetes.

Now is there a great need to improve mental health?

So research shows that daily basil consumption can influence many aspects of your mental health.

A non-human study in the lab showed that basil essential oils have the potential to decrease depression and stress and age-related memory loss.

The results were so positive that researchers concluded it was time to see if basil could improve symptoms associated with Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer's is on the rise.

My mother has it pretty severely and if this can help I should be Making sure she gets sweet basil making sure she gets pomegranate juice because that is very powerful also and that has helped her a lot.

So we're going to talk about sweet basil cultivation and this is where everyone's interested if you're not into commercial growing, you want to know how to grow it.

It's really easy to grow and so we'll get into what it takes.

So first thing to understand about sweet basil is it is a tropical plant.

In fact anything I found that below about 45 degrees the leaves can actually start tarnishing and having like brown brownish markings on them as it gets colder.

If you plant them out too early, they might not die from the frost, but they'll ruin the leaves and and they won't be green you've got to wait for new ones to to start growing.

So basil is also susceptible to fusarium wilt, blight and downy mildew, especially grown in humid conditions.

Now where I grow is in California we have very dry summers so we don't have any issues with disease.

But if you're in the eastern side where there's rain and humidity and I think more also when you have cold combined with those conditions, then these diseases are more prevalent.

For the sake of the recording, we'll hold questions till I'm ended and then it won't.

Yeah, so but we'll, yeah, please bring it back up.

So, yes, so it's a very hardy plant once it's in the warm conditions.

In fact, if you take cuttings from it, and you put it in some water and leave it there for maybe a week you'll see it start shooting some roots out and you can actually take that and plant it in the soil and it will take root and grow a plant.

So it's amazing how it can be started from cuttings, you don't even have to start it from seed.

But I'm not sure how you would get on if you were to buy the ones you commonly get in the stores that are in a little, they're probably grown in a hydroponic situation and they're tall and lanky and they don't do well with transplanting.

Robert Sullivan

Michelle Sullivan

Microgreens 101

Father in heaven, again we're thankful you've given us 1 more opportunity, another opportunity to learn, to share, to encourage.

We just ask Lord that your Holy Spirit ultimately will be the 1 to inspire each 1 of us.

Okay so unfortunately again I've just put my name on there but it's not just myself it's my wife as well.

Yeah and just to make sure that you're in the right presentation, this is the microgreen 101 presentation.

And so it's just an overview, an introduction into how we got into growing microgreens.

As was mentioned I think yesterday about the 2 feet rule, which means if this is the wrong class or if you suddenly decided actually I want to go somewhere else it's not a problem you can leave now there'll be no hard feelings We won't be annoyed or anything like that.

I think we're in here for this session and the next session.

And the next session is the more technical side of the growing of the microgreens.

This is more the inspirational side, the start of our story.

Oh, let me just ask, Who's grown microgreens?

And, Does anybody know which microgreen this is?

We don't have any magnets to hand out, this is just a question.

We're going to keep going on and on and on.

Beautiful plant, but even beautifuller when you grow it as a microbe.

It's very beautiful, as you can see from the pictures here.

And last but not least, if you have questions, if we can try and keep them towards the end, and then we'll try and go through as much as possible.

So there's lots of answers that you could give here, but I just thought I would pick 4 that have meaning to ourselves and resonate with ourselves.

Number 1 is that they definitely are baby plants.

A lot of people get them mixed up with sprouts.

Microgreens the Next Level

Father in heaven, you have given us 1 more chance, 1 more opportunity to learn of your goodness through agriculture, through doing your will.

Continue Lord to teach us and continue to allow the Holy Spirit free access to our hearts and our minds.

More importantly, help us to take away the lessons that you want us to learn, specifically as individuals.

So Is anyone here that shouldn't be here or wants to go to another session?

And if you do want to go to another session, it's not a problem.

Well let me ask now, just in case the audience has changed much, I'm not too sure.

How many people have grown microgreens here?

Well, let me just ask, does anybody know any of these microgreens here on the left or the right?

These are probably 2 of my favorite looking ones.

Even though the lemon balm, there's not really much to it.

But I think because of its simplicity, and then when you get the smell, you're like, wow.

But it didn't look like much, but it's really coming through.

And then obviously, the vibrancy of the red-veined sorrel.

Very quickly, we're going to speed into growing.

There's not 1 rule that you have to follow it's quite forgiving but we'll cover the growing methods that we use we'll also cover how we cover how we cope with pathogens as in mold because that's something that that we have a lot of And I'm not sure it could be to do with the humidity, but anyway, but it's something that we had to deal with.

We're also going to be looking at market and revenue streams, just to give you some ideas.

Again, this is our context and just to kind of say over here, I know that you guys do a lot of farmers markets.

We don't really have farmers markets because most of those sort of markets are on Sabbath.

So they're not applicable, they're not available for us.

But again, you have farmer's markets, you could use those.

And then the last thing we're gonna cover is some admin related stuff.

Because if you wanna really take it to the next level, you know, you gotta have your admin kinda, you know, you gotta know what's what.

Gotta have your invoicing, get your invoices sorted out, get paid, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So I think we mentioned this, I think I used this slide before and I'm just using it by way as an example.

So in our context, everything that we grew, we had 2 rooms to grow in.

And so where we seeded, it was like a second dining room.

And so to make sure, because we were using soil, and to make sure that we kept everywhere quite clean, we had our trays, as you can see here.

It's actually called a hydroponic tray, growing tray.

And so when we put our trays inside there, it would mean once we've got our soil in there and everything like that, and we're moving things around, if there's anything to fall, it would fall inside the tray instead of it falling on the ground because that's how we had it before.

And after every seeding, the floor, it would look a mess.

And we're renting a property, so we would wonder to ourselves If the landlord came in today when we're doing seeding, he would tell us, out, out the door.

So anyway, yeah, so we got these trays just to make sure that we kept everything clean.

Obviously, if you're not using soil as your growing medium and you're doing it hydroponically, you don't need to worry about that.

So I'm just going to show you very quickly how we would divide up onto the soil.

And actually, I'll just mention something once the video has stopped.

Again, we're just pouring out equal amounts into each tray.

Kenny Point

Cultivating Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

Okay, I think we're ready to get started here.

I currently live in West Virginia where I have a farm and my focus is not just on mushrooms, but just growing vegetable crops, fruits and you know, mushrooms is part of that.

I also keep bees, and I get enjoyment out of all of this.

But mushrooms are special to me, and there's just something about them.

And that's what today's presentation is gonna be on, cultivating mushrooms.

And you're gonna learn some techniques that you can use yourself at home or if you're on a farm, whatever your situation is, you can grow mushrooms even if you're in a house, in an apartment somewhere, you can still, there are things that you can do to produce mushrooms and it is just a fascinating hobby to get involved with.

Now I'd like to first start with a word of prayer.

Our Heavenly Father, thank you again for everything that you do for us, for bringing us here, allowing us to participate in this conference this week.

Please be with us this morning and help us to get a grasp, a better grasp and understanding of your creation and use this information to draw us closer to you.

In the name of your son, Jesus Christ, amen.

Okay, so here's the outline of what we're going to cover today.

I'm going to do a brief introduction on mushrooms, then we're going to look at just the general life cycle, production cycle, the way mushrooms operate.

We're going to go over a number of growing techniques that you can utilize.

And that's going to focus on 3 different mushrooms that we're going to cover specifically.

But these techniques can be used for a number of wide range of other mushrooms that are edible that you can cultivate.

And some of you I talk with have an interest in growing commercially, scaling up.

If we have time, I'm going to cover that briefly, as well as sterile lab culture.

If you want to set up a lab and grow mushrooms under those types of conditions.

It just gives you more things that you can do.

Hopefully, we'll also have time for some questions and answers at the end.

So please hold your questions until the end of the presentation, just so we can get through everything.

So to start with, people are like, well, why grow mushrooms?

And for me, I mean, just look at these pictures.

The 1 on the left there, that is called chicken of the woods.

And these are all mushrooms that grow wild.

But the chicken of the woods, that's a real choice, edible, culinary mushroom that you can find just growing wild.

The upper right, that's a reishi mushroom.

You wouldn't cook with this 1 because it has like a real woody texture and it's hard but you can grind it into a powder and use it to make medicinal teas or you could put it in capsules after you've ground it up into a powder and ingest it that way.

At the very bottom, those are morels, That's the mushroom that a lot of people that are foraged for mushrooms, they're familiar with them.

And people that go out in the spring, that's the 1 that they seem to just be crazy about.

It's not my favorite, but I do like them.

I like just the appearance, the texture of all these.

You have those colors and it is just so much to for me that just draws me into them.

So first question is something 1 people always ask with a particular mushroom and they're concerned about.

They think they're going to pick something and eat it and kill themselves or kill their family.

So they want to know, well, is this mushroom edible?

And I've worked with Trad Carter, and he's like a really famous or popular mycologist.

And I've seen him at almost all his presentations.

He tells people, you know, he says you can eat any mushroom once and so you know and that's true but there are mushrooms out there you're not going to get a second opportunity So you want to make sure you know what you're eating.

And so identification is very important for you.

You want to learn to positively identify any mushroom that you're growing.

And also, you need to be familiar with any toxic or poisonous look-alikes to the mushroom that you're growing or that you're going out foraging for.

Because that way you can compare the 2 and it'll be easier for you to distinguish 1 from the other if you come across the poisonous look-alike mushroom.

There are field guides and books on identification that you can use to learn mushrooms.

That's not, for me, that's not a recommended method because there's too many things, Even in some of the books, there are errors that will cause problems.

It's better to go and join a local club where they have groups that they'll go out foraging, looking for mushrooms.

And they have people that are experienced with them.

They'll walk you through and help you to build your skills and identification.

There are also courses and certification programs that you can attend.

I went through 1 with Mushroom Mountain in South Carolina.

And they have courses around the country where you can go and it's usually a couple of days and you learn to identify about 60 to 70 different mushrooms and how you can, what you can use them for.

But at the end of that certification, if you pass that the test, then you're qualified to forage and sell mushrooms in about a dozen or so states.

And you know you can even buy mushrooms from other people that have foraged them but aren't certified and you're allowed to sell them if that state recognizes that certification.

On the Ad Agra website, there is a resource sheet that I put together and posted there.

Be sure to download that, because that's going to have links to some of these things, like even some of the books that you would want to use, how you can locate clubs in your area.

There's a link that will take you to where you can find out if there is a group in your area that goes out foraging, and you can join them.

There's information on that sheet about the resources in terms of where I get some of the products, whether it's spawn or equipment tools that I use when I'm growing and cultivating mushrooms.

When we go through the options or the processes for cultivation, there are videos on YouTube.

And I have links there that will cover everything that we're going to talk about today and just give you a visual of the actual process and people doing it.

Series

Special Interests

Understanding Hoop House Gardening

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Basic Gardening

Help! How do I Start My First Garden?

1h 7m

Basic Gardening

Your First Soil Test

1h 13m

Session 5

Tomatoes

1h 1m

Breakout Session 2

2- From Seed to Harvest: Planning and Scheduling to Maximize Yield

1h 12m

Session 4

Season Extension: Low-tech Methods & Materials

53m

Turning Tomatoes into Profit

Turning Tomatoes Into Profit Part 2

1h

Special Interests

Guiding Principles for a Successful Orchard Part 1

1h 2m

Special Interests

Irresistible Basil

1h 6m

Short Course: Gardening 101

Gardening 101- Part 1

38m

Advanced Track

Optimizing Your Greenhouse Production Part 2

59m

Market Gardening Track

When Efficiency Makes You Enjoy Your (Farm) Life

54m

Market Gardening

Market Gardening ABC’s: Looking at the Basic Building Blocks of the Market Garden

53m

Sound Doctrine