Crop Layout First Plantings of The Micro Self Sufficiency Garden

Welcome back to the Six-Bed Series, where I'm trying to grow as much food as possible. in 18 square meters tracking it all using everything I've learned from projects like the self-sufficiency garden and various kinds of tricks to show you they don't need much space to grow a massive amount of food, and today I'm going to share with you how I'm going to be planting up these beds. I'm actually going to get going today, but each bed has an individual theme. and I want to go through, step by step, exactly why I've chosen each particular theme and what the The plan is for that bed. So here are the six beds, and basically the theme is, and I'll kind of I haven't finalized where I'm going to place it, but I'm thinking something along the lines of a salad bed. a root vegetable bed, a brassica bed, a perennial vegetable bed, thinking about next year and certain very productive perennial vegetables, and then a squash bed and also a legume bed. So I'm not planning to do crop rotation, but I'm just planning to make sure things kind of have their own space to help with prep. So this bed here, I'm going to put brassicas in. Now I've just One of the categories I didn't include was herbs, but I'm just going to fit herbs in around here. Some of the other things that are growing because they're really useful for occupying space. I have this old type of parsley tray that would be perfect for that, but here's what I'm going to do growing some very productive kales and other brassicas just to make sure that I'm getting a lot of food. So I'm putting out these, which are Pentland Brig kales, and then I've also Got Australian tree cabbage. Now, although these are somewhat perennial, they are short-lived. perennials, so I'm actually going to treat them as annuals or at least bi-annuals so I can enjoy them all of the flower shoots next year and then do a reset, but the kind of the perennial bed behind that's going to be focused on things that can actually last for five to ten years in length. Now it's quite windy, so there's no point trying to stand these back up, but I'm just I'm going to go ahead and plant these kales. Pentland Brig is known for being incredibly hardy, which is good and very productive, but also very tasty, so what I'm going to do is, since I've already added Some compost to the bed—I'm going to take some of the top layer that has some nutrients in it. And I'm just going to place that at the bottom of the hole, and I'm also not afraid to sink it in. and plant it a little deeper. So I'm placing it like that, and then I'm just going to give it A good move—clear that stone out of the way, press it down nice and firm, and around the base. Now it's always a little bit challenging filming on a day like today with the weather being So unsettled, but that's okay. I can just focus on getting my plants out and happy and what I'm I will do just as well this season, at least for these beds, I might supplement feeding with some like organic chicken pellets, or obviously I'm going to make my own liquid feed just to help get things really nice and productive, and while it's not a necessity, that's precisely the whole point of this The project is growing as much food as possible. So now that the Pentland Brigger is here, I'm just going to Plant the Asturian tree cabbage now if you have plenty of access to compost—it's always worth it. Adding a nice handful in, but I'm not going to be doing that for everything just because I'm trying to limit my costs as much as possible and instead feed them over the medium term. Now why am I planting Asturian tree cabbage? Well, really, it is one of the absolute best feeders. provides you with plenty of harvests throughout the winter months; it is a non-heading variety of loose-leaf leaf cabbage, it is so sweet, and also the flowers that it sends up in spring are so sweet they're much sweeter than purple sprouting broccoli, so it is a real delight, and also if it sends out lateral shoots—I actually have the possibility to take cuttings and propagate more, so I don't need to to get more seeds. So that's the brassica bed planted; I'm now going to plant up this bed. and I just wanted to kind of draw your attention to something really important—I went on a little trip yesterday to see what was available to gardeners Like, are there actually any good vegetables you can get? Are there any good deals? What the... The price looks like it might be better to start things off from seeds yourself, so I'll just take that approach. You to that now, where I went to three different places, and it was quite important. what the results ultimately indicated compared to purchasing a packet of seeds or beginning things from scratch Obviously, there's time to think about it, but I just wanted to show you because If you're trying to save money, getting a seed packet is usually the best thing you can do. because you don't have to sow the entire seed packet that year, you can sometimes make some seed packets last for four seasons, so what I thought I'd do is head out to visit a couple a garden center and something like a home and garden store, just to see what they're selling vegetable plants for and try and determine what is the best route if I want to be getting some Harvest ASAP— is it worth the price of buying the plants, or is it better to go for the seed packets? We'll see what I come back with. Well, this first shop is extremely depressing. both the appearance of the plants and also the prices—there's nothing here that I'm going to have to Find another place, but a packet of 400 greyhound cabbage seeds for 99p—it's pretty the standard variety would probably take that same with things like kale and perhaps some lettuce as Well, and again, 99p for 500 radishes, and oh, this good spinach beet—this is, uh, this is going to feed A lot, so six packets of seeds for six quid—not bad. So the first shop, there, uh, while there weren't Any good vegetable plants? I've got these six seed packets, and there were a lot of them there's a A lot of food that you can grow here; now I understand these aren't going to be the best quality plants. but sometimes you just have to go for it, and you've got your standards, like dwarf green curled Kale—that's going to turn out fine; I have faith in that, so I'll definitely be able to grow more. more than the value of six pounds from these six seed packets, but there are some things that I am just going to raise myself and other things that um would definitely be better off investing in higher So there are some courgettes here for £1.25, not bad. I just think they kind of look like they just get completely destroyed by slugs, but you know, for three pounds you get this many leeks—it's like Not quite enough, but I think this is a bit much—three pounds for six sprouting broccoli in summer. Purple doesn't look like that; it's a fact that they look really bad. If they looked better, then I'd be much more tempted, for sure, and uh, I just don't understand this at all with the carrots. Oh well, so there it was, just uh, again, the quality, like what you're paying for, the size of The plant, um, the courgette—I think if you didn't have any courgettes and it was late in the season Go for it, £1.25. Go for it—maybe grow it on for an extra couple of weeks in a bigger pot before planting out is fine, but for the leeks, absolutely not, and the same goes for the Brassicas—it's a bit hit or miss, I think. The only time to justify things like that is if you can. grow them a bit more before planting them out, and if it's very much at the tail end of the season but for Those two things, it isn't quite... um, we're not quite there yet, right? So I've just been to the Garden center—I actually found something: nine of these climbing French bean plants for three pounds. Now I've got these because I really need some food from space quite urgently, and I know that Actually, French beans are quite premium, and you can get a lot of dishes from this, so I'm going to have to create a bean structure, plant these out, and this kind of thing will be marked as a nice start I I also have seedlings I'm going to be transplanting, like cucumbers, and I wanted to show you. Something important I'm going to mention at the variety market is what I bought here—the seed packet. was £1.95 for 50 seeds; now these seeds would likely last at least three years once opened so I could just sow about 12 or, you know, 15 a year for the next three to four years I have more than enough cucumbers for myself for £1.95, but in some places a single The cucumber plant, like the one at the garden center, was £2.50, so that's the kind of maths, um, for it. to work, and I've also got some other things, like some mixed lettuce, so I can just direct sow that and start enjoying some leafy greens, so cucumbers, I'm doing something a little bit different from the brassicas, which don't require a large amount of fertility, in some cases it's actually worth investing in compost, particularly if you haven't made any yet, just to help them get underway, so what I'm actually going to do here is make a bigger hole, and this is market more that I was talking about in the car; the great thing is that these also have edible leaves. Cucumber leaves are edible provided that you cook them; you could sauté them or stir-fry them. It's just really useful to know all of the additional harvests that you can get in your garden, so I'm just going to remove actually a bit of the topsoil and then I'm going to go with one big handful, and I'm just going to mix it in a little bit into the soil so it's not just fully mixing it into the compost; mix it up a bit with the soil there like that, add a bit more in, and now it's ready for me to plant this cucumber, and if you plant things with a slight dip, you create a small bowl around them, which means if you pour water, it stays there with either a hose pipe or a watering can, you're creating a little bowl where the water can sink and it all gathers and goes down rather than running off the surface, which is really useful, particularly on a dry day, if the soil has dried out a bit, so I'm going to be planting these four cucumbers in this kind of setup, and then I'm going to create it's windy, I shouldn't be doing this, but sometimes we don't always have the best opportunity to do it, and I might not even have enough time to create a structure, but what's most important for me right now is actually getting plants in the ground, I can always come back a few days later to make a structure when I'm a little less busy; it's just trying to think about all those incremental steps that I could take to help me get closer to my goal of growing as much food as possible. Actually planted a winter squash there and let it spread out in that direction, occupying that space. That's fine, but that was an idea that only occurred to me after I could actually bring these up. That's going to take me another five minutes to sort out and fuss over, instead of which I could do Is it worth planting winter squash in that bed and letting it sprawl out and around, and if I'm losing a a few legumes there, I can just plant them at the end here because what I'm going to put in now I'm planting three zucchini plants; these are three Black Beauty zucchinis, extremely productive. And I love zucchini, especially when you have them quite small, like baby zucchini. I'm giving a little bit of space away from the cucumbers just because they are going to grow. around and occupy that space, and I'm going to pop these in here, and these are going to produce so So much food for me this year—I'm so excited! And courgettes are growing extremely quickly as well. So you might be watching this video in June; you still have time to start courgettes for real. Enjoy this later in the season, and so I'm just going to plant this one in and again use the bowl. shape, because when it's quite windy like this, plant them a little bit deeper and creating a small bowl around it actually helps protect them a little, especially the central part from extreme winds, which keeps your plants nice and healthy, so it's nice that there's actually Some plants that are starting to go in now, I'm going to focus on the salad bed in front of me. I've chosen this one partly because I actually put in a little less soil than the rest. The beds lend themselves perfectly to salads that don't have a deep root system. I've got some. of the seeds I got yesterday from my looking for certain deals, I've got radish, onion, and lettuce, and I also have a large pack of mixed lettuce, so what I'm going to do is I'm to make some trenches, and I'm just going to go and get these sewn up, and I also have labels in my pocket just to make sure I remember what I'm going to do, but my thought is maybe Just for visuals, to break things up a bit, maybe add a couple of rows of spring. onions in between the radish and the lettuce and see what happens now just a top tip if you are doing a lot of direct sowing, sometimes it's easier just to write your labels first before You worry about sewing and then think, oh, you know, I'll remember later what's growing there. You won't, uh, at least I won't, so make your labels—write your labels first, and then I'm going to get To get these nicely sewn, I've just remembered that I also have spinach beet, perpetual spinach, so I'm going to put that at the end there, and I've got all of the labels written out, so I'm going to put the labels on first before it gets time to sow; now, if you're interested, I've only I used half of the packet of seeds—225 seeds—and I've used about 110, give or take, so that's about 50p worth, and we'll see how much food I can grow in that row, and now I'm going to get on with it Sewing these, and then what I like to do is I like to do things in batches, so I get these sewn. and I'll come through and cover them over, and since we're expecting some rain tomorrow, I'll Just let nature water them for me now. What's really important is actually there's a The reason I'm not going to plant all of this with just lettuce or so many of my lettuce seeds in one go because I don't need that much lettuce; this is going to be a huge amount of salad that's why am I adding some other things in, like I'll definitely include spinach as well, of course, but that's the The purpose of the radish and the spring onions is that they're adding just some extra dimensions. to a salad because a single row like this can provide a lot of lettuce, so yeah, it's nice and productive, which is a good thing. It's nice that things are productive. It's just about kind of managing expectations and trying to avoid actually ending up with waste and too much food So I'm just going to put a couple of rows of mixed lettuce in now. Now something quite useful. to know about raised beds like this is that because there's a gap there, it just helps take The cold wind helps to improve germination and maintain the temperature; now I have leftovers. four seed packets where there is at least one additional row of seeds that I can sow that I'm I'm going to stay on one side, but now I'm actually going to plant a couple of bits of parsley. beneath the brassicas, just so there's going to be quite a bit of space there For a while, so they might as well occupy that space so I can feel the rain starting to come in. but I'm going to give quite a bit of generous compost here for the rhubarb, as I mentioned Earlier it was called Glaskins Perpetual, so I should actually be able to start harvesting it later this year, but next year, particularly next spring, and I can force it as well—I'm going to expect to get Quite a few kilograms of food from just these two plants alone, so I'm simply mixing in a generous amount. of compost and I'm going to fit them together, and the idea is just to keep on top of it harvesting as they grow, because sometimes rhubarb can get massive, which is only a problem If you're not harvesting, then I'm going to put that in there now—I can feel the rain coming in. So I'm just going to make sure I sow a few rows of carrots, just so I know that something is on its way, and then I can always come back tomorrow and finish off what's left needed, but this is just about showing you my thoughts, and you can start to see behind show me how the different beds are coming together—so I've got my salad bed, my squash bed that'll be the legume bed, then I've got the perennials, the brassicas, and the roots, and then What I'm doing is placing things like herbs around the area; I'll also add a few edible flowers. just to fill in some gaps and keep it neat, but really my focus at the moment is primarily on those leafy greens in the herbs and salads because they are what cost a lot but they're Really, really easy to grow, and that will give time for other things to start coming in and mature. like squash, like beans too, so this is kind of just, there's a lot going on here, there's Quite a nice variety—it's not just like growing six beds where three beds are potatoes and three are... of onions instead it's actually about being tactful and making the most of the space that I have the whole point of this video series is to show you that you can grow a lot of food in a small space, and you can just follow along and get ideas, and I'm just going to be out here proving to you all that you can make a big difference in a small space, so you can keep going The track with the series here, there's another video that you might like down there, and uh, here. the rain comes again, so it's time to get the carrots in, then head home and have some food because I'm starving.