- If you're just new to gardening
or you're looking for some ideas
of really fast growing crops that you can harvest
in under two months, then this video is for you.
We're gonna start off with what is probably
the most famous fast growing crop out there.
It's radish.
I've got a bunch of radish growing here
and it's been battered a lot by the cold weather,
but some of them are already starting to swell up.
During the growing season, you can expect to sow radish
and harvest it within four to five weeks.
During the colder times, maybe that's around six weeks,
but I've got a lot more seedlings ready to come out
and I've already been harvesting a bunch
from the poly tunnel and it's just a great thing
to get started with.
Another crop that's well known
for growing quickly is turnips.
Now, obviously these are running to flower
because they've been in all winter
and we've had so many coming out, but if you sow them now,
they'll be ready in about seven weeks.
Now, if you're not so keen on a turnip flavor,
you want to go for the smaller ones
that are more golf ball size like this.
These are gonna taste a little less turnipy.
You can also eat their leaves
before they start creating the root
or you can let them grow on
and actually start harvesting the turnip tops,
which are all completely edible,
especially these flowering ones.
The third crop is actually related to turnips
and it's described as a flowering turnip top.
Here's a plant right in front of me.
It's and I'm probably gonna be butchering the name
it's called Cima Di Rapa and it's an Italian,
apparently really popular Italian vegetable.
And one variation of variety
is said to mature in about 40 days
and I'm gonna put that to the test.
Next up is a crop that's actually flying behind me.
It's called pak choi or you can include bok choi in the mix.
And this is a stunning vegetable,
where if you are treating it as a baby vegetable,
it's really you to harvest within 35 days
so just over a month.
And you can let it grow and start maturing
and within seven to eight weeks,
it's gonna be a really nice size.
This is just a stunning vegetable.
That is fantastic to add into your stir frys
but it also over winters really, really well.
So at the, of the year, if you've taken out your tomatoes
what you should then do is transplant or sow
some Bok choi in your poly tunnel
and you'll be really surprised
because you'll be able to enjoy it right through
kind of December, January, and February.
Perhaps my favorite fast grow crop is actually pea shoots
because these can be ready in as little as two weeks.
Now you can either sow them
as a specific crop where you harvest
just above one of the last nodes,
so it can send out more shoots.
But what I like to do is grow peas as normal,
but as they're growing, pick out the odd shoot
here and there to encourage the pea plant
to bush out but I can also enjoy the lovely tender flavor
of peas weeks and weeks, if not a couple of months,
before any of the pods start coming through.
An alternative to pea shoots is actually broad bean
or fava bean shoots.
You can also include field beans into that mix as well.
So these can be harvested in around three to four weeks,
a little bit slower growing, and it's great use
for any of those spare broad beans
that you have at the end of the season.
If you only have eight left, then grow them for the shoots.
Now you can either do that
or you can still enjoy the shoots,
but this isn't within the, within the two months.
After the broad beans start flowering, you pick up
the top shoots of the plant to help prevent black fly,
but you can enjoy those shoots either raw in a salad
or you can stir fry them, whatever you want.
They're delicious.
This next crop might re really surprise you
but it's actually the flowers of zucchini or courgettes.
These are edible.
They're super delicious, quite a delicacy.
One of the best ways to eat them is either raw
or you can actually stir fry them, pan fry them,
lightly batter them.
Absolutely delicious.
And we all know how productive courgettes are.
And sometimes if we have too many courgettes,
one of the best ways to deal with that
is to actually eat the flowers.
However, the flowers come before the actual fruit.
So if you wanna sow some courgette plants now
and grow them on, just be wary of frosts.
Then you can expect to start harvesting flowers
in under two months.
I'm gonna group three crops into one.
And that Swiss chard, spinach, and lettuce
all of these grow really quickly
and you can start harvesting their baby leaves
within a matter of weeks.
Heck you can even put kale into that mix as well
if you want.
Now within seven to eight weeks,
you'll actually start getting some considerable harvest.
But in terms of having those celebrated young, green leaves
for adding to your salads and adding a bit of freshness
to your diet, then these three, including kale
will grow really quickly and you'll be surprised
how soon you'll be harvesting their leaves.
Before I share with you the 10th crop that you can harvest
in under two months, I just wanted to give
a really quick tip because whatever you grow,
the soil that it grows in is just as important.
And you always need to be thinking
about soil health and improving it.
And there's one really quick way
to improve your soil health, which is turn
going to help improve the success of all of these crops
that you're growing.
What it is, is basically,
as you're going around the garden
and you're either harvesting and then
you've cooked something or you've made a salad
and you've got all the vegetable scraps at the end,
or when something has grown too much,
perhaps it's running to seed and it's bolting,
then what you want to do is with those scraps
with the bolted plants is chop them up
nice and finely and just sprinkle the plant matter
back over the soil.
It's a really quick way to add a lot of fertility,
some organic material to the soil to help promote
a healthy soil life and that's gonna be
one of the most important things that you can do
to help ensure a good success this season.
So the 10th and final crop is actually
dwarf beans or bush beans
during the kind of warmer parts of the growing season.
These are great because they're a great thing
when a gap has emerged in say August time
to transplant seedling straight into
and harvest in around five or six weeks.
They are so productive and in fact,
out of all of the legumes, they are the fastest growing
and fast in maturing in terms of going for the bean
or the pod.
So I'd highly recommend that you get some extra
dwarf bean seeds this year so you can use them
to fill those gaps and get an extra harvest.
A lot of these 10 crops are gonna be too delicate to cook
but you can enjoy them as salads.
And if you want help and inspiration in both
how to make salads as tasty as possible,
but also how to be completely self sufficient
in salads all through the year,
this video right here is gonna give you
all of the hints and tips and ideas
to help make that possible and also to enjoy
these 10 fast growing crops.