It’s June 13th and schools out and I’m back to podcasting! Excited to reach out to all of you Green Future Growers! Hopefully this episode will hit your ears asap and here it is July 24th! But alas summer flies does it not!

Today I am here with Hanna Crumm the Kombucha Mamma!

The Big Book of Kombucha: Brewing, Flavoring, and Enjoying the Health Benefits of Fermented Tea

Tell us a little about yourself and what is it Kombucha and am I even saying it right?

Kombucha with an O and it’s basically fermented tea

I visited a friend from college 

Sanfranciso in CA

box of jars, towels, weird floaty things! That’s the kombucha! I had never heard of it, I was like that’s funny! So I get back to 

entertaining!

I get back to Los Angels and there’s an entire case of kombucha! I take my first sip

acidic acid

tea vinegar

A lot of people that might get that sour kombucha face! For me I loved the flavor but I’m the girl that loved the pickle juice out of the pickle jar, fermented funky flavor

I felt the kombucha in my body

You know when you pick a vegetable out of your garden and you grew it and you know everything that went into it! You take the first bite it’s a rush that’s beyond the flavor and you can tell it’s alive and that was the experience I felt alive

I wanted more of it

but I my thirst out did my budget.

This is so appropriate because I ust got home and tasted some of the first lettuce out of the garden and just putting it in my salad, right here fresh picked! 

Kombucha has applications beyond making it a beverage to drink.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

My first experience come from my dad, he grew up on a farm in min own of like 200 people

Every summer we’d get 

shipped out to the grandparents and get dropped off there

John Deere shop

clamber out the tractors

• tomatoes
• peppers
• plant the marigolds to keep bugs away
• soux chef who had to go out and gather the herbs and pick all the leaves off
• Lots of great memories!

How did you learn how to garden organically?

My grandparents grew

fields weeding

on the land stuff as a kid

later in life more pesticides

by the time I was getting older they kind of transitioned away into other things like auctioneering and real estate

My dad never used any fertilizer but on the other hand we didn’t have a composter

I made my own in my backyard a few years ago in Los Angelos, I love working with the worms. I turn all of that stuff into that rich black earth! That’s where all my volunteer tomatoes come from that come up in the weirdest places…

Tell us more about kombucha

Kombucha is in some ways similar to gardening

We need to have a really rich soil that is nutrient dense that has the right microbial balance so that teh plants are able to uptake that nutrition.

Were like that too where our guts are the soil in our boddies…interface to create that

diverse micro biome

create our nutrients that way

Kombucha is a fermented food.

fermetation

• sauer kraut
• pickles
• vinegar

preserved our foods, back when we did’t have a fridge, I know we take it for granted but 150 years ago, didn’t have those luxuries.

A lot of people still don’t around the world. 

What’s interesting about the United States we came from a bunch of places

came to a country that didn’t

post world war 2 processing food industry replaced 

• having a garden preserving

touting on the WWII posters

• patriotic to plant a garden
• everyone should have chickens

processed food industry

lowest cost lowest quality inputs unfortunately our bodies are suffering as a result of that

repopulate our microboime in a positive way.

micro-biome

there’s bacteria everywhere

I know we’ve been waging germ warefare

• bacteriacides
• hand sanitizers

fda

now banning trycluen

micorobiome is all the bacteria and organisms that live on your body

planet

rainforest under there

arm is like a dry desert

Our body has all these different terrains

each is populated with different organisms that protect you. They go from your mouth to end of you everything is covered with bacteria

We’re over prescribed

pesticides

that leaves space for organisms that

overprescribing

arent’ native

candida overgrowth

organizms

bacterial infections 

can go wrong.

Even more to most basic level

back to hypocreties who says all disease starts in the gut.

2010

really starting to uncover

• autism
• parkinsons
• alcoholism
• rumitoid arthritis

so often they’re going 

THE gut is out of balance

what strain

one thing

mentality

diversity

just like nature

organizms populating our body

speaking engagements

hug or a handshake you’re not getting away without sharing some of your bacteria only

Tell us about

kombucha kamp

started out  as a workshop in my home. Kombuchas is easy to make. 

• tea
• steep it
• add sugar to it

specific website

click on recipe

read it

sweet tea solution

add our culture to it then it turns it into this tangy healthy beverage

Because we’ve lost this connection with our grandparents

demistifying our process

Mainstream media says

• no proof
• contaminate yourself if your make it home

if that were true

people would stop ages ago

Why would you share something if you know it’s gonna cause them harm?

because it’s an acidic acid

low ph

coupled with the healthy acid profile has been shown to kill salmonella and wisteria and all of the pathogens on contact

pathogens were so strong 

if they were so dominant we’d all be dead!

pathogens would have gotten us

There’s more good guys then bad guys

many good guys as possible

It’s our force

microbial cloud

helps keep us strong

what does all of this have to do with gardening?

soil based organizms are good for people

The bacteria tangyness

If you have acid loving plants

• rose bushes
• blueberries

composting the cultures is a way to get positive organisms in your soil

the worms love them and they help to break everything down quitkcly

then you get the particular

soil ammendment

put that scoby in a blender

burry the pieces in the ground

Let’s back it up a scoby what is that?

That’s what we call

our mother

If you’re at all familiar with raw apple cider vinegar at the bottom of the bottle you will see this disc object

acidic acid bacteria

also creates cellulose because it’s so reproductive you end up with loads these extra scobies

My hope is if you throw them away they will break down the garbage. 

could

don’t want to throw them away, people feel like they are friends and pets and up with hoards of them

put them back into the world…

indicative in all things in nature if you give an organism what it needs to thrive it will!

If you’re putting the right nutrients in the soil you’ll notice your plants will be more

• robust
• healthier
• they don’t don’t need pesticides as much because their immune system
• plants are more nutrient dense

something we can look at through bricks testing. That’s really we have this myth of needing pesticides because we’re trying to farm in a way that isn’t in harmony in nature

Nature isn’t monocropping

nature is diversity

• corn
• squash
• beans trio

more of all of them

competing and taking things from each other

how nature operates

implement how those things we end up withmore successful gardens

instead of in straight lines following the patterns of the earth in order to create more yields with less chemical inputs.

The one thing I have been trying to get done, I interviewed this woman from PITMOSSⓇ 

PITMOSSⓇ 

• it’s natural
• recycled fiber

there’s two other episodes I have done with soil scientists, it’s imperative for me especially Mike’s been wanting to buy $180 for soil for  hopefully welll split with someone. I think the non-organic option 

soil health is so essential I’ve been trying to have a worm bin. I’m fascinated with all of this that it’s a tea I thought it would be more like a vegetable.

Is it an herb? Do you grow it?

tea doesn’t grow everywhere

tea plantations in the south

liptons

other climates showing potential

tea plant

here in the us

traditionally grown in china and india

fermentation has been important in all of those ancient cultures coupled with the fact that they have realiable access to tea

arose from

cha in kombucha

chai can we use herbs?

Often reserve those for flavoring. That’s what I did.  I went out and plucked some

• lavender
• rosemary stems
• sprigs of thyme

would give it this lovely herbacious flavor

herb s and spices are our friends

don’t just add flavor

help support our bodies

come from nature

most

litterally no separation

all inhabit

same amazing planet

all of our computers

technology

drive our cars

airconditioning

leads to a lot of depression and sadness

we need to be in contact with nature

Japanese word for forest bathing

concepts like these are percolating back into our society

thing when we take the time

Even if your not the most successful gardener

• getting your hands dirty
• peace and kind of
• sense of connection that really satisfies…

Absolutely, I call people trying to grow a greener future being in thr garden, something we all share in common. 

Then you see how the run off pollutes the waterways

fish start to...