Do THIS If You Want to Be Self-Sufficient in Vegetables 

Massive thank you to Readly who kindly sponsored this video! Enjoy 2 months of unlimited access for FREE: readly.me/huwrichards (by the way, any guesses on how many times I said self-sufficiency in this video?)🌿😀

The biggest strides I've made towards "self sufficiency" have come from embracing "community sufficiency" instead. For example, I grew almost 40 pounds of onions this year, which my family wouldn't be able to eat fast enough before they start going bad, so I gave 5 pound bags of onions to several coworkers and friends. My parents likewise grew an abundance of squashes, so now I have several on my table waiting to make meals in the winter.

My strategy is to grow those foods that are the most expensive in the shops. Soft fruits, green beans, broccoli, peppers, plum toms, cherry toms, etc etc.

Hi Huw, this is a great point you're making. One suggestion: don't go down the road of clickbait bossy titles. Instead of "Do THIS...," how 'bout what you said at 1:50? "Embracing part-time self sufficiency." Love from UP of Michigan USA.

Hello from Costa Rica. You might find it unusual that somebody follows you living in a tropical area, but believe me I learn sooo much from you! Thank you very much for sharing! 🙏🏼

Haha, that's pretty much what I'm doing. Cook and eat whatever's available in the garden at that time. Simply because I'm kind of lazy when it comes to making plans and organize things. Gardening is my counterpoint to the stress the rest of my life tends to give me. It helps me to relax and for some reason too much planing and organizing would kind of destroy that. Keep up the wonderful work you do! Love from Germany, Andrea

dude.. the camera angles, the scripting, the “challenge” approach and its longterm benefits.. you killed this video! your book has already taught me so much and im excited to see whats next!!!!

Well done. This year I did trial by fire. Tripled my garden size. Learned a lot this season. Glad I did it. Had lots of room to plant vegetables I had never eaten before. Kohlrabi is my new favorite. Also learned what vegetables I need to grow more of and less of. Short season zone 3. Excited for spring.

It really does help when you make videos like this. It's so easy for people with different spaces and different accessibility to growing areas to feel over whelmed and not good enough and to simply give up because they aren't doing everything every one else is doing.

Loving the consistent quality content Hew 👊🏽😊

"Simply in season" is a cookbook that has helped me a lot in this regard!

Some very wise words here. Watching this in NZ and thinking what a long way you have come from your first videos. I have used lots of your ideas, just have to remember to translate the seasons lol. This video really struck a chord and I will watch it again. Great stuff, thanks for posting. Cymru am byth!

This was such an awesome video! Thank you for talking about self sufficiency in this way! I call this learning how to be sustainably self sustainable. Self sustainability is a great goal, but we have to be reasonable with our abilities and time available to do so. If we just go pedal to the metal, it's very possible to burn out. It's important to be respectful to ourselves while we learn how to do as much as we can to provide for our families.

i started watching your videos somewhere in 2011 to 2013 range. i've enjoyed watching your videos since day one and watching you grow and mature as time went on. please keep doing what you're doing. thanks.

Huw, thanks for speaking freedom and permission into our gardening experiences. I appreciate your encouragement for the value of time and balancing that with gardening and the rest of life and for challenging us to think wisely about what we grow so that we can avoid burn-out. As always...your videos are like taking an educational course every week! Thanks, Huw!

I really enjoyed your take on this! I think it's what I needed to hear - I tend to fall into the trap of looking at self-sufficiency as a binary thing, all or nothing, when actually it doesn't have to be. Love your view on part-time self-sufficiency - so it's time to ease up on myself a bit!!

Huw, you have been an inspiration and have helped me in my love for gardening. Through watching your videos, I’ve learnt a lot and got introduced to a lot of other gardeners. You are so selfless in your approach and make my time in the garden worthwhile. I will encourage others to watch Huw, a remarkable young man.

This is a beautiful philosophy. Last year was my first garden and I enjoyed cooking 🍳 everything I grew. I only made pickles, dried herbs and froze lemongrass! So encouraging to watch this video. Thank you for sharing 🤩

Thanks Huw , another thought provoking video, I don’t have enough growing space to be self sufficient, much as I would love to be, but the important thing to me is what I grow is organic and much healthier than shop bought stuff , so at least I am reducing what I buy .

I've been watching you since you're a kid! You are a class act Huw... I'm so impressed. I'm not a full time youtuber, but we have many of the same influences.

Great phrases Huw, "Create a true value for the time we spend in the garden".How can we be more clever with our time"... This wisdom has enabled such clarity in my planting plans and choices. Thankyou so much ! ☺

Hi Huw, I was looking into cold hardy citrus to grow where I live too. Unfortunately I am in zone 7 and haven't found any good candidates for my zone. The best ones I found would be pushing it in zone 8. Since you are in zone 8 you might have some luck with them outdoors in a sheltered spot like a south facing wall of a heated building, but better still in your polycrub if you have the room. The most promising ones I have read about are Arctic Frost Satsuma and Satsuma Orange Frost. They are two newish crosses that were developed in Texas and are meant to be cold hardy to zone 8. Both are relatively short trees, 8 to 12 feet tall in the ground, 6 feet in a container. Arctic Frost is the more cold hardy of the two. Other satsuma have similar if not quite the same cold hardiness. Owari Satsuma, Brown Select Satsuma, Satsuma Miho, and Satsuma Seto are varieties that can survive a frost. I am not sure if this is a different name for the citrus you plan to grow, but the one that I read of is the Ichang lemon, which I've read tastes a bit like a lemon and a grapefruit, and has a lot of juice but a lot of seeds. There is an Ichang lemon variety that is supposed to have fewer seeds than the standard called Grand Frost Lemon. Changsha Tangerines are supposed to be a more cold hardy parent to Arctic Forst and Orange frost, but very seedy with an insipid flavor, so not worth eating. Honey Changsha is still seedy but it is supposed to be a better tasting Changsha and more cold hardy than the satsumas. Sweet Frost Tangerine is meant to be a Changsha variety that tastes better and is nearly seedless, but I am not sure how cold hardy it is. Anyway, sorry about the wall of text. It's just something I had been looking into but haven't found something that will suit my climate. Maybe some of these will suit yours.

LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION TO START MY SELF-CONSUMPTION GARDEN, I FOUND THIS CHANNEL, I THINK IT HAS THE NECESSARY INFORMATION TO START, THANK YOU FOR PUTTING THE INFORMATION FOR FREE ACCESS

I do try to grow "too much" but what I'm thinking of is (a) the local food bank and (b) in case the kids (in their late 30s now) need to come home in a emergency. As it is they raid us regularly, which is, like, our favorite thing. Also it really helps bind our friends to us to hand out eggs, tomatoes, and apple butter on a regular basis.

I love gardening. And I love drying herbs for tea, freezing, fermenting and canning. This year I picked and canned wild pokeweed. Delicious, and I now cultivate this hardy weed out in the fields. Life in a garden is life harmony.

Huw, your growth is incredible. I've been learning from you since you were a teenager. Keep it up! Dried Stevia is a lot stronger, but leaves an aftertaste. Borh the leaf and the stem are packed with sweetness. When you find a way to dry Stevia sans the bitter after taste, do show us. Thanks again!!

After unsuccessfully trying to grow lemons outdoors I purchased a miniature Meyer lemon and put it in a small poly tunnel. It worked a treat. I also have an orange tree in there I grew from seed. No fruit yet and it's approx 15 years old. I love coriander, I mince mine and pop it in ice cube trays for my winter curries 😍

Thanks for the video! Gives a lot of input at the end of the growing season and for planning the next. We are growing only what we like to cook and so we just found our basic crops. Every year I'm adding a bunch of new ones in a corner of the garden. Some are staying, some don't. Only the space is not growing. 😂

Hello Huw, yes, you have just nailed the biggest problem for me: to balance the time invested on the one hand and the results on the other hands. Goal being self-sufficiency. Obviously enjoying the whole process in between enormously. Thank you very much for all the videos. Very very informative!

There is a fruit called Chaenomeles that is called "northern lemon" here in Estonia. It is sour as hell and we but it a tea just like a lemon. We also preserve it in a sugar syrup for winter.

Hi Hugh I love your enthusiasm and the sight of your garden is a delight. I am no longer young and ambitious, my goal is to grow as much healthy seasonal food as I can and enjoy the process of growing, cooking and preserving and taking delight in the renewed sense of purpose in my life…

very interesting as usual Huw. The best thing I have done recently to aid production is to buy a dehydrator. I think it will do so much against food waste. Thanks for a great video.

I am so blessed by your wisdom AND practicality. This is exactly where we are, as a family getting back into gardening and becoming more self-sufficient. Thank you for this video! And thank you for sharing your insights and experience!

I only started last year with a little bit of gardening as a hobby. I'm going very slowly because I don't wat to feel it like a job. For now I'm only growing a few aromatic herbs and tomatoes. I think I have a talent for this (it's called "green thumb" I believe) but I'm not skilled at all yet, I'm just doing what feels right, I make many mistakes and I learn from them. Watching some videos on youtube helped a lot.

When I don't know what to make with what I've grown, I either stir fry with tofu, beans or meat in a wok, slow roast, or saute the veggies for a while on low temperature.. Hot peppers, cumin, garlic, and turmeric are often in the picture. It always comes out great! A step up for me would be having a recipe to make in advance so I will try Readly. I am enjoying your inspiring videos.

Its so nice, I planted so many vegetables also on my rooftop, I bought them from vegetables store, then I'm taking the seed then tried to plant them in the plybag, pot or planter bag, bcs I dont have a big space to transplant them in the bigger pot bcs I live in the cental city, I wish I can live in the village, I do love a pure nature and I love this video so much❤

Huw thank you so much for your videos, they are indeed a valuable teaching tool. To your point, I too love fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden, and I do believe we should grow seasonally, but I also believe that a certain amount of preservation from the garden is important, as never knows what the future holds; drought, illness, job loss. Unless you have a massive garden, it is very difficult to feed a family solely off of fresh fruit and vegetables from your garden, this is when the preservation of last season’s crops are helpful. I live in Florida, and wile I technically have a yearlong growing season, there are vegetables that I cannot grow in the summer due to heat and humidity, and the winter due to the cooler temps. Growing what’s in season makes for a much better tasting vegetable or fruit, and takes some of the stress out of fighting Mother Nature to grow something that isn’t seasonal.

Haha like your def. it’s what I gonna adopt for me. I never wanted to be self sufficient. It would make me unsocial. I want to join my colleagues for lunch and I want to support my local farmers and restaurants. But be self sufficient on weeknights veg could work.

Started doing this in the past few seasons. Went thru things and but back to what we really need/use, and what had the best labor-time-yield combination. Anything that doesn't produce, produces more than we need, or is too labor/time intensive has been cut or reduced. We still produce good quantities but in about half the space. Also have come up with specific methods and procedures to make everything as simple and quick as possible. Try to keep a good balance between fresh and preserved (I juice and cook alot) and do year round gardening as we can fit in.

I've been building my gardening knowledge slowly since 2017, and one of the things I've enjoyed the most is discovering new plants that either aren't available or taste really bland in the grocery store, like ground cherries. They're so tasty, they self-seed year after year, and they produce an absolute abundance of fruit! A great fruit ☺️

I like the block gardening method.

Thank you so much ! In a and of April there are aetable herbs start to grow. Dandelion and nettle. You can make wonderful spring salad out of it. Ful of prana, vital energy and vitamins. Wish you all health and prosperity!!

I did want to grow chickpeas for my homemade hummus but did realize it wasn't worth the effort. But I am trying my hand at beans and now I have the idea to see what kind of hummus I can make out of those instead. Thanks for the idea.

I have grown stevia and it does well in zone 6, New York. It is very hard to grow from seed but we have a local grower that has them as 4" pot starts and I buy them like that. I think they are easier to propagate via rooted cuttings than seed.

You make great points. It takes time to establish a food supply at home & gain the knowledge & skills required. I’ve cut down my labour significantly by using the Kratky passive hydroponic method for some things such as strawberries, capsicum, tomatoes. I plan to overwinter these & make new plants via cuttings. Planting perrenials such as Perpetual spinach, kale, celery. Choosing everbearing, early cropping, prolific & longer storing varieties. Root vegetables with an abundance of edible leaves such as sweet potato, multiplier onions, radish, beetroot. These types of decisions have allowed me to grow more than I could achieve otherwise

I've been enjoying chimichuri - a parsley, cilantro, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt paste on everything lately. My goal for this season is to grow scads of parsley and cilantro so I can make as much of it as I can from home. Thank you for your great advice!

Your planning has really helped me prioritize instead of just planting my favorite foods; instead planning for the lean late winter and early summer plan.

I grow all sorts of beans and in large patches. I cook tender beans throughout summer but there’s huge amount remaining which I leave on the vines until November. Then harvest all the beans on a sunny day and remove all the dry beans onto trays and leave them to dry further in my conservatory. Then put them in large bottles ready to use anytime in winter. Great colours and different sorts look fantastic in bottles in my kitchen. High protein and fibre and delicious superfood ready in plenty especially for vegetarians. White bean hummus is a great idea Hugh, thank you. I also freeze excess tomatoes in small bags and use them to fry and make stews as they can’t be eaten in salads of course. Much better than tin tomatoes to use in curries and stews.

In a zone 4, you don't eat what is in the garden in winter, you eat what is the cold cellar. I get that preserving tomatoes is a hell of a lot of work but preserving roots or tubers or even onions and garlic is not that much of work. I also freeze some stuff that don't require blanching and it's not that much of work.

from april on, we'll gonna have thick beans fresh for months (planted in autumn '21) & jerusalem artichokes & cabbages - so there's almost no hunger gap, only in variety.

This is incredibly well thought out. Researching and collecting recipes so that you can enjoy what you grow rather than getting bored. I like that you aligned your topic (some don’t) with your sponsored product. Still don’t know what to do with eggplant but all the people I give it to appreciate it.

Wow.. love this..your creativity of your garden landscape & the variety of plants on it, the ideas & the hardwork, were just soo amazing. God bless you.

Great video! I'm glad you pointed out being more clever with your time. That's huge. Keep up the great content 😎

I can't wait to put some of these ideas into practice - such great ways of thinking and approaching the garden - thank you!

Great video - I always focus on trying to get the most crop on Onions, Potatoes, French Beans and Squash's - everything else is a bonus / experiment at the moment. Still working on the wife for a bigger freezer ;)

You always have such sound advice and I appreciate you sharing your insights.

Your not kidding joy in being self sufficient. Looking at potential and always continuing to grow. Thanks again for such amazing informative videos i have even been taking notes.🤩

I too have been looking for recipes to freeze produce. Quiches provide a good lunch when you want something warm. However flour, eggs, cheese and cream come from the shops. I've used several Chetna (RU-vid) recipes this year, Sweetcorn and Aubergine Curries that taste really good also using tomatoes from the garden. However all those spices need buying too. My main problem are my supply of cucumbers, which are slowing down, but still coming at several every day. The cucumber soups were insipid and the cucumber curry was a little thin in flavour. Carrots or potatoes to assist are so powerful that any cucumber flavour is swamped. First year of growing them so haven't sorted methods of dealing with excess. Interesting video, thank you.

That's so important to discuss the economy of our operation.

ugh your garden is LUSH and gorgeous I am jealous to the max and gonna up my game this year!! Thanks for the inspiration! I literally am taking snapshots of your garden and putting it on my vision board hahaha!!

Love watching your videos. Always a pleasure to watch. So informative without talking down to your audience. Inspiring!

For lemony taste, I just learned researching what to plant in one neglected area of our garden, that Tagetes tenuifolia- a fairly common annual here grown in the gardens, especially by the older generation, is in fact edible and! The leaves of the yellow flower variety are said to taste like lemon zest, while the orange flower variety.. you guessed it ;) I have the seeds ready waiting for May and I will be sure to try for myself

I'm going to experiment with growing red okra outside next year so I don't have to buy that (which I presume isn't local or seasonal!) - I've found a variety that is apparently okay to grow outdoors in the UK. Also yellow Siberian tomatoes are apparently super early and good to grow outdoors here. Just takes a bit of browsing seed catalogues!

Hi Huw. Thanks so much for another inspiring video! I'm here in CA, propagating a bunch of raspberries for next year. I'm setting the seeds for self-sufficiency by planting a bunch of fruit trees. And for the hungry gap, I'm trying to plant as many citrus trees as I can find space for. As for vegetables, I'm doing mostly greens because they're so reliable and I can seem to grow them even in the middle of the winter. Here in CA, it would appear we can start carrots as late as september. One of the issues we have here is that if we start too early the winter vegetables will get too hot.

Absolutely brilliant info. Got me to thinking for certain about my own veg garden. You have put in to concise words some very real and good advice. Thank you!

Amazing and natural. Mind blowing. Love it!

Thank you, Huw. Your video is timely for me. I've been killing myself trying to keep up with the work I've created for myself. You are wonderful.

Perfect timing we are planning our garden for next season. Great advice and awesome knowledge.

There are some good points here Huw. I think that there is room for growing and storing crops that might be very time intensive or even costly if those are the crops that you are most passionate about. But you do need to balance this with crops that are more efficient.

Definitely wisdom being spoken.

My challenge as a beginner is to produce a few big crops to freeze and dehydrate for the year. I'm choosing zucchini, spaghetti squash, and kale. Maybe tomatoes to can. We like kale and zucchini in a lot of things, especially soup.

Thank you so much for your inspiring videos ❤️ Just what I need

Thank you. I live in the desert and found out last year with our 100 degree temps and my plants dying that this year I am going to start much smaller and dedicate much of my indoor living space and only a small portion of my garden and only grow those veggies I truly love. Grateful to God I have 7 cats who love to chase away peasty predators!

I learned many things from your RU-vid videos about gardening...Self-sufficiency is very important nowadays especially of what happening to our economy, cost of living is increasingly expensive. It helps us to save money.

I love how you design your garden 😍 it is pleasant to look at. I would love to download the layout of it

Another fantastic and real video. Thanks Huw, you are an absolute star 🌟

A huge factor in what my wife and I grow is taste and freshness, for instance before growing our own my wife hated the taste of carrots and would never buy them, but we now look forward to harvesting our own and why we grow most of what we grow.

thanks Huw..this is amazing. just what i need it❤

Thank you, I needed this info. My small garden did not go well.

3:49 beautiful garden shot

I love experimenting in the garden and kitchen too.

Thank you Huw, you really were my inspiration for starting gardening again this year. I’ve made 5 raised planters, so far and intend on 7 more. By next Spring I’ll have 12 planters ready to go. I’ve put my Strawberries 🍓 to bed for the winter, planted my Onions 🧅 & Garlic 🧄, which are coming on great in just a few weeks, and next week I’m transplanting my Cauliflower plants & hoping for a wonderful surprise next Jan/Feb I still have some carrots to pull, and have some carrots I hope will grow up until Xmas. Also got my Sarpo Mira potatoes 🥔 which I can harvest in December. We’ve also had Lettuce 🥬 & Peas as well as Corn 🌽 on the Cob & French Beans so yes Thank You for the boost I needed xxx

Love this video, personally not trying to be self sufficient just enjoy growing to eat seasonally and make food gifts for others. This year I seem to have had a slug festival going on, learnt there are such things as root aphids, and the beautiful metallic blue beetles found may well be flea beetle. May have a bigger hungry gap than expected as we also had some badgers visit the Pumpkin patch. This year has definitely been one for gardening for wildlife. Have set up buckets and tubs for the nettle and comfry tea do they help reduce pest and disease, your produce looks amazingly clean do you have any idea if it is the no dig that is the main reason or something else you are doing?

I’ve learned the hard way that trying to grow everything I enjoy results in getting zero satisfaction. Next year I’m going to grow herbs, tomatoes and onions and I’m looking forward to having a great harvest of all three!

I love your garden layout.

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. You're helping to educate and improve the world and I appreciate your help.

Would you ever be interested in building a small Walpini sunken garden, to extend the growing season, and also to be able to grow more "tender", warmer climate fruits, plants (there's a guy in Montana that has a Walpini sunken garden, and grows oranges in the middle of the harshest winters there. And also has asian pear trees, blueberry bushes, raspberry and blackberry vines/shrubs, lime trees and lemon trees, and even a fig tree. He also harvests tomatoes in December.) It's a good way/alternative to fill the "hungry gap" more than once in a year. I enjoyed this video. Very interesting topic, and glad I viewed this. Very thought provoking, things one needs to consider.

Self sufficiency in not about just you (the person) and what you want, it's understand that you are part of a bigger system. When the person understands this, understands what grows well in there environment and how to utilize it in there life then the person can be eco system sufficient. Feel the word self sufficiency is to focus on the individual not the whole. Thank you very interesting topic.

Once again, just super inspiring! Thanks Huw!!! From Nova Scotia Canada

Some good thoughts there Huw. I try as best I can working on the principle how many onions, cabbages etc I use in a week and then multiply by 52 so as to not to overplant. Veg alternatives to meat or pasta would be a good idea, if possible, must look at that spaghetti squash. Diolch.

Thank you for your valuable advice 🙏

let’s remember people - the most revolutionary thing you can do is grow your own food. Let’s all just do it

I love all your ideas here! I grew way too many tomatoes this summer. I'm thinking of having a tea garden next summer. I'd never heard of Readly so this is exciting also. Thanks bunches!

I tried planting chickpeas. You're right about the effort vs yield.

Huw.. how are you always so clean in your gardening clips?!?! Anytime I'm in the garden i seem to be head to toe in mud/compost/leaves!

I aspire to get to this level of self sufficiency in food!

I have never thought about growing wild rice..🤔I will do some research..cheers from Sydney, Australia.😁

This is epic. What fantastic information. I’ve just reorganised my growing and storing. I’m going to do more dehydrating and bottling and less freezing. I won’t bother with butternut squash, they take up too much room for little produce and potatoes, never again in the ground. I tend on the whole to grow stuff that’s expensive in the stores, like red/white currants and strawberries. Why grow things like potatoes that are cheap and good in the stores? I grew Stevia but it needs a cosy place over winter. I gave up on fussy things that are never good like a blue sausage plant which hated wet, cold winters.

Since I live in zone 4, I do not try to be self sufficient. I simply see what else could I grow. I grow veggies like people grow flowers. I see what I can grow, what I like and then in summer I simply am happy to get to be lazy and getting my dinner out of my garden rather than going out shopping. This year I accidentally am self sufficient in onions, kale and home made jam. When I do not strive for some goal I can relax and enjoy my garden as a place to meditate while doing chores :)

Hey your videos are so much innovating for us sir