(paper rustles) (soft upbeat guitar music)
(bird chirping)
(wood clunks)
- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
Today, I'm just gradually getting the garden more ready
and prepared for spring time.
And I'm gonna be giving you my top tips for creating
a really effective planting plan that not only brings you
lots of productivity in terms of food from your growing
space, but also a lot of satisfaction
and enjoyment as well in 2021.
(fire crackling)
Today's a very exciting day for me
because my second online course,
called The Productive Planting Plan, is launching.
And it's a complete guide.
It's 10 lessons to show you how to go from a blank piece
of paper to a fully developed monthly, not an annual,
but monthly planting plan for your vegetable garden.
And you can do it in under a day.
So if you wanna find out the method that I use
to plan for abundance and a lot of fun
using a month-by-month basis, that has so many benefits,
then head over to planforabundance.com
and use the exclusive coupon code found only
on this video called 'YOUTUBE20' to get 20% off.
Before you go about creating your plan,
there's actually one really crucial job that you need to do
which will give you complete direction
in terms of where your plan is going to go,
because it's all too easy to fall back into old habits.
And the one thing you wanna do is to outline
the top three goals that you want to get
from your growing space this year.
What you want to do is to get a bit of paper
and write down the top three goals that you want to achieve
from your growing season in 2021.
And then as you're planning out your garden,
keep that bit of paper in front of you to serve
as a reminder and to give you a clear direction
in terms of where you want the plan to take you.
So you make sure that you're growing things
that are gonna help you achieve those three goals
and also to perhaps miss out on growing particular things
that might actually hold you back
or growing in particular ways that might prevent you
from reaching the goals that you've set yourself.
Now, I have three gardening goals.
The first one is to try and grow as many
new varieties as possible this year,
with a particular emphasis on heritage varieties.
The second goal is I want to have also a bigger focus
on growing beneficial flowers in and around the garden.
And my third goal is to actually
learn more about perennial vegetables.
To celebrate the launch of the "Productive Planting Plan"
course today, I'm gonna give three of you free access
to my first online course called "More Food, Less Effort"
and all you need to do to enter, it's worldwide,
of course, 'cause it's an online course,
all you need to do to enter is to go down
in the comments box and write your three gardening goals
that you have for this year.
And you have three days from this video coming out to enter.
The second tip, which is what the online course goes into
a lot of detail, is to scrap doing a single-page annual plan
and instead do a monthly plan, so a month per page,
because it gives you a lot more clarity on the changes
that gradually happen throughout the season.
And it means you don't miss out on anything important.
For example, if a gap emerges, you can make sure
that you can start off some seeds under cover a month
or two months before to put straight out.
For example, when the potatoes were harvested
I had these leeks ready to go.
When you're filling up an empty garden plan,
it's really easy to fill it with loads of different crops.
But the third tip is to actually leave
some unplanned space on purpose,
'cause you never know what's gonna happen.
Perhaps your friend gives you
a really interesting variety of seeds to try out.
Perhaps you have some extra seedlings that you want to grow,
but there's no space for them or perhaps you've had
a change of plan and want to try something different.
So just make sure you leave a little corner or section
on your plan that isn't actually planned
to give you a bit of freedom in case you need it.
The next tip comes from Liz Zorab, where she shares
her clever trick to go around and do something called
intentional observation, but there's so much more to that.
So I'm gonna let her briefly explain what that is
and then give you an example of how I do it.
(Liz Zorab) - So I start this planning process
with some really intentional observations,
really careful looking and making notes of what's going on
in each bed and how things have grown this year.
Now I don't use a pen and paper for this process,
I use my phone and I record onto my phone.
So I walk through the garden, dictating notes,
effectively onto my phone ,and then I can get inside
and listen back through to that,
and it's got all the thoughts and all the comments
that I have about each bed and each part of the garden.
And I find that much easier than walking around
with pen and paper, trying to make notes and then
not being able to read my scribbly writing.
I've got all my thoughts as I walk around.
- This was the main 2020 squash and cucurbit bed.
It went well, we had way too many courgettes,
and I used the landscape fabric method of burning holes,
which I've done for the last two or three years.
But what I found, especially just looking at it,
and backed up by the drone shots, was that there was
a lot of empty space in between.
So what I think I'll do is I might use this bed again
for squash, but I won't use the landscape fabric,
and instead let the plants develop,
start off a load of beneficial flowers in the polytunnel,
and then once they grow a little bit, put out the flowers
in any of the natural gaps that happen, because you can't
really predict which ways squash like to grow.
Something that relates to Liz's intentional observation tip
is, as you're maybe halfway through
creating your planting plan, or you've got your ideas down
and then need to refine them, come back up to the garden
with a copy of your plan and then reference it.
So you're not only looking back at what happened last year,
you're actually going to now start visualizing
about how your plan will turn out this year
because it's a really powerful thing to visualize.
And you might remember something
that you might've forgotten, for example,
I had the potatoes in this bed and they had blight last year
and I put them down here in the same bed,
so I shouldn't put them there again.
Or perhaps the A-frame of runner beans is on
the wrong side of the beds, 'cause then it will be
casting shade on the other side
because of the sun's direction
or even something like I've got too many low-growing crops.
I wanna split it up and put a wigwam right here
so there's a different look and feel to the garden.
So it's really important to come back up
with a copy of your plan and just visualize
how it's going to look to help solidify your ideas
and also your goals.
This tip is less about productivity and more about security,
and I think just as important.
Now, wouldn't it be awful if you created
a beautiful hand-drawn planting plan and then you lost it
or at least lost a couple of months, or perhaps you did it
on your computer, but then your computer crashed
and you lost all of your files.
Well, something that you need to do is to create
a digital copy of your planting plan
and put it in some cloud storage, for example Google Drive,
because if anything else were to happen,
you can still access your planting plan
on any other phone or computer.
And there's a 99.9% chance that you won't lose it.
But if it does happen, you'll be really pleased
to know that you actually do have a backup.
And it's just a small thing, but it's so easy to forget.
Before I go over a few helpful bonus tips,
one thing that you wanna do, so this is my master template
for filling in for this garden here.
And yes, those are six new beds going in,
and the three old beds are coming out.
You actually want to dedicate a section
of your plan to create a box.
And in that box you can highlight the key tasks
that you have that month, perhaps like the top five,
six, seven planting tasks that you have that month.
Because what it means is, as you're looking
through the month, you can have a quick glance and think,
oh, this is when I will start harvesting my early potatoes.
Now it's just gonna act as a approximate,
but that's gonna be really helpful.
Now, a really quick bonus tip as I'm here is,
you'll notice that this is laminated.
And the reason why is well, for this, it's just to keep.
It's a lot harder to lose a laminated bit of paper
than just a normal bit of paper.
But once you've created your plan, you may want
to consider making smaller copies and laminating them,
so you can then take them up with you to the garden.
And it doesn't matter if you're wearing dirty gloves
or if it's raining, your plan is protected
and you can just keep it in your polytunnel or in your shed.
So you always have the plan easy to reference
and you don't have to worry about taking off your gloves
and you can take it around the garden with you.
If in previous growing seasons, you found it
hard to dedicate time at the start of the season,
for example, February, March, April to the garden,
then now's a perfect time to start crossing off your days
on the calendar to make sure that no clashes happen.
So you make sure that you do have some set days
that are dedicated just for the garden.
I hope that you found this video useful
and I wish you the best of luck with your planting plan.
And don't forget to check out
my online course, the "Productive Planting Plan"
and make the most of the coupon.
And also to let me know your three gardening goals
for chance to win free access
to my first online course, "More Food, Less Effort."
I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Goodbye.