How to Make an Edible Apartment Balcony
So here we are in my Oakland apartment, this is my balcony and here I just grow a few plants, might work in the garden all day, so I don’t really have a lot of time to spend or a lot of space to garden at my house. But I do grow a few things here and what we’ve got here is green tea. This is a camellia and it’s the same plant they used to make green and black tea, so the young light green leaves here as oppose to the dark leaves, you don’t want the dark, you want the light green leaves. And if you dry them, if you just let them sit out, they actually ferment. And when they ferment, they become black tea, and if you actually lightly roast them or, you know, put them on a high enough heat so that they dry, then it becomes green tea. And it’s a much better than the kind you can buy in the store, it’s just the first year, the tiny little plant here, as you can see, it’s not very big at all. Provided me so far with two, actually four cups of tea that I shared with a friend each time and it’s really rich and good tasting. Down underneath it is kinda just a like a ornamental understory to this camellia, this is a companiolla, and I don’t know what species it is, but all species, all members of the companiolla genus are edible. So I pinch this off here and I eat them, and they’re really good and sweet. It’s one of the best greens I’ve ever eaten and the stalks to, you can eat the whole thing. And it’s got a really nice sweet flavor, I like it better than like baby organic lettuces. And I sit down here sometimes on my porch and just look around and relax and nibble on this. I hear they’re, you know, have vitamins, well beta carotene and vitamin C, but haven’t seen the full nutritional read out on the companiolla, but they taste really, really good. And imagine if you have a lot of it, you could put it in a salad and mix it with some dressing. And so then you look over here and I have nestershum, and colengiolla. Colengiolla is about to open, I mean these are tiny little pots here, they don’t take up much space at all, and this doesn’t actually even get full sun coz I’m actually under a little canopy here. And this is a north east facing side of the house, so, you know, like I said doesn’t get a lot of sun, especially in the winter and this, the colengiolla, which is very medicinal and technically it’s edible but I don’t like to eat it. It actually makes my, my throat hurt, I have a reaction to it. But it’s really pretty and next to it is the nestershum, and nestershum flowers and leaves are edible, although, they definitely pack a kind of a wallop when you eat them. Yeah, it’s pretty spicy, it’s like eating a red hot, but in plant form, like a child’s candy, red hot, say when you had when you were a kid. It’s kinda intense, but I hear if the leaves have the same type of intense flavor to them, but I hear that if you steam them or sauté them, they instantly loose all the spice. So you can eat them in a mass if you needed to. But with the spice, you can't eat them in mass, unfortunately. But they make a great addition to a salad or nice little spice up trail nibble. Over here, another small pot, as you can see, this is another companiolla, and this is companiolla perimendalus, probably not saying that they way most people do, and it’s great to eat. Actually prefer the smaller leaf ones better, but these are also sweet and you just eat them, leaves and stalks and all and it freaking taste great. I’ll sit out here and just nibble, just like I do with the other one, I’ll nibble one all three just like what I’m doing now. Just kinda nice that it have food growing right outside on your balcony, even in an urban setting, we don’t have a lot of space, or a lot of sun. And eat them straight off of the plant and just nothing else, you don’t need a lot, I think, they’re, that’s more potent when you eat it right off the plant. So you don’t need to, a tremendous amount, although in a pan you could, you know, mix this into a salad. I’m actually surprise that companiolla is not use more as a food crop or as an edible, because it’s just so mild and tasty and , I mean if anything, it’s sweet, there’s no hint of bitterness or whatsoever. And I’ve eaten quite a bit, and I’ve never experienced any ill effects. It’s great, great plant, the younger leaves are better than the older leaves as would most things. And it’s a perennial, so it keeps growing year after year, it’s really easy to take care of. I hardly even water it, I don’t, the only thing I fertilized it with is occasionally I water some of my own urine, which actually, it’s really potent, a urine is extremely high nitrogen, probably higher than any other source of nitrogen you're gonna get organically. If you water it down 8 to1, it’s safe to use on your plants. And for things that you want to grow the leaves, the nitrogen of course encourages leaf growth over, you know, flowering or anything else and so, when I’m trying to make this keep producing leaves, that’s a great way to do it. And it seems kinda interesting that we spend all this money on back one O or worry about how we’re gonna get up nitrogen to grow our plants when we have one of the most potent sources that we, you know, just flush down the toilet and put into the ocean which actually not good for the ocean to have so much nitrogen and so many salts and things that go to the urine. Of course they’re mix with so many other toxic. Coz I eat organic food, I don’t take pharmaceutical chemicals, so my urine is quite nice and safe, so I hope.