- Hello, and very warm welcome back to the garden.
Today, I've got some jobs to crack on with.
But I thought that as I do those,
I'd talk about a topic that
is quite a popular topic these days,
and that's about self-sufficiency.
Now, the goal of growing all of your own food
is a wonderful target to have,
but it can also feel really overwhelming
when you don't know where to start.
So, in this video, I thought I'd kind of outline
a bit of a strategy to really help you
take those first steps to becoming food self-sufficient
and to improve the food security of your own household.
Before we look at a strategy
that really does help with self-sufficiency,
I actually wanna look at what is self-sufficiency
in the first place,
and why I actually think it
isn't always the best route to go down.
So self-sufficiency means kind of independence,
the ability for someone to provide for oneself.
The idea of growing all of your own food
and not needing anything else is a lovely thought,
but what comes with that is a lot of careful planning,
a lot of needing to follow some rules,
and perhaps, a lot of sacrifice.
And what you really need to ask yourself as a gardener,
is what is the ultimate thing
that I wanna get from the garden?
If your ultimate reason for growing food
is out of that pure enjoyability
and that kind of escapism,
then you might find it kind of trying
to follow the strict and regular routines
and patterns that you need to be fully self-sufficient,
it might end up crushing your passion.
So you've really got to think about how best to approach it,
which is why if anyone is ever thinking
about becoming self-sufficient,
I always recommend a try before you buy.
So you can start to dabble and test with it,
and to try to work out the style
that suits you and your personal needs the best.
So how on Earth do you start becoming self-sufficient?
Well, it's about setting small targets
and make your targets, and working on them.
When you achieve those targets,
you can then set slightly more ambitious targets.
Now the process of self-sufficiency
is something that doesn't happen overnight.
But, surprisingly, through marginal gains in improvement,
you can soon start realizing and seeing a big difference.
A lot of people think that self-sufficiency
means that you have to grow food for 365 days a year,
but I want to introduce you to a different perspective,
and that is something that I call
part-time self-sufficiency.
Where, rather than growing food for the whole year,
to last you 365 days,
what you're doing instead is growing for a specific period.
For example, you could be self-sufficient in salads
from April all the way through to November.
Or you could grow onions and be self-sufficient in onions
through autumn and winter.
To me, I still very much value this self-sufficiency
because you're not needing to buy any of these ingredients
or produce from a shop.
So rather than trying to go all in
to last you the 12 months,
why not start smaller and look at smaller periods of time,
and just focusing on growing enough to suit those?
So there are five crops, or groups of crops,
that you can grow to really introduce yourself
into part-time self-sufficiency.
Now, these five groups are not only easy to grow,
they're versatile in the kitchen,
and you can also consider them to be staples.
So, the first crop is probably the most obvious one,
and that is growing salads,
mainly cut and come again salads.
So it's really easy for a couple of two
to be totally self-sufficient in salads
in single 4x4 foot raised bed
for the entirety of the growing season.
Now, you can take this a step further
by using like cloches and fleeces to extend the season.
Or you could look at getting a mini greenhouse,
and eventually upgrading to a polytunnel
where after a little bit of clever planning,
you can actually become fully self-sufficient
in your salads right through the year.
Another crop that is most definitely a staple
for almost any kitchen is gonna be potatoes.
I've got seed potatoes here
that I'm growing in larger containers,
so 25 to 30 liter containers.
I'll put a couple in.
And the thing about the potatoes
is that you can plant them in containers
to free up space in your raised beds,
and you can start harvesting them
with a bit of protection from around mid-June quite easily.
And potatoes are really easy to store.
So you can store them right the way through winter,
and enjoy lots of crops.
The third crop is something I've already mentioned,
and that is onions.
It's really easy to grow lots of onions,
and they're really easy to store.
So the idea of having a whole late summer
and an autumn and winter of your own onions
is something pretty amazing
and you might actually be wondering,
how do I know how much I need to grow something?
And that's what I'm gonna come onto,
after I've completed these five groups of crops to grow.
Another crop that works so well
for part-time self-sufficiency is kale.
Now, kale you can actually be fully self-sufficient,
but if you start some kale off,
say, end of March all the way through April,
you can start expecting to harvest leaves
from mid-to-late June all the way through winter.
And then come March, April, May,
you'll then get a load of flower shoots,
which are gonna happen next here.
And the thing about kale is
that there are now countless varieties to choose from,
so you might not actually enjoy this kind of curly kale.
So you can look at other types of kale,
like this one here, I have a Red Russian kale.
And there's a chance for you
to actually try out some different varieties
to see if there's perhaps ones
that you like more than others.
The fifth crop is the one
that can perhaps make the biggest difference
in your kitchen, and that's herbs.
I'm not actually talking about perennial herbs.
These are easier, it's almost cheating
to try to be self-sufficient in rosemary
'cause that's easy to do.
But I'm talking about more of the annual herbs,
so things like dill, parsley, coriander,
having a huge amount of these herbs available fresh
during the growing season is such a blessing.
And things like parsley are pretty hardy,
so you can be harvesting those well into winter.
Now it's impossible for me to make a list,
outlining the amount of plants
or the rows of plants that you need
to grow enough food to either be self-sufficient part-time
or even, throughout the year.
The reason why is that every family and every individual
is going to eat different quantities of vegetables.
Some people might think that
a bulb of garlic a week is hardly anything,
and others might think that is
"Whoa, how do you eat that much garlic?"
So, in terms of working this out,
it's about creating a bespoke plan for you.
And to start that, you need to begin
by looking at the core staples of fruits, vegetables, herbs
that you eat throughout the year.
So, these are gonna be things like salad leaves,
like carrots and potatoes and onions and garlic.
The next step is to estimate how much of a particular staple
you use on average a week per year,
if you wanna grow enough for three months,
or throughout the whole year.
So for me, garlic is a big one,
and I know that I need around
about two bulbs of garlic a week.
This patch here is one of two garlic patches
'cause gotta grow more,
'cause I find that as time progresses,
I'm using more garlic.
But there's a simple calculation,
you then workout how long you want that for.
So if let's say, you want it for 10 weeks
and you need two bulbs a week,
then you wanna grow at least 20 bulbs of garlic.
Then, if you're looking at maybe all throughout the year,
and you've got to be cover with storage
and things like that,
you then times it by 52.
So, two times 52 is 104,
which comes up to about this row.
But another thing that you need to do
is to kind of account, take into account potential failures.
So what I like to do is to times that number
by about 1.2, 1.25 so that's 130.
And here, I've actually,
we've planted about 146 cloves of garlic.
I've seen a couple of places where they haven't come up,
and there might be issues later on,
but that's kind of the template that use.
I will always kind of work out how many I need a week,
how many weeks would I like to grow them for,
and then, also, grow a little bit extra
in case something doesn't go quite to plan.
For things like beetroot, and cabbages,
and garlic, and onions, and leeks,
you know roughly how much you're gonna get per plant,
so you can quite easily estimate how much to grow.
But when it comes to things more like salads,
like leafy greens, spinach, lettuce, all of that,
it's gonna be a bit harder to work out.
And this is actually
where the initial part of self-sufficiency
can actually be quite exciting
because you get to test out.
You might feel that sowing a new four foot row of salad
every couple of weeks isn't quite providing enough for you.
So it means that you can tinker with quantities
and with the amount you sow to suit your needs.
And even after a single growing season,
you're gonna get a much better understanding.
So for example, you might have felt
that you didn't get quite enough leaves from kale,
from 12 kale plants,
why not grow 16 kale plants this year instead
to try and give you that bit extra?
Now, another thing that I highly recommend you do
is to test out different varieties.
Because if you test out different varieties,
you'll find ones which are best suited to your climate,
which then means you're going to
get better yields from them.
Yes, it's really effective to work out roughly how much
you need to grow in order
to be self-sufficient in something,
whether for months or for a whole year.
But I think that the single biggest positive impact
you can make to becoming that ever-closer
to self-sufficiency is to embrace and celebrate seasonality.
So for me, I don't feel that it makes much sense
trying to push against the seasons
and trying to really extend the crop of every single thing.
Instead, I want to celebrate what comes into season
at any point of the year.
And I like to grow crops when crops are meant to be grown.
Yes, I will like have some exceptions,
but in the most part, that is the way I garden.
So this leek here, I just harvested it,
and we've got more leeks behind me.
And the fact is, is that we've run out of onions,
but I, now, because of being forced,
by using only what is available
I believe that breeds creativity
and it means that we look at new ways of eating
or storing particular things.
So for leeks, at the end of the season,
I actually chop these up, I blanch them, I freeze them,
and then I use as an alternative to onions in a lot recipes.
So that's just a little way that you can be clever,
rather than trying to be,
have carrots for every day of year.
Instead, look at what is special
about every single season and celebrate that.
And that is the single biggest thing that you can do
to become more self-sufficient.
(gentle melodic music)