Where to source seeds? There are more options than you might think.

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Today we’re going to talk about seeds and where you should be looking to source your seeds for your vegetable garden. There’s lots of options available to you and some of them are obvious and some of them perhaps not so much. We’re going to run through them in order of what people are probably already doing.

We’re going to start with online. I imagine that’s where a lot of people buy their seeds and there’s pros and cons of ordering your seeds online. The first thing is that you’re ordering from a global community, so it’s very easy to buy any variety you wish. That has ups and downs, because it’s not necessarily the case that the seeds are going to be suited to your climate and it’s also far easier to buy seeds from somewhere that perhaps doesn’t have the highest standards. I’ve found that when you buy seeds online, you have a slightly lower germination rate and things like that. So, that’s something that’s worth bearing in mind.

The next option down the list, insofar as how readily people tend to do it, would be garden centers and shops that sell seeds. Garden centers are great because they also have quite a wide availability. The only downside at the moment with garden centers is, depending on where you live, you may not actually have access to them with the current pandemic. I know that where we are, you’re literally not allowed to open up if you’re a garden center. You might be able to do online purchases from local garden centers where you can go and collect them, but it’s certainly a restriction at the moment.

One huge advantage though of garden centers, when they are open, is that they’re far more likely to be selling the sort of seeds that are produced in such a way that they’re going to be suitable for your environment, for your climate. Another advantage is that, generally speaking, there will be a member of staff there that you can speak to and get a little bit of advice from.

The third way of procuring seeds, and this is one that perhaps more people are unaware of, are seed banks. There’s lots and lots of different types of seed bank setups and different areas will have different availability, but it’s certainly worth doing a search and finding what seed banks are available in your local area. Seed banks are a great place to communicate with other people who are doing something similar to you and to get advice on what type of seeds to get, but the reason I love seed banks is the ethos of community and they can quite frequently actually be a way of getting free seeds.

Generally speaking, how a seed bank works, or at least the seed banks I’m familiar with, is there’s a communal pool of seeds and you go along and you take whatever seeds you want. They’re also referred to a seed libraries in some cases and I’ll explain why here, because effectively what you do is you borrow some seeds, so you withdraw a packet of seeds from the seed library and then at the end of the season you return the seeds in the form of seeds that you’ve saved from your plants.

This is a fantastic, sustainable way of growing, because it perpetuates the seed varieties – there’s no actual outlay; the only outlay is in your time. It also encourages community and it encourages you to perhaps go slightly outside your comfort zone with saving the seeds, and it helps you to learn some more skills. And of course everybody that’s going there is in the same boat. They may be slightly further up the stream than you insofar as experience, but they all are doing the same as you are. So, not only is it a great way to initially get your first lot of vegetables growing at no cost, but it’s also a great way of upskilling, because everybody there is going to have the knowledge and be more than willing to help you learn how to do your seed saving.

So, my fourth way of procuring seeds is saving your own. Now, the whole ethos of self-sufficiency is one around perpetual systems that keep themselves going and don’t require inputs, and there’s nothing more perpetual than the system of growing your own plants, saving your own seeds and then growing your own plants the following year from the seeds you’ve already saved. It’s the best way of keeping your own seeds. Not only does it guarantee that you’re going to have varieties you’re familiar with that grow in your area, but it’s also going to allow you to select the best plants for the saving of those seeds.

Something to be aware of when you’re saving seeds is how different plants germinate. Different plants will germinate in different ways that can hybridize across species. One of the things to be aware of, for example with tomato plants, if you’re growing four or five different types of tomato plants in the same space, then the seeds you’re saving from those tomatoes are very likely going to be a genetic mix of those plants, and this can happen across species and different plants are differently susceptible to this. Some plants are very rigid and will only pollinate amongst themselves, others will cross pollinate. It is something that you should do your own research in into the different varieties you want to grow, but it shouldn’t put you off the idea of saving seeds

Things like beans and peas are the easiest seeds to save because they literally do all the work for you. All you need to do is leave a few of the beans or pea pods on the plant, let them dry just as mother nature intended, and then harvest them later than you’re harvesting the ones you’re going to eat, and they’re ready to be sown the following year. Keep them nice and dry, and in a cool place out of light and they’ll just sit there quite happily ready to go the following year.

The next place to source seeds, and this is another favorite, is to ask your local gardening community, that can be your neighbors, it could be your family members. But anyone who’s growing their own plants and has done so for some time is probably saving at least some of their seeds, and in most cases they would be delighted to share some with someone else.
So, it’s a great way again of connecting that community and getting hold of free seeds.

I certainly recommend you start reaching out and trying to start those connections if you haven’t already, because especially now there’s so many people out there that are keen gardeners and they are struggling for these connections because everything’s changed. No one is operating in the way that we did six months ago. So, it’s a great time to try and forge these new connections, even though it might be difficult to do it with social distancing rules and what have you. Just pick up the phone, or speak over the garden fence.

The final option for where to source seeds is that you don’t have to source seeds for your perennial plants. If you introduce more and more perennial plants, then that’s less and less seeds that you will need to introduce every year. So, when I’m talking about perennial plants,
I’m thinking of things like asparagus, artichokes, all these things that can deliver fresh veg
for you every year, but you don’t need to actually be sourcing those seeds every year. Those are great things to have in your garden. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t save seeds from these plants to propagate more, of course you can, but it means that you’re not necessarily needing to sow those seeds every year.

Those are my quick thoughts running down where to source seeds. In the next section, I’m going to talk about the things that you need to be thinking about when you are actually choosing the seeds that you’re collecting.

So, once you know where you’re getting your seeds and you’re going to start choosing which seeds you’re going to purchase, the sort of things you need to think about are different varieties within species. You might want to think about early and late varieties so that you can extend your season. So, you can get some early varieties of something in the early end of the season, and then have a second crop of late varieties coming along after them.

The second thing is locality. Now, local is always better. It’s definitely something that’s worth looking at. A variety that is proven to grow well in your area is definitely worth far more of your attention than an unknown variety from somewhere else in the world that you’ve no idea how it’s going to actually adapt to your climate.

The next thing you might want to consider are seeds of plants that have been specifically bred for resistances to certain diseases or things that they might be susceptible to. There are lots of plants out there that are resistant to bolting and if you’re someone that thinks, “Well, when it comes to harvesting I might not have as much time as I would like to go and harvest as readily as might be perfect,” then you might want to go for an anti-bolting variety, so they’re going to stay harvestable for longer.

And the final thing I wanted to say is, and I’ve already touched on this several times about locality, it really is worth speaking to people who are having good success growing things in your area.

So, that wraps it up for this article. Hopefully you found something in there that’s thought-provoking, makes you think slightly differently, or you might have learned something new.

It’s important to understand how to give our plants the best chance for survival. Understanding how the way we water effects them can be really important.

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We’re going to be talking about some plant watering tips. Plant watering is something that sounds simple and ultimately it is once you understand what’s going on. Many people make very simple mistakes that are so easy to cure and it’s just a lack of understanding of what’s happening that leads to those mistakes. So we’re going to go through a few tips today.

The first thing I want to say about plant watering is you need to understand what’s going on with your actual plants and the stage your plants are at. When a plant is just a seed, it’s nothing but a load of stored information. It’s the genetic code of that plant waiting for the right environment. The right environment is usually moisture. As soon as you place that seed in your compost and introduce some water to it, it starts growing. At this point, it is literally just a package of information. It doesn’t have all the root system, stems, and all the ways of storing energy and water that it will have as a mature plant. As it grows bigger, it requires a different type of care. So as a plant grows, it’s going to send out some tiny little roots and a couple of little leaves. It’s pretty obvious what these things do. The roots are to take in the water and nutrients that it needs and the leaves are to photosynthesize.

Once you’ve got your plant germinated, it’s really important not to let it dry out. It’s a tiny little thing and it doesn’t have much water in it. Those little leaves have got hardly any water in and the second that you ask the plant to look after itself with regards to fluids, it’s going to fail. So you need to keep that soil moist. Once it dries out, that is when your plant starts to germinate.

The first tip is to keep the soil moist, not wet, when your seed is just starting out. You don’t want to rot your seed. By keeping the soil wet as opposed to moist, what can happen is that your seed can actually start getting mouldy and rotting. So if you look at the soil, pick it up and squeeze it, could you imagine ringing it out? If you can, then it’s probably too wet. But if you touch it with your finger and it feels a little dry like dust, then it’s definitely too dry. So it’s a bit of a balancing act when you first start it out and you might want to water your plants a little bit less and more often particularly if you’re keeping them in a greenhouse or somewhere like that.

The next thing to think about is that plants don’t eat the nutrients in the soil. They drink it. They can only access the nutrients in the soil if there is some moisture. This is more critical with your seeds and seedlings. If you go out into your lawn and you poke your finger down into the soil, it doesn’t matter if it hasn’t rained for three days, the soil is still damp and that’s because of the bulk of it. It’s very different from a little seedling in a pot. So if the soil is not moist, then your plant literally cannot drink and it cannot take what it needs from the soil.

One way to help your vegetable bed to keep moist once you’ve planted your seedlings is to mulch it. Mulch is especially important for young plants for all those reasons we’ve just talked about. It keeps your soil moist if you’ve got a couple of inches of mulch on top of the surface of your soil. This is really important regardless of your soil type particularly if you’ve got soil that is going to dry out very quickly. If you keep that mulch there, then everything underneath it is going to be nice and moist and a perfect environment for your plants to grow.

Some people make a mistake and that is when signs of overwatering look like under-watering. Plants can wilt through over-watering just like they can through under-watering. So don’t necessarily assume that if your plants are wilting and look thirsty, that’s necessarily a sign that you’re under-watering. Just have a look at the soil and then make your decision.

The next tip is to water in the morning. When your seedlings are young or in very hot weather, you might find you need to water more than once a day. But if you are watering just once a day, try and do it in the morning if you can. The reason for this is because the plants have got the water when they need it most. They’re doing most of their work during the day when they’re photosynthesizing. It’s when they’re doing most of their growing. So if you can water in the morning, then your plants have got what they need and when they need it. By watering them, you’re not only giving the plants the water they need but also allowing access to the nutrients in the compost of the soil because they can’t eat, they only drink.

When it comes to vegetables in particular consistency is really important. So you don’t want to have a situation where you are absolutely deluging your plants with water one day and then not watering for three days. Lots of plants will really struggle with this like cucumbers, tomatoes and hungry plants of that sort. They need that consistent watering. They will just fail to set through otherwise. All the fruit they set will be very poor. If you suddenly increase or decrease the amount of water for carrots, they can split the roots. So it is quite important to be consistent where you can. You can do this with any method you please but do try and consistently water your plants. We use a little drip-feed in our polytunnel. That’s the method we choose so that they’re constantly getting that low-level watering.

The next thing is to understand how your plant’s roots work. If you’re giving your plants a very light sprinkling of water a couple of times a day, that water is going to sit near the surface and that’s where your plant’s roots are going to be encouraged to grow. If you think long term if all your plant’s roots are sat up near the surface, they’re not going to have access to that constant moisture that’s available deeper down in the soil. Particularly with tomato plants, once they’re planted in the ground, make sure that you water them deeply and that means give them a really good soak so that the water gets down deep into the ground if the weather is dry. This will encourage your roots to go down to that same depth and that same depth is where the water is going to keep that soil moist for longer.

This is going to do two things: It’s going to allow them to be more healthy and able to look after themselves when there isn’t as much water available on the surface and it’s also going to take the pressure off you to have to water them every day once they get established because their roots are going to be in the right place to look after themselves. A very shallow root layer is going to struggle because it’s only going to have access to the water when you put it there whereas the deep root layer is going to be able to look after itself in the long term.

One of the last things I wanted to mention is not to water your plants with a big spray hose all over their leaves in really hot weather because this can scorch the leaves. So when it’s the middle of the day in the middle of summer, you want to make sure that you’re getting the water to the base of the plant and not over the leaves because you can actually damage the leaves that way and even kill it in really severe cases.

Finally, the last thing is to make sure that you’ve got a method of watering your seedlings that aren’t going to damage them. So if you’ve got a drip irrigation system, which you can set up yourself by just a piece of hosepipe and punched little holes in it that you can run around the base of the plants, then that’s great. But other than that if you’re going to use a hose system with one of those trigger guns, make sure you’ve got it set to mist or the finest setting you have. Even on mist, make sure you stand a fair distance away from your young seedlings because you will just blow them over flat with the power of that water because they’re very young plants
and they’re doing everything they can to get established and we don’t want to knock them back. So I hope you find all of my plant watering tips useful.

What sort of things go in to planning a vegetable garden? Here I discuss things like wind exposure and crop rotation.

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Today, we’re going to talk about planning your vegetable garden. When it comes to planning my vegetable garden, it’s one of the jobs I actually really look forward to – I get quite excited. I personally do it on a Word document and plan it all out. I’ve basically drawn out a map of my vegetable garden that I printed out and I take with me, which I now keep in the polytunnel. You don’t have to go to that effort. It’s really as much or as little as you want it to be, but personally, I like to spend quite a lot of time planning what’s going where. I put quite a lot of different factors into my decisions. It doesn’t have to be as in-depth as I make it. I do it because I enjoy it, but there are quite a lot of factors to be considered if you do want to think about them. So I’m going to go through some of those.

When it comes to planning your vegetable garden, particularly if it’s the first year and you currently don’t have a vegetable garden, then one of the things to think about is what sort of ground do you have? If you have a big garden, like we do here, then you might have more than one spot in which to choose. What sort of soil do you have? Have you got a loamy soil, or a sandy soil, or a clay soil?

These likely are going to be the same throughout your whole garden, but you might find that some areas are better than others, particularly if you’ve inherited a garden where one area was already worked, then you might find that area is more conducive to growing vegetables than a separate area. So, have a look at what sort of soil you have. If you have a choice of different areas, then you might opt to go for a loamy type of soil, if you’ve got that choice; most of us aren’t that lucky. Where we live, although we have quite a large area, it’s all clay.

So, if you have a loamy soil, what that means is that it looks almost like when you buy compost, it’s that lovely, black material that falls apart in your hands and it’s the sweet spot in the middle of the most common soil types. On one end of that common soil spectrum, you’d have your sandy soils, which do feel quite sandy and you can see that when you look at them. And on the other end, you have the clay soils, which clump together when you roll them in your hand. They each have different characteristics that you, as a grower, should be aware of. Sandy soil, as you might expect, drains quite fast, so you might find that you have to water it more frequently. But, you don’t get some of the issues that you do get with clay, because that fast draining soil is actually a benefit when you have quite a lot of rain and for a lot of plants that are going to enjoy having dryer feet. On the other end of the spectrum, you have clay, which is very clumpy and very hard to dig. The biggest issue with clay is that it will dry out quite quickly if you get prolonged dry periods. It’s going to dry and crack, and if you get very wet periods, it’s going to get very claggy and difficult to work.

Whatever type of ground you have, you’re going to want to at least consider using a mulch. The best way to increase the quality of almost any sort of soil is just to add organic matter, so compost. Hopefully you’re making your own compost that you can use, but you can also use well-rotted manure or the old bedding from your animals. All those things really increase the quality of your soil for growing.

Once you’ve decided what sort of soil you have and where you’re going to put your vegetable bed, the next thing to consider is what position is it in? Is it going to get lots of sun? Is it a south-facing part of your garden? Is it a north-facing part of your garden? Is it particularly exposed to the wind? Whatever it is, with regards to how it’s exposed to the elements, then that might guide some of your other decisions about what you’re going to plant and maybe whereabouts on that plot you’re going to plant things.

There’s very little that can’t be grown, regardless of where in your garden your plot is, but you might change up the ratios slightly. So, if your plot doesn’t get a tremendous amount of sun, you might try to grow some more of the leafy green type vegetables and less of the nightshades, because those leafy greens are quite happy with partial shade, whereas the nightshades are really going to want as much sun as you can give them in most cases. Another thing, is it very very exposed to wind? Because if it is, you might need a windbreak. You could even use your pole beans as a windbreak. This is a great way of getting a dual purpose from your crop, which is something I’m very keen to do.

The final thing about positions is to think about the actual slope of the ground. You might have it undulating slightly and you’ll find that higher points obviously are going to dry out that little bit quicker than the lower points.

The last thing is, and this really is only if you have quite a large space, is it a frost pocket?
Is it quite exposed or is it fairly sheltered. Do you personally live in a frost pocket?
Do you live out in the country or are you in a town? Because this is going to affect your frost dates.

Which brings us on to the next thing to consider, which is when to plant. Again, this is predominantly going to be based on your climate. If you are in the UK or in America or anywhere else, you will have access to some kind of zoning system. Even though I’m not an American, I’m familiar with the USDA zoning system and I imagine most people are, that’s why I mention it. Here in the UK, we have our own, so familiarize yourself with that and work out what zone you’re in. That’s going to dictate to some degree when you should plant certain crops, but it’s also going to dictate which crops are going to do well where you are. That’s an important part of planning your garden.

The next step is to go through everything I went through in the “Which Plants” article, and that is to work out what your family wants to eat. What are you going to be able to grow? What do you want to grow? Get together your list of actual plants that you’re going to choose to put in your plot, bearing in mind all those other considerations that we’ve just spoken about.

The next thing is to plan your rotations, after you’ve gone through all those other steps. This is where it does start getting fun. What you’re faced with, if you’re doing it the way I do with a physical piece of paper, which I’m ultimately going to print out, but ultimately what you’re going to have is this blank canvas on one hand and a list of crops on the other hand. This is where you start getting to add the color to your color-by-numbers book – it’s the exciting bit. I try and plan my rotations quite simply. I’ve separated my vegetable plot into four equal sizes and I have my crop rotation working so that basically everything this year in bed number one will be planted next year in bed number two, then number three, then number four, and everything that was in bed number four for this year will go into bed number one. That’s how I have my rotation all planned out.

What you’ll find is there are lots of different types of plants and you’ll want to make your own categories that work for you. But for instance, legumes are a very certain type of plant.
I keep them all in their own bed because they have very specific nutritional effects on the soil.
After the legumes, this year I’ll be planting nutrition-hungry plants like sweet corn
and things like that in the same bed, because those legumes actually add the right type of nutrients for the sweet corn to follow on after. I’ll do an entire article on crop rotation in the next few days, but it’s something for you to look into and certainly I include it as part of my planning and I recommend you do the same.

The next thing to think about, when you have a rough idea of what’s going where, then you want to start thinking about how you can maximize your cropping from the space you have by doing things such as double cropping. For instance, you might have some early peas that you’re going to put in and they’re going to be producing all through the early summer, up to the middle of summer and then they’re probably going to fall away, at which point they may well leave room for a second crop in that same place. These are all things that you can be planning at this stage. It’s worth taking a note.

You have everything written down on paper, where you think everything’s going to go, now look at the actual specific varieties that you have and work out, “Okay, so this is going to go through until late August; that’s going to leave me a gap for x” and then you can come up with what x might be. There are quite a lot of quick-growing plants that will give you a second crop.

The next thing to bear in mind is succession planting. In our first year here, we planted a beautiful big row of lettuce and, like an absolute idiot who didn’t think about anything, I planted them all on the same day. Of course, they were all ready at the same time and I’m talking probably 20 or 30 lettuce. Lettuce is one of the crops that you’re really going to struggle to preserve, so for all the crops like lettuce, you’re going to want to be succession planting. What that means is, if you think that your family might want two lettuce a week, then you might plant the lettuce in batches of six. Then you plant six lettuce every three weeks so that, as they come to fruition, you can crop them and then there’s a steady succession of lettuce for the foreseeable weeks and months as you go.

Those are the basics and a few not-so-basics of how I planned my original vegetable garden, what I’ve learned from that and how I plan it now every year. There’s lots and lots of information out there and, for me, it’s one of the funnest parts of the downtime that we get in the winter, is planning what’s going to go where next year, and I might decide I’m going to try out a few exciting, different varieties or unusual plants that I haven’t tried before

I just want to very quickly talk about why we rotate the crops and it’s basically for two reasons. The first is, as I’ve already mentioned, different crops have different effects on the nutritional values of the soil. Some crops are what we might call mining crops. They’ll mine minerals from very low down with taproots, very deep roots, and they might bring some of those minerals up to the surface and deposit them in the soil, which is great – we really want that to happen. I make sure that my crops are doing that, it might be comfrey or something of that nature.

The other reason is a buildup of pests. Over time, pests that like a certain crop will feast on your crop during the growing season and then throughout the winter. By planting the same crop there the next year, what you’re doing is you’re basically making sure they’ve got the perfect environment to come back to and expand their numbers. By rotating crops, you very much deal with a lot of those issues.

So, there you go. That’s my thoughts on how to plan a vegetable garden. I hope you’ve found it interesting.

Watercress is a great plant for anyone to grow. Super easy to grow and propagate. You can also forage for it in the wild.

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Today, we’re talking about one of my favorite plants. It’s a plant I’m very, very passionate about and that is watercress. It’s a plant that I love so much for so many different reasons.
It’s such a utility plant. It serves so many purposes. It’s so easy to propagate. It’s so easy to grow. It’s easy to harvest. You can find it in the wild. You can grow it yourself. It really is a fantastic plant.

The first thing I’m going to talk about is growing your own watercress. It is the easiest plant in the world to grow; you can grow from seed or you can grow it from any part of the plant itself. In nature, different plants have different characteristics. There are some plants that can only be propagated from their seeds. There are some plants that can be propagated from cuttings of a certain part of the plant, be that a stem or a root cutting. There are some plants that can be tip-layered. Some plants that can be divided. There are some plants that you can create new ones purely from a part of the leaf. Watercress is one of those plants that you can do all of those things with.

When I was talking about the different ways plants propagate, it’s to do with which part of the plant contains, effectively, the equivalent of stem cells. Within a raspberry plant, for example, the stems, if you tip layer them, contain all the genetic ingredients, all the coding, to create a new raspberry plant. Every part of that plant has all the coding it needs to create the roots and the stems, the leaves, and the fruit. With watercress, every single part of the plant has that information. So, you could literally take a piece of watercress that you bought in the supermarket and you could chop it up on a chopping board and every single piece is a potential new plant. That in itself for me is just an amazing thing and it’s one that we as self-sufficient gardeners can utilize.

But it gets better. It just gets better and better, because not only are every part of this plant viable to create a new plant with, but, in addition, it’s super easy to do. You don’t need to make a seedbed compost. You don’t need to expose it to rooting hormone or anything like that. The propagation process is literally as simple as throwing it in some water. You can literally take some Watercress from the supermarket, throw it in your pond or throw it in a water butt, and it will grow new plants from it. That’s just a gift we should all be utilizing. I strongly recommend that everybody has some growing in their water butts, and if you have a pond or any other areas, I strongly recommend you have some growing there too.

You can also do guerrilla gardening with it. You can introduce it to a pond or a stream near you. Please be aware of what that might do to the local ecology and infrastructure of the environment in that area. So, if you’re in an area where it’s not a native plant, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing that. But if it’s native to where you live, then you can take some from one part of a river and introduce it to just somewhere a bit closer to you, if that’s what fits. Once you have it growing, it’s as you might imagine, much of a “cut and come again” plant. You can just keep harvesting it and harvesting it and harvesting it. It’s a perennial, so it will stay there through the winter. You might not want to harvest it in the winter to give it every chance of surviving, but it all depends on how much you’ve grown.

It’s a great plant to grow yourself, because it’s so easy to do. Another reason it’s such a great plant is what it does in the kitchen. For me, it makes a great salad. I quite often have it as the only part of a salad. I’ll have a big bowl of watercress. Maybe I’ll throw some lemon juice in there. Maybe I’ll throw a little bit of olive oil in there and boom, that’s it – a great tasty salad. But also, you can cook it; if you blanch it, it becomes a cooked vegetable green. So, it’s a very versatile plant in the kitchen as well.

The final thing I have to say is that it’s also findable in the wild, as you’ve probably gathered by now. It’s something you can go foraging for and that’s another great tool in this plant’s arsenal, is that it can be cultivated domestically, commercially, but it can also grow in the wild. It’s a great thing to go foraging for I love foraging anyway, so the fact that I can forage for one of my favorite plants and maybe bring that home and introduce it to an enclosed, captive space at my house – wow, you know, what could be better.

There is something that is very important to be aware of though, if you are foraging for watercress, and I suppose also to be aware of even if you’re growing it on your own property depending on your property and your layout and where you are. There is a propensity within watercress for it to hold liver flukes; these are little parasites that live in sheep and can also live in humans and they can actually be quite harmful to you.

So, whenever you’re foraging for watercress, my advice is to only use that watercress for cooking. If you find it in the wild, only use it for cooking. If you have sheep on your property, like I do, and the water course that you’re taking them from is in any way downstream from that sheeps run, or in any way possibly connected to it, again only use it for cooking it. Not as much of an issue if you’re growing it and you have sheep, if you’re growing in a water butt or something like that, because there can’t really be any cross-contamination. If you’re in the wild though and you’re foraging, I strongly advise that you cook it, even if you can’t see any sheep, because there can be sheep upstream out of view. There could have been sheep right next to that little stream that you’re in, just three months ago, and they’re not there now. So, it’s always advisable, in my opinion, to take wild watercress and blanch it before you eat it.

We also use watercress in a multi-pond system. What our set up is, or will be when it’s complete, is we have three ponds. One of them is exclusively for watercress. So, in that pond, we just grow watercress. That pond feeds down into another pond, which is predominantly growing duckweed. And then that pond feeds up into the top pond, which grows a couple of edible plants around the outside of it, but is predominantly for growing fish that are
for the table. What happens is the fish excrement effectively is fertilizer for our watercress
and then our duckweed, and the duckweed and watercress both filter the water before it goes back to the fish, and the duckweed feeds the geese and the ducks. So, it works great in a multi-pond system like that.

That’s watercress. I strongly recommend you get some. It can be cultivated from seed and, again, that’s very easy to do. I bought a packet of seeds when I first started looking into it, before I realized how easy it was to propagate from the plant itself and they all came to fruition very easily. If, for whatever reason, you find it hard to get hold of fresh watercress, then maybe buying seeds is the way you go.

What I recommend you do, if you’re just starting out and you haven’t got any yet, is you just buy a bag from the supermarket. It’s not very often I’ll advocate buying a bag of food from the supermarket. Or better still, go and forage it. But if you can’t forage any and, for whatever reason, you can’t get hold of the seeds, go out and buy a bag of watercress and boom – that’s it; you’re set up. Turn half of it into an amazing salad and put the other half into a water butt or a bit of a pond or even a bucket of water outside, and that is starting your cycle of perpetual watercress production at home. What a great feeling that is.

Managing frost can be tricky at the start of the season. The longer you extend your planting season, the more you expose your plants to frost and the risk it presents. Even with the most risk averse attentions a late frost can catch you by surprise and decimate your crop before its even got a foothold. Here I talk about some cheap and free ways to protect your young plants from frost.

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We're going to be talking about how you can protect your seedlings from frost. Everywhere has
a different last frost a day. You can find this online and this is the date that traditionally would be
the latest you could expect a frost. So the actual day of your last frost any given year is likely to
be earlier than your last frost date. That is the last date you could reasonably expect to get a
frost. From this day onwards, it's safe to assume you won't.
What that means is that on or around that date, you're ready to let your garden go on the
assumption that you're not going to have any frost. It still makes sense to keep half an eye on
the weather because the climate is changing all the time, but on the run-up to the last frost date,
the chances of you having a frost get lower and lower. So it's very tempting to get your plants
out a little bit before this date and when I say tempting for me personally, it's irresistible and I
don't even try to hold off for that date any longer, I simply go for it.
The downside of this is that you are exposing your seedlings to the risk of frost for a lot longer
and at a lot higher frequency. I've already planted out a fair number of seedlings that will need
to be protected from the frost because the frost will kill them. I'm going to go through a number
of different ways of protecting our plants from that frost and tell you how you can do the same.

The first thing is a greenhouse or a polytunnel. If you’re growing your seedlings in pots or trays in a greenhouse or a polytunnel, then chances are they’re already protected from frost. That’s the first thing you need to remember because that’s doing the job. If you’ve got plants out in pots, even if you’re growing their seedlings in pots, you can always just bring them inside of the polytunnel or the greenhouse to protect them.

But if you’ve got them growing in the ground as I do, then you’re going to need to do one of a number of other things to protect them from the frost. You need to be aware of how deep that frost is going to be because if it’s only a light frost you only need to take very light measures but if it’s going to be a deep hard frost then you need to think a little bit more.

One of the favourite methods I have is a hooped run. It’s about six little wire hoops with clear plastic that runs over the top of them and I bought these from the one-pound shop two years ago and they’re doing really well. They’re still holding up fine. The reason I like using these is the cost. They’re just so cheap. For 10 pounds, you can get enough to cover a significant number of rows of plants. You set these up by pushing the edges of your loops in the ground either side of your row and then a piece of string at each end just pulls them tight.

The upside of these is that they’re semi-permanent so I can put them in when I plant and I cannot worry and it’s almost like those seedlings are growing in a greenhouse until I take them away. The downside can be if we’ve got really unseasonably hot weather and bright sunshine, then some of the plants that you might have growing under them can perhaps scorcher little because they’re quite delicate and so small. But that’s really an outlier for that to ever be an issue.
If you don’t have anything like that and you have to make do with what you have around you, then I’ve got three other methods that are super simple and I’d be stunned if you didn’t have at least one of these available to you.

The first one is a jam jar or something similar. You take the lid off, turn it upside down and place one on top of each of your seedlings. Now if you’re mulched like I am, this can actually serve two purposes. If you’ve got tiny, little seedlings, then this is going to enable you to mark your rows a little bit easier because you’re going to be able to see where everything is in your mulch. They are working exactly the same as a greenhouse. So it’s not a bad idea. Even if you’re not going to get a frost, they’re going to help give your plants that extra boost.
One thing I do want you to be aware of though is that they’re going to recreate that greenhouse environment. So you’re going to have to go through the process of hardening off again if you’ve got nice warm weather and you’re leaving them in place. When you come to remove them, just do it gradually. First of all, just remove them during the day and then slowly remove them overnight when your plants get strong enough and you feel that they’re ready to be hardened off that way.

The next one is plastic bottles. I like to use these for things like peas. I cut both ends off the plastic bottles like an orange squash bottle and I like to feed that down over the cane that I’m using for my peas to grow up. I do this regardless of the weather because it also serves a fantastic second purpose when you plant peas and beans. Quite often they’re going to be seen as food by some of your friendly garden pests and I’m talking about mice, pigeons or anything like that. They’re going to love to find a pee while they’re scratching around on your soil. These semi clashes if you like without a lid serve two purposes.

They protect the plant from frost that’s growing but also they protect it from the pests that want to dig it up and eat it for their tea. One thing you do need to be aware of is that if you’re going to get a super hard frost, you might want to place something over the top as well like some plastic or cling film because the bottles that I use, I’ve cut both ends off because I leave them in place once they’re in and the plant grows up out of them and up the cane. If you’re going to use that method, just be mindful that the top is open and therefore if you get a really hard frost then the element that’s inside that bottle is still going to be susceptible.

The last way of protecting your seedlings from frost is by using something like straws. Straw is a great insulator because you can kind of fluff it up a little bit and it creates loads and loads of lovely air pockets. It’s also super light so it’s not going to do too much damage to your seedlings by pushing them down.

I’ve used grass clippings as well but I tend to use that more when I actually plant when I’m trying to protect a seedling. I’m certainly going to use hay much more common than grass clippings because grass clippings are going to weigh down on the seedling and probably damage it whereas, with hay, you can fluff up and really protect it. I tend to use hay quite a lot on my potatoes as well for their first covering because it gives them the opportunity to carry on and grow up through it really quickly while at the same time keeping the sun off those first few.

These are all the ways I use to protect my seedlings from the frost. Keep an eye on the weather and be proactive. Take those steps because there’s nothing more disheartening than coming out and just seeing a lovely row of vegetables that were just coming on or wilting because they’ve been frostbitten. Take all precautionary measures. You’ll appreciate it and it will certainly pay you back.

How to plant seeds, either direct sowing or in seed starter trays. I use a no digging method in my vegetable bed.

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Today, we’re going to be talking about seeds. It’s the time of year when we’re all busy planting seeds. The weather’s just turned; some of us have just enjoyed some lovely hot days
and the summer is definitely just around the corner. Winter, I think we can say, is behind us. I certainly am very, very busy planting seeds, transplanting seeds, some I’m direct sowing already, others I’m putting in pots in the polytunnel.

There’s no mystery to planting seeds. It really can be quite simple. So, I’m going to try and demystify it a little bit here today. The first thing I want everyone to remember is that plants want to grow. They absolutely are built to do a job and that is to grow into the finished plant. A lot of the time, what we really need to do is give them what they need and then get out of the way. We don’t need to be tinkering too much; we just need to make sure we don’t do anything wrong. The plant is already raring to go. We just need to make sure we don’t do anything wrong to spoil it.

So, there’s two types of planting: one would be planting undercover in a polytunnel
or under a cold frame or something similar, with a view to planting out once the seedlings are strong enough to be handled and transplanted into their final destination. And then there is direct sowing, where we put the seed where the plant is going to ultimately stay. I’m going to talk quickly about planting undercover first.

There are a lot of seeds you can’t plant when there’s going to be a frost; they will benefit from being planted in a greenhouse or under some kind of protective environment. Now, obviously the information is going to vary from seed to seed. You’ll be able to find that on your seed packet or if you do a bit of Googling about the specific plant you’re going to grow.

If you have a plant that you’re going to start in a seed tray or a small pot and put in a polytunnel or on a windowsill, then the type of soil that you use is quite important. If you are going down the route of buying compost and soil, then make sure you buy a seed starting compost. But if you’re not, you can make your own potting mix, which isn’t particularly difficult and does make quite a lot of difference.

You want to make sure that there’s no weeds and bugs in it. One of the common mistakes people make is that they take soil from their garden, put it in a pot, plant something in it and then put it in the greenhouse. Well, some of the problems that can happen from this is that there’s not just going to be the seed from your seedling in there. There could be something in there from a nearby weed. There could be bugs in there that are currently dormant but are about to be woken up by the lovely, warm temperature in the greenhouse environment, and lots of things of that nature. It’s always best, if you can, to use a piece of soil that has been covered or somehow protected from these things, so that when you introduce it to your greenhouse, then it’s not going to suddenly come alive with things you don’t want in there.

I have heard of people who take the soil and they put it over boiling water to sterilize it. Personally, I think that’s a bit too much work. But, by all means, that may be the way to go if you feel that you’ve got it in you to go to that effort.

You also want something that’s going to be fairly well draining, so you can water the plant
and without it getting waterlogged, but also something that’s going to retain plenty of the moisture. We’re lucky and we tend to just use the compost that we’ve made from the season before and we mix a tiny bit of sand or something with it. But you can buy products, such as perlite, which are designed to hold the moisture in the soil, but not in the soil where your seeds are. The perlite are little white balls that act like mini sponges. They soak the water out of the soil when it’s waterlogged, but they also slowly release it back after it has dried out.

Once you have your soil in your pot, you go ahead and plant your seeds. Now, the methods for this are going to vary greatly from seed to seed. A general rule of thumb is that the bigger the seed, the deeper you plant it. So, a tiny little seed, such as that of a carrot, you’re going to plant under just the tiniest bit of compost, whereas a much bigger seed, such as a bean, you’re going to really push down in there with your finger. That’s one rule of thumb.

Another thing to be aware of is that, once you’ve planted your seedlings, you’re going to need to monitor that moisture level, particularly if you have warm days and you have the pot in your polytunnel or greenhouse, as they’re going to dry out fairly quickly. Through the last week or so, we’ve had some really warm weather where we are and I’ve been watering my seedlings at least twice every single day. There are ways around that – you can place your pots in something that’s going to hold some water. Personally, I just make sure I’m out there checking them, because I’m in the garden anyway.

Once you have your seeds planted in your pots and they’re in your greenhouse or other environment where you’re going to bring them on, could be on a windowsill, then really all you need to do is keep out of the way. You make sure that they’ve got the water they need and other than that, you trust that they’re going to do the right thing.

Now, you’re never going to get a hundred percent germination rate, so don’t be upset when you don’t, because no one does. Some of these seeds are not viable; they simply are not viable in nature. So, there’s no way you could make them grow, regardless of how perfect you made the conditions for them.

Once they’re big enough to transplant and when they’re looking sturdy enough that you’re fairly confident you can pick them up, take them out from where they are, and plant them somewhere else, then that’s the time to consider doing so. Now, there are lots of plants that will need to be protected from the frost, so you don’t really want to plant them out until the risk of frost is gone. But even the best gardeners I know – and I certainly I don’t include myself as one of the best gardeners I know, but I do include myself as someone who does plant their seedlings out a bit early – even I don’t like to wait until every single risk of frost has gone, because our last frost can be in May. I like to get things out in the garden before then, because otherwise I feel as though I just lose so much produce by not using that extra time.

So, if you’re like me and you’re going to put your seedlings out before the risk of frost has passed, then you’re going to just make sure you monitor the weather and be prepared to protect them from frost if a frost comes. I’m going to go into some ways of doing that in our next blog post.

If you’re going to sow something out directly, then, again, it’s based on the type of seed
and the information will be on the seed packet as to whether and when you sow it directly. But some things you really have to sow directly. For instance, with carrots, the whole thing you’re growing is the tuber, or the root. So, anything with a strong taproot like that, you’re going to want to plant in its final destination. Just bear that in mind.

What I tend to do is I just part the mulch, because all of our vegetable beds are covered all year round in a thick layer of mulch. I part the mulch and I tend to just place my seeds on the soil and then cover them in a tiny bit of compost and then recover with the mulch, but maybe not quite so deep. I do very little digging. I tend to plant everything in the mulch or just at the bottom layer of the mulch, down through the mulch. It saves a lot of back-breaking digging. But also, it actually does your soil really good, because there are a tremendous number of organisms, including the mycelial web, which is the fungi underneath the soil, that actually work like a distribution network amongst all your plants and they will make sure that all your plants get what they need. Every time you dig the soil, you disturb this and it has to start from scratch again.

You’ll find that some people with more traditional methods of growing food, will always say you need to dig; you need to keep the soil dug over and loose. But the method I use is very much a “no dig” method and there’s lots of evidence to suggest that it’s at least as good, if not better than the more traditional vegetable growing methods.

Once you have your seedlings in their final position, again, it’s all about getting out the way and letting them do their thing. When you’re choosing their final position, be mindful of that particular plant’s characteristics: some will like shade, some will like full sun, some will need to be protected from the elements such as wind, some will need canes. Just bear all that in mind and make sure that you don’t plant something such as tomatoes on the south side of a big stack of runner beans, because what’s going to happen is that the runner beans are going to catch all that sun and the tomatoes, which are just behind it in the shade, are going to really struggle. So, make sure you plan how and where you’re going to plant things before you actually go out and do it.

There you go – that’s seed planting and the time really is now. Another thing to bear in mind is to plant more seeds than you need. Generally, speaking, they’re almost free and a lot of the seeds that you’re going to plant next year are going to be seeds you’ve saved. Make sure you’re saving extra seeds so you have enough to over-plant. When it comes to seeds, I do this for three reasons:

1. Firstly, there’s going to be a natural element of unviable seeds, which for whatever reason aren’t going to germinate. So, you’re going to lose some that way.
2. The second reason is that it means you get to pick the strongest plants, the best looking plants, that are most likely to go on and do well and to be the ones you’re going to place in your garden. They’ll be the ones you save your seeds for next year.
3. The third one is that you’re able to then sell some seedlings and that generates a small amount of income, which goes back into the homestead. So, make sure you over-plant. Let the seed do its thing and I’m sure you’ll have great success.

Good luck being more self-sufficient this year than last. That’s always the plan, at least, it is mine.

The gift that keeps on giving! Plant once, harvest for a lifetime, edible perennials should form the backbone of every self sufficient food plan.

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Edible perennials are such an important part of self-sufficiency because it's a lot of work to grow
your own food and to raise your own food, and edible perennials form a part of that self-
sufficient food income, if you like, that over time requires less and less input. So it's the same
amount of work as planting your lettuce this year, to plant (for example) kale, but the difference
is that the kale won't need planting again next year. It's an edible perennial.
So we're going to run through a list of edible perennials. It's not exhaustive and I'm sure later
date, we will go into a lot more depth in some of these, but for now, I just wanted to run through
just some of the edible perennials that we've got growing here to illustrate just how important
they can be for part of your self-sufficient food security.

So we’re going to start with vegetables and I’m just going to list four or five that are really key for me.

Asparagus

The first one is asparagus. Now asparagus is hugely important to me because it is something we all love eating. We really enjoy eating it, and it can be the centerpiece of a meal. So if you’re a carnivore – like I am, and you enjoy eating meat, asparagus and mushrooms are two things that can take the place of meat in a meal. You can make asparagus-based main courses, and it reduces the need to produce as much meat as you might otherwise. At least that’s how we look at it.

Another reason asparagus is so great is that, once you’ve got yourself your asparagus bed established, it will go on for decades, giving you a fantastic crop every year. So we started with eight crowns that we bought and we’re expecting our first harvest this year. We put them in two years ago. And this is year three and that’s really when you can start harvesting. There were quite a few Spears came up last year, but we didn’t touch them. As tempting as they were, we left them so the energy could remain within the plant and, as of this year, we should be able to harvest lightly, and next year full harvest. So, from those eight grounds, I’m fully expecting to get enough asparagus to meet our needs, certainly for the summer half the year. And in subsequent years, we should get enough asparagus to fill our needs for the whole year and potentially with some to sell. So that’s a great crop.

The second one is something I've already mentioned and that is kale. We planted a row of kale
two years ago, and it's overwintered and we've basically used it as a cut and come again crop
for vegetables, for leafy vegetables like spinach and equivalent; and it's still going two years
later. And it's strong as ever. So kale is a great plant because it's got two parts. It's got the stem
and the leaf. You treat them both differently and you can actually serve it up as two different
vegetables on a plate. They look very different, tastes very different. So kale is a great perennial
vegetable and it's actually got a place in our vegetable plot with our annuals.

The second and third are both artichokes. They're actually not related, but they've got the
artichoke in the name. So that's the globe artichoke and the Jerusalem artichoke. They're very
very different plants.
Now Globe artichoke flowers, you can put it in the corner of a border flower bed, and it wouldn't
look out of place. Which is in fact what we've done. We've got four or five scattered around our
flower beds. And it produces beautiful Globe artichoke vegetables every single year. And again,
that's a perennial. It will go on and on.
And the second one Jerusalem artichoke – strictly speaking, it's more of an annual but it can be
grown as a perennial. If you've ever tried to grow Jerusalem artichokes as an annual then you'll
be familiar with the situation that they're actually quite difficult to get rid of once you've got them
because they're so prolific. The edible part is a tuber under the ground. You need to think of
them really as very like a potato plant. They grow like a potato. So once you've planted them –
and we planted some last year, and I have just left them in the ground that year for those tubers
to spread, and this year we shall dig and bring some of them up – and by pure chance without
me trying I'm certain that there will be some left behind and they will grow every year. So literally
it's just the case of harvesting from here on in.
I planted them on the edge of our pig wood. The idea being that they'll spread into the wood as
well, and they'll be tubers for the pigs to forage for. So for us, they are a dual-purpose crop in
that way.

And the final one is rhubarb. Rhubarb is a fantastic plant. It is so generous. We inherited a
couple of plants when we moved here. They're huge and those two plants alone produce
enough rhubarb for us to meet our needs all year round, but also, sell a reasonable amount at
the side of the road. So rhubarb's a great cropping plant.
We've also picked up five or six small crowns from Freecycle someone who wanted them
cleared. So we took them and I've place them somewhere else. We're going to leave them
another year, but that will give us another source of rhubarb because we can't meet the demand
we've got at our little shop at the side of the road. So we're going to have a lot more to sell next
year, hopefully.

The next section is Vines. Fruit trees and berries Berry bushes, and things like that. Now here you really are spoiled for choice. A lot of them I’m sure you’ll be familiar with.

As always. I’m talking about a temperate climate, so things might change slightly based on where you are. As you’re aware, I’m in the UK. So do a bit of research on what the best varieties of these things are for you. Something to be aware of whenever you’re planting a fruit tree or a Vine or something like that, is you need to make sure if you’re only planting one that it’s self-pollinating.

So for instance, we have a kiwi here. I can’t remember the name of the variety. But the variety we chose was specifically one that would (a.) grow in our temperate climate, but (b.) would be self-pollinating. So that one plant would be enough. (edit; it’s the variety Jenny)

So I’ve mentioned kiwi. Another great one is grapes. These are something else that we acquired. They were already here. They were actually in a bit of overgrown land and we didn’t know they were there. We cut it all back and while I was debating what to do with it the following spring, these Grape Vines shot up. And I’ve just recently in the last few days built a structure for them to grow up and over. So we’ve inherited those.

We all know about the (what I’m going to call) the standard Garden variety of fruit. We’re talking apples, pears, plums, and that kind of thing. So one thing to be aware of is that you should be able to dry these. So we dry an awful lot of our fruit. We have more than enough from each of our trees to supply our needs. And we get lots of these when they’re in season. So we tend to dry them and that keeps us going through the winter. You can also freeze them and can them.

We’ve got lots of berries and I’ve acquired most of our berries from freecycle for free. So I’m very very happy about that. We’ve got red currants, blackcurrant, gooseberries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries. And these are plants again that will come back every single year. They’re great for the kids. Again, we tend to have gluts of these, and they freeze really well. So that’s how we tend to preserve our berries. We also make a lot of cordials, jams, preserves, and fruit leathers. If you’re not familiar with fruit leather, it’s basically this – you make it very similar to a jam – and then you spread it out very thin on a piece of greaseproof paper. Or at least this is how I do it. And then we put In the dehydrator and you can either leave it as it is, smash it into pieces, or cut it into strips. And it’s like a chewy sweet – my kids absolutely love it.

The next section I wanted to talk to you about with regards to edible perennials is nuts. Now hazelnuts are very prolific. They’re so easy to go foraging for. We didn’t have anywhere locally to us that had lots of hazelnuts for me to forage. And when I say local, I mean within walking distance of the property. So what I have done is I’ve planted a load of hazelnuts that I foraged from slightly further away and we’ve got about 15 little Hazel plants growing now, They’re going to take a few years before they crop but thinking long-term, I’m quite comfortable with that. We’ve bought an almond tree, and we acquired a nicely established black walnut tree. So we’ve got hazelnuts, almonds, and walnuts here.

One thing to be aware of with nuts is squirrels. It’s very very difficult to stop the squirrels from getting there first. So you’ve got three options. If your trees are small enough, you can net the whole tree out. That’s quite tricky and not always practical. It can make your own harvesting difficult. So that’s option one. Option two is obviously pest control which you can do with traps or an air rifle. And option 3, which is quite ingenious – and I’ve tried it this year, so I’ll have to let in the Autumn how it went. This is something I found online. I can’t remember where I got it so I can’t quote the source, unfortunately. But if you bury a little four-inch pipe under the ground next to the tree and leave one end slightly exposed chances are the squirrels will find it and all he’s looking for is somewhere to hide his nuts. So he will use that to hide the nuts for himself. At which point, you can let him do the harvesting for you and then come along and take the nuts.

Now, I suggest that you look at this one of two ways. There are only two ways to do it humanely. I don’t think it’s particularly humane to let a squirrel starve to death in the middle of winter. So in my opinion, and you want to do one of two things, you want to do this along with a pest control measure. So you are actively ending the squirrels as humanely as possible alongside this, or what I’m going to do is I’m just going to take half the nuts. So I think that’s a fair deal. I’m growing nuts for the squirrel. He’s harvesting them for me and we split the produce. We’ll have to see how that works out.

The last and final thing is mushrooms. And you can buy impregnated plugs that are impregnated with the spores of things like oyster mushrooms and lion’s mane mushrooms, etc. But if you’re a bit of a forager, like I am, you can actually find your own mushrooms and bring them back and leave them to drop their spores on the logs yourself. This is particularly good with oyster mushrooms. Oysters are very prolific at propagating their spores. So they are great ones to find in the wild, bring back, and allow to propagate your own logs.

So there you go. There is my rundown of the really important edible perennials – the ones that come to my mind straight away for ones that you should be thinking about and finding room for if you can.