- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
Today's video is sharing nine edible crops
that you never need to buy seeds for again,
either because they self-sow everywhere
or the saving of seeds and their tubers are super simple.
The first two I'm gonna share are herbs.
I'm gonna start off with coriander.
Right in front of me here is confetti coriander
that is self-sown.
So behind me I had this, what I call an island block.
We have a block of herbs and edible flowers
to create a nice pollinator friendly,
but edible space in the garden.
That was last year, let it run to seed.
And now I've got (laughing) I just got this carpet
of herbs coming up.
Borage is another one.
I'll just throw that in.
That's coming up as well.
But coriander, one of the easiest things you can do
is just let it grow, let it seed, do nothing.
Let it die down normally.
And every year you're gonna get a massive crop coming up.
And it's that simple.
The second crop is dill.
And when it comes to herbs and edible flowers,
I don't actually plan for
where I'm gonna plant them in the garden.
Usually it's in the corner of beds.
And then that's where they're gonna share their seeds.
And I've got a load of dill coming
up here in between the shallots and carrots,
which I can either gently lift up
and transplant somewhere else, or I could let them grow.
And I'll show you another example of this in the Polycrub.
So in the Polycrub we had some dill
just growing at the top.
And now somehow it's managed
to spread itself all over the place.
We've just cleared a massive one to make space for tomatoes.
Nothing was planted or sown here.
This just came up and you can see
how effective it is at spreading itself far and wide.
I'm gonna throw in some other bonus crops
into this video 'cause so many things do self-seed
and spread like crazy.
For example, these nasturtiums, none of these were planted.
These have just grown from what has fallen,
all of their seeds that have fallen into the soil.
And again, you can either save the seeds
or wait for next year and pot on any that are growing.
The next edible crop is tomatoes.
Now, tomatoes self-pollinate, and it's really unlikely
for them to cross pollinate in a setting like this
unless there's quite an adventurous bee.
So what you can do is grow blocks of tomatoes,
and actually the easiest way to do it is
to let those tomatoes fall on the ground
and don't pick them up.
And what you're gonna get next year is
tomatoes sprouting in all those different areas.
So one of the places we've got
where there we'll cherry tomatoes,
we've got a forest of mini tomato seedlings coming up.
There's another tomato seedling coming up here,
and this is where the cucumbers were.
So again, it's another crop that will,
if you're not careful, pop up everywhere.
Now, if you like to label everything
and know for sure what is growing
but you have all of these volunteer tomato plants coming up,
what you could do is pot them on
and give them away as a lucky dip tomato
and let people experience the joy
of not knowing what they're gonna grow
until it starts fruiting.
The next edible crop is a flower.
It's calendula and that's another one
that will just self-seed everywhere
especially if you stop deadheading it
towards the end of summer, early autumn,
and just let it live out the next month or two
and clear the plants.
You will always get loads coming back.
In fact, a few beds behind me, I've planted a whole row
of calendula using seedlings
that have self-sown and popped up.
The next crop is peas.
This is something that you don't actually allow
to self-seed and drop on the ground
because rodents and birds love peas.
However, they are in my opinion,
the easiest vegetable crop to save seed from.
For example, these here are Llanover peas,
a Welsh pea variety that I have saved seeds from.
This is 2019 seed and I'm still getting
this kind of results.
So peas rarely cross pollinate.
So if you really enjoy a certain variety
or you've got a really rare pea variety,
save those seeds and carry on grown them for forever.
Another legume that you can
easily save seeds from are runner beans.
All you want to do is let the pods turn brown on the plant
and then take the beans out and dry them on a windowsill
for a couple of weeks.
And then you got your seeds to plant.
And there are many stories that I continuously hear
of people growing runner beans
from the exact same seed stock
that their grandfather used to grow.
And I just think that that's such a lovely story
and it's something that you could start up.
And also right in front of me here is a lot of dill plants
starting to also self-sow and grow.
So the next example is Jerusalem artichokes,
also known as sunchokes and we're here in our new,
mainly experimental growing site.
It was just a field around three months ago.
And all of these Jerusalem artichokes have come
from spare tubers from the main garden.
We grow them in the shadiest part of the garden,
just a small strip at the end of a raised bed.
But these are all of the spare tubers that come from that.
And we've been growing from the same initial
batch of tubers, just duplicating and replicating
for over 15 years.
We haven't had to buy any tuber since.
This is ultimate free food forever.
And literally all you do as you're harvesting
your Jerusalem artichokes is just leave one tuber
in the same place a plant was
and it'll continue growing every single year.
Following on from Jerusalem artichokes are oca,
also known as New Zealand yam.
These if you just, they're like potatoes
which is another one as well.
If you forget to harvest some of them,
they're always going to grow back.
And this is evidence of them.
I've got a few plants that are growing.
Oca is actually really easy to save over winter.
They rarely rot provided that you keep them
in a dry, dark, cool place,
and then you can keep on sowing them.
So all of the oca that we grow here
in this garden comes from a single batch of tubers
that we got around five or six years ago.
And you can see an old video on my channel about that.
Now another crop here isn't strictly seeds
but it is cloves and it is how you start the plant.
And that is garlic.
It's one of my absolute favorites
and it is really easy to grow using
your own seed stock or your own cloves.
All you need to do is harvest it.
Usually that's in July.
You cure the bulbs.
You don't need to store them really properly
because come October that same year,
you then plant them again.
And then you repeat that pattern every single year.
And that means you can be self-sufficient with your garlic.
Now we're just looking at garlic.
And if you're feeling a little bit impatient
and you're missing your own garlic,
there's actually a way that you can harvest it this month.
And this video will show you exactly that harvest,
and some fun ideas to enjoy it in the kitchen as well.
I promise you, every gardener needs to know about this.