I discovered last year how versatile basil can be. When I had way too much I tried basil iced tea and just fell in love. My yard is tiny but it WILL have a ton of basil. Love from the USA.
Your videos are so beautiful and inspiring, I watch them several times. My winter project was creating a 20 foot windrow of composting materials. We are preparing to convert an acre of old pasture land to cover crops to improve the soil. I have test pots of sunflower, oats and mustard in my living room. While not your standard garden, they are healing crops for our pasture and fall food for our chickens.
Working back from what you enjoy eating is my main motivator. Once my greenhouse is built this year I will be planting tomatoes, peppers and chillies to try some lovely heritage varieties that I have no chance of buying in a supermarket
Thank you for the encouragement. Our PNW weather has not yet shaken the winter cold ,we've only had three days above 60F. Usually, on April 1st, I am busy planting tomato and pepper seeds in the unheated greenhouse, but maybe autumn will be mild again, as last year I was picking the last of the green beans in late October. We gardeners need to be flexible with the climate changes. This winter I allowed the black kale, or dinosaur kale to have side shoots (I cut the plants in half late summer) and its buds are just as delicious as other sprouting kales or broccoli. Thanks for your videos, very helpful and educational.
The beauty and downside to living in an urban area is that you just can't grow that much. So, you focus on what you are growing and make sure it's stuff you enjoy eating. There's a lot of hope in growing in small spaces as it can go wrong and then you get very little.
I'm personally a fan of summer squash fritters. 1 grated pattypan (pat dry on paper towel to remove excess moisture), 1/2 cup diced onion, 1 egg, 2 Tbsp cornmeal, 1 Tbsp flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp sugar. Mix it all up, let the batter sit for ten minute, then add to a frying pan with a good amount of oil as if you were making pancakes. My husband likes them with maple syrup, I like them with soy sauce, but they're delicious just as they are. 1 or 2 thinly sliced okra and 1/4 cup fresh sweet corn are excellent additions.
I just did my April plantings today. Red Pontiac potatoes, mustard greens, swiss chard, peas, lettuce, spring onions, radishes, and beets. I will do cucumbers and dill in a couple weeks. I had forgotten about nasturtium, I might do that again this year.
Hi Hugh Love your videos and I really appreciate the what to sew in what month advice. So many benefits of growing your own food. If you also count in that you pretty well grown organically. Okay for Seeds might not of started out Organic who cares. You haven’t put any chemicals on etc. Compare the price of buying organic vegetables to you growing them and you save hundreds if not, thousands of pounds
I adore courgette, and will be planting plenty again this year. Have almost finished what's left in the freezer from last year! Think I prefer simpler tastes, so planting to suit! Brilliant video :)
Try fermenting chunks of a firm courgette (such as lebanese white bush) with garlic, onion and slices of lemon. It might just become a new favourite. Thank you for another great video 🙏
So envy about your climate! 😄 So green already in your greenhouse. Thank you for your videos, so much good info. We still have 82 cm of snow and the last frost can be around 6.6. - Mirja, North-Finland -
your quality in your videos is amazing lately. the colours and the editing and how sharp, it’s incredible. props to whoever is editing, is it yourself Huw?
I love courgettes - roasted with tomatoes and garlic and herbs, or in a ratatouille, or homemade minestrone (good for freezing). Loads of uses that can be frozen for winter months. Thanks for the reminders of things we can get started this month. I absolutely love growing herbs. So much wonderful flavour so easily. I tuck them in everywhere. I just need the lake that was my garden to dry out enough for me to get started! x
I canned a bunch of winter squash with garlic and rosemary. It was great. Also made a spicy squash and sausage soup and pressure canned that. Excellent, best soup I ever made in the Devraux Pressure canning book.
Some absolutely fantastic ideas there! I tend to focus each year on a particular crop, I want to be self sufficient in. Last year it was beans and I almost got there. This year I'm focusing on sweet pepper. Fingers crossed 🤞
What I've done with my large lot is each year I pick a space to put down black plastic to kill weeds, etc. (The piece from the previous year's space so you don't have to buy tons of it). Then that space the following year is cardboarded, composted, and mulched. 3rd year plant.
But there is always that "glut" point where you never want to see another courgette or tomato! 😂 but generally sensible advice, and to learn to love food that grows in the UK climate. This is easier with a large polytunnel, so we are growing grapes too, trying out a Welsh variety from the Welsh fruit nursery that specialises in rare varieties that have been grown in this climate for a very long time. I'm also growing crops such as Amaranth to feed chickens and geese my friend keeps and shares the bounty with us.
my 1yo loves nusturshams. last year getting carried about grabbing leaves and chomping on them. it'll be interesting to see if she still likes them this year!
👏👏👏🎉Bravo!!! This vid is packed with wisdom. Its so nice to see how much experience have gained. Thanks for the verbal guidance on growing what we like for the most part. I do struggle with trying to eat too much of a variety of vegetables and then when i can't get to them im sad about it. Those purple broccoli and rob spouts look awesome! Thanks for the trick about the carrots to use the plank method. My family didn't do this in the 80s, but i LOVE fresh carrots. Ideally your generation brings gardens back!
Have a couple Parisian carrots growing in my attic, first time to get root! Sowing carrots outside for the first time this year, also doing the Golden Beets per Huw’s suggestion, some Japanese turnips, and russet potatoes. I need to get more root crop than a few radishes in the Spring.
I grow pumpkins Jack O Lantern for the hens , great as a treat during winter months ,they love them. The seeds are supposed to be a natural wormer for them too. Grow up and over the chicken run or a weedy patch of ground, just leave them to it .Biggest problem is storage space during winter. Happy hens.
If you have a lot of zucchini, shred it up and pack into ziplock bags and freeze it. I add it to soup, I make zucchini bread & muffins, I find lots of winter dishes which I can put it in, and if it's shredded into small bits, you get all the nutrients and not the deary "zucchini again" thought.
huw can you maybe do a video on how you would preserve any veg when talking about self sufficiency? say you have a big harvest of beans, where do you keep them all so they stay okay?
We have bought a spiralizer to take zucchini and turn it into a vegetable pasta for summer dishes, and it works well. We are also looking at drying them and see if they are something that will hold it's quality and use it in the wintertime also.
I’ve never grown zucchini, but looking forward to it. We buy a lot of it for a simple soup (just garlic, oil, salt & grated zucchini) grilled (garlic, salt & pepper) & in a zucchini loaf bread
Thank you for those inspirations and ideas, Huw. Today we started our own container garden at my Kita (Kita being a form of kindergarten/preschool/nursery here in berlin/Germany with mixed age and mixed ability classes ranging from 1 year olds to 6 year olds) some of my students did sow paprikas, tomatos (yes, I know a bit late, but I already have some seedlings at home to switch out, if needed) and nasturtiums. Some parents brought big containers, soil, strawberry plants, cucumbers and some herbs. tomorrow we will set up the containers, plant strawberries and blackberries, sow carrots, radishes and calendulas. I have a good idea of what we will grow with the kids and how to keep those little ones excited, but, if I may, I would like to ask you (and the community) for advise on how to best feed container growing veg and fruit in general, since we unfortunatelly cannot make our own compost or have a worm farm on site. Would a slow releasing granulated organic feed directly mixed in the soil be better or should we adapt a regular feeding regime together with watering? thanks a lot!
Summer squash and zucchini is NOT anywhere close to prolific in the deep south in the United States where we have the squash vine borer. Also I have problems with an abundance of male flowers and zero female flowers. Additionally we have squash bugs. Growing zucchini in zone 8 here is extremely difficult. Stubborn tho I am, this year I'm going to try a decoy system to plant a Blue Hubbard winter squash first just for the vine borer and then waiting two weeks to plant others that hopefully the borers won't be interested in since they'll have had their fill from the first squash. I learned about this method over the winter. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will work. Also Fennel tastes great raw made into a salad with a vinaigrette dressing mixed with fresh juicy orange slices and lots of green onions. Whoops, I forgot Tarragon needs to be added to the dressing.
Hi Huw, I wonder if I can put toms in my polytunnel shelving safely. I would appreciate any advice from any others on our community too. I am UK based. US zone 8 equivalent. Temps have been between 15 and 7 degrees C
@@HuwRichards may I ask you something? Is this video: 5 Reasons Why Direct Sowing Is Underrated” an answer to my video “Propagation trays FOR FREE in the style of @CharlesDowdinginodig and @HuwRichards” or it was just a coincidence ?🤔
Great video. Certainly going to be useful at some point for me when I have the land to get serious about growing food. Tangentially to all this i know wildflower meadows arent covered really on this channel but I'm hoping I haven't sown a little wildflower meadow too early as we had a light frost last night...I may have been overzealous in my seed sowing. If anyone has any experience with wildflower meadow sowing and frost I'd appreciate any advice from experience.
Wait what!...You can freeze chopped/quartered raw tomatoes without blanching? I'm a Beginner gardener so it's quite daunting, and confusing, finding out this sort of information!
It's interesting switching between your videos and Charles Dowdings videos and how your advice differs, he says not to sow climbing beans until May, is there any reason you start yours in April?
Are there any other types of potatoes that you would suggest because in American I can't seem to find anyone willing to sell that variety. They look great and my climate is similar enough to yours (just a bit less wet) that I wanted to try them this year and had no luck finding any.
Idk... I am aiming simpler. It seems simple to me to just make Elderberry wine. Even Revelation says that wine will be cheap... and since I have land and I am an underachiever, maybe I can be at the drunken forefront of the elderberry wine Apocalypse market.... idk... thoughts?
I'm a new gardener and I planted my basil (green and purple) and they have germinated!!! My problem now is....I don't think I've mastered sowing techniques yet and I've got several seedlings in each module. What do I do? Should I try to split them into individual plants and risk killing them all, or should I cut my babies at the base and just leave one in each module, or could I plant the small groups a bit like multi sowing? Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks 👍
@@user-ed7et3pb4o Thank you, I like that idea as it will cover all bases so to speak. I know it's only basil and it's really easy to grow but, as I said, at nearly 70 I'm venturing into gardening and I really can't tell you what joy it gave me when they germinated!!!!!
@@davegilford1257 Just watch out - the joy you get from growing plants from seed is very addictive😅 Soon you'll be collecting seed packages and starting 1000s of seeds every year😅
No worries. Basil is not fussy. You can grow a few plants together in a cluster or divide them and plant separately. You won't hurt their roots at all. Just pop them out of the module and gently pull apart.
I've never understood how people grow fennel from April sowings - it flowers in June so every time I've tried it's bolted before the bulbs. Best to sow July for autumn winter harvest surely?
I'd love to hear your opinion on root parsley, as a double crop like fennel (both herb and root). It's strange to me that it isn't grown more often. Also, do you grow skirret and scorzonera? I wonder if your issues with carrot fly would be erased by just switching to another root crop. Do they attack your parsnips?
From where I come from root parsley is almost a staple crop. Definitely staple in cooking. The only problem growing root parsley is very long germination, apart from that it´s like carrot. Last year I grew both carrot and parsnip at the same spot and there was substantial carrot fly damage on carrots. Parsnip zero. If I was to choose what to eat raw, I´d choose carrot as well ;) I still have two last huge parsnips from last year, carrots just finished.
@@andreahorsch286 They only concluded the height thing is a myth. I have a friend who tried growing carrots in containers on top of IBC water tanks and it didn't make any difference. Crops were still infester dover 2 seasons.
Huw, Please help me out. I am so fed up with low quality seed trays we have here in Poland. I cannot find anywhere (online nor offline), and I live in the capital, seed trays that will last in the same shape more than one season... it's such a shame and every gardener I know complains about it! I don't care about the shipping cost anymore I need hr10! Please let me know where I can buy them with shipping to Poland. Thanks in advance :) Klaudia
I love your videos but I am frustrated the way you casually mention the raised beds and covering of beds. As a common, poor person, I can't afford to build these things. I'm doing well that I have found a farmer who will let me use part of his yard for a garden plot. Even to pay a yearly fee for plot is too much and defeats the purpose of growing my own. I love to grow in my garden but if it is costing me more yearly to do my own growing than buying from the grocers, I have wasted my time and effort. I have a bad back and bad knees and every moment I am in my garden is painful but I hope to save money and have veg when the stores are too expensive. I so wish I could build the raised begs but I have no access to used lumber and buying my own is out of the question. Thanks for what you do teach.
The "raised" bed concept doesn't have to have sides. Just establish about 3 foot wide garden beds and then shovel the dirt from what will be the paths onto those beds. Never walk on your beds.
Grow them in low nutrient soil. Makes them produce flowers. Try using spent potato compost or just plain old garden dirt High nutrient soil makes them produce tons of leaves but no flowers. Also if you plant them in pots you can mo e them next to anything that gets black fly. The black fly will move off onto the nasturtiums and leave. Your veggies alone.
