Self Sufficiency Garden In Summer - Growing 95% Of Our Fresh Food In The UK
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- Опубліковано 29 лип 2024
- On 3 acres in the South East of England we grow as much of our own food as possible - Organically. In the video we show you around our outdoor vegetable beds and share what we are growing to achieve 95% Self Sufficiency for ALL of our Fresh Food. We grow most of the usual fruits and vegetables that you would expect to find on an Allotment or Market Garden - We also grow rare and unusual crops, taking inspiration from Indigenous foods, methods and tribal ways.
We are Dan & Laurie and our land is called Freedom Forest - Its 3 acres in the South of England where we are creating an edible oasis and trying to provide as much for ourselves, from our land as possible, where we are completely off grid.
Our food growing journey began together in 2017 when we created our first No dig lasagne bed. Every year we grow more and more and now we are currently around 60-80% self sufficient in our food needs.
Our style and methods are inspired by permaculture and we try to be thoughtful about how and what we do, to be as gentle on the planet as possible.
We are MASSIVELY grateful that you choose to watch our Videos and support us in this way, however, If you appreciate and get value from what we share and would like to help us a little more, you can become a Freedom Forest Patreon (link below).
It takes us about a day to film some video and another few evenings to edit it, Patreon provides a way you can support what we do with any size donation you wish, it could simply be the value of a packet of seeds! We have many projects coming up, as well as wanting to improve our videos with better camera equipment... maybe even a drone one day to make our videos even more detailed and better quality for you to enjoy! You can help make it viable for us to keep putting the time into making these videos by becoming a Patreon. In return your name will appear in the end credits of our videos and we'll message you a password for the 'members area' of our website where we share more of our favourite recipes exclusively for our Patreon's 💚
/ freedomforestlife
Enjoy & Thanks for Watching
✌️🌿 Peace and Plants
#Freedomforest #selfsufficientliving #gardentour #smallholding #offgrid #Indigenousfood
Fantastic array of food in your garden and everything looks so healthy. Thanks for the tour 💚
Thanks for watching Annette. Glad you enjoyed the tour 💚✌️🌿
"boring crop of old people" 🤣
new subscriber...looks beautiful and look forward to more 😍
I wondered if any one would pick up on that comments!!! 🤣 The wonders of Dan's mind! 🤣 Great to have you with us 💚 Hope you enjoy more of our vids. Appreciate you watching/commenting ✌️🌿
loved it
Awesome 🙏 appreciate you watching & commenting ✌️🌿
Red onions always bolt for us too. White have never been a problem. We’ve noticed this in seeds and sets so we’ve always assumed it is the variety that’s tricky! We’ve switched 80% to Egyptian walking onions now so other than a few seeds each year as a back up, won’t be going back to annuals as the perennials are just so easy and efficient 😊
PS - just recent found your channel and am binge watching my way through! Am loving your approach. We are in the process of moving from a residential garden and allotment to a property with some acreage so excited to learn from you as we prepare ❤
Hi, glad you’ve found us, at the perfect time 💚 this defo seems to be the greens of what I am hearing with the onions now - glad I asked! We do have Welsh onions here, but I kind of forgot about them last year and they are all flowering now, I’m just gonna leave them be and see what happens - I have been intending to get walking onions for so long … and then always forget!! 🤣 like what your saying though, so maybe this will be the catalyst to make sure I get on it 🙏 so glad to hear you are expanding you growing (and life) experience, land management is an exciting journey of learning and grow in so many ways. Great to have you with us, thanks for watching and commenting 💚✌️🌿
@@freedomforestlifeWelsh onions are also called perennial shallots and if you grow them as shallots by planting a single medium sized bulb it will produce small onions that store for a couple months or all winter in the garden unharvested
Ive got those dungarees! Right bargain 😊
You can buy heat treated sets. They dont run to seed , normal sets often do. Theyre a bit more expensive, but worth it. Marshalls and thompson and morgan sell them.
Hi Ali, did you get the Dungies from Tweedy clothing? Love those guys 💚 interesting about the heat treated - thank you - I’ve not seen them before, some else said earlier they’ve also had those run to seed too though 🤔 I think for me, I am going to stick mostly to seed - seems to work best here for us, everyone’s garden is different though, defo about finding what works best for you 😃 appreciate you watching & replying 🙏✌️🌿
@@freedomforestlife I got them from amazon. Not sure who the company was. They were only about 12 quid though.
As far as the sets go, nothing is 100%, but I find the combo of some seed sown and some heat treated sets, gives greater assurance as its unlikely both will run to seed, so you've more chance of getting something if disaster strikes with your seed sown. It's a back up plan.
@@freedomforestlife I get mine from Marshall’s too but always look for them during their sales. Much cheaper.
Thanks for the lovely tour. Everything looks so lush!
Thanks Nneka - It is suprising how lush it was all still looking really considering we had just a good few weeks dry ... and we only water when we really have to 😊
Looking absolutely beautiful, so inspiring 😍
Thanks Alice, glad you enjoyed the tour 🙏 appreciate you watching and commenting ✌️🌿
Love your channel! 💚🌱
Thank you Kara 💚
I looked at my onion bed earlier today and regretted why I didn’t double my sowing last autumn. They are huge! The best season for me yet, unlike my garlic. I’m just waiting for the rain to pass to start harvesting. I’ve not been lucky with seed sowing but very successful with sets. I have never had any set onion go to seed, except the ones I deliberately plant for pollinator flowers the next year. It may come down to variety or how well they are treated before sold, I am not sure. What variety do you sow? Mine’s Radar (brown), snowball (white) and red winter (red/purple). I’ll be harvesting only Radar this year but also seeds from Snowball and Red Winter. I don’t want to give up on seed sowing just yet because I want to be self sufficient and keep cost down. We eat onions everyday 😊
Good on you for growing huge onions 🙌 such an essential in the kitchen hey - I bet you produce some AMAZING food with all your beautiful homegrown produce and cultural skills 😋 It is interesting as it is only the red ones, Red Baron, this year, which were store bought sets, the white ones that are doing ok atm were my tiny onions I saved from last years harvest and replanted - Dan's mum had a lot of Red's that bolted too this year - Interesting. Onions do take a long to germinate when sown in Jan or Feb, so you do need to give them a while and ALWAY yes fresh seed (learnt this the hard way) it is said that homesaved is often the best 💚✌️ 🌿
I say the same thing every year, I wish I grew more….😁🇦🇺
@@NnekaOchonogor you can multi-plant sets. Plant 3 in a cluster. 7 inches between clusters. If you want to be really intensive, work out your onion bed layout in march and get some parsnips going in the gaps, then plant your sets a few weeks later once the parsnips have germinated. They grow happily together. Once you harvest the onions, the parsnips grow on.
@@AliW-xu4lv thanks. I multisowed and single sowed on the same bed to see the difference. I can already tell
That multisowing is the way to go from comparing the sizes but it’ll be interesting to see when I start harvesting. I haven’t thought about parsnips. I had a great harvest one year and haven’t planted it again as my spaces are premium. Great idea, I’ll think of how it might work for me next season.
Wonderful!
thanks Maria 💚
Gardens looking fantastic 😊
Sets are second year ,onions are biannually, when you grow them from sets, but you can save the seeds once they are ready, that’s what I do, then try them from seed next year.
I did this last season and now this season I’ve put sprouting onions in soil for seeds.
Thanks for the info Rick - great idea to save seed for the bolting ones 👍👍👍 thanks for watching as always 🙏✌️🌿
It seems like a lot of ground is needed to feed 2 people. And a lot of work as well. Good to see that you don't have to use pesticides etc. at all to make things work. Love your tours, very informative and interesting.
I grow in my back garden. It even has quite a lot of shade. North facing with a very tall wall on the east side. It's about 100m2. I have a 12m2 polytunnel. I follow the advice of Steves seaside kitchen garden and allotment. I grow all year round and am self sufficient for 2 people with excess to share in spring and summer. This is only my 3rd year and was self sufficient in my 2nd year. Follow steve and you won't go far wrong. He has links on his videos to extensive growing guides and an ebook with absolutely everything you need to know, there's a weekly news letter too. Its all free to access, though you can donate if you wish.
In fairness, we could grow at lot more intensively on the space we have, especially if we had more hands helping! What we currently grow is probably enough for 4 people easily, it’s good to have too much when trying to be self sufficient, as you never know what may fail each year! we gift surpluses to our family, friend and neighbours and being mostly plant based eaters, we prob eat A LOT more veggies than average 😆 so glad you enjoyed the tour, appreciate you watching/commenting 💚✌️🌿
My onions grown from sets have always had a tendency to bolt. Seeds for me from now on.
Seems to be I am defo not along in f having this happen then 😌 thanks for watching and sharing your experience too 💚✌️🌿
Fermented beetroot is awesome if you have too much to use. I much prefer it to pickled (although pickled is pretty good in a salad too).
I'd be interested to know what the 5% of food you buy is? Is it mainly indulgences, or would you just not count them in the numbers? 95% self sufficiency is very impressive indeed, well done.
Hi Ricos, Oh yes for sure I love both pickled and fermented Beetroot too 😋 So 95% is our 'Fresh Food' the 5% fresh that we buy in is Banana's & Mushrooms regularly, very occasional other things, like Mango for a treat! Overall we are around 70-80% self suff in ALL food, give or take through the seasons - its just really grains and treats that we buy in, the first we hope to be able to reduce over time as we learn to utilise corn and other small scale grains more ... its mostly just time with that limiting us atm! If we choose to cut certain 'conveniences' out of our diet and just use what we had we could defo more than survive on what we grow here - we'd just need to trade for an cooking Oil! Thanks for watching and for your interest 💚✌️🌿
Never had any luck with red onions on our allotment plot with loam soil. Sets doing OK. Seed onions slow but getting there.
Hi Pauline, that’s interesting, so do you find that white/yellow onions grow ok for you, just not reds?
@@freedomforestlife yes. White & yellow fine. Red sets hopeless. Fellow plotters have the same issue. On another note, no bees or butterflies around atm here at our garden and plot in Worcestershire.
Thanks Pauline, yes lots of people are talking about this with the insects unfortunately. We are seeing them here, we've have been watching closely now, but they have been much lesser in numbers than normal ... I think they will come - I think its the weather ... mostly ... we have had Red Admirals arrive in just the last few days and I am starting to see an occasional cabbage white now and 4 bees on my leek flowers yesterday 🙏
Can you show us how to make your beetroot burgers?
Will defo be sharing the beetroot burger recipe when we’ve built our outdoor kitchen, so stay tune - great to know you would like it 😊appreciate you watching and commenting ✌️🌿
2:05 nope, you are not doing anything wrong. I have been growing for 7 years and have the same issue here in Ireland. This year (actually last year to be exact) decided to do a full experiment: i bought red and brown onion sets in autumn last year, so they overwintered in the ground. Then I bought spring planting onion sets again this spring, planted them too, and also sowed onions from seeds in january this year. All the onions i planted from sets last autumn and overwintered bolted. Every single one of them. From the sets i planted this spring, about 30% of them have bolted so far, who knows how many more will decide to do later on... Not a single one has bolted from those I sowed from seeds. The sets I planted were just regular onion sets, but i have tried a few years ago the so called "heat treated onion sets" that promised those would not bolt - no difference whatsoever, they bolted just like the regular ones. This is the point where i have decided that im just done with onion sets. Waste of money, waste of time, waste of effort and most importantly wast of growing space. Im done, no more onion sets. They would be more convenient i guess but no point coz they just bolt. 🤷
Thanks for the reassurance and sharing your experience - very interesting. It is only the red ones, Red Baron, this year, which were store bought sets that have bolted, the white ones that are doing ok atm were my tiny onions I saved from last years harvest and replanted - Dan's mum had a lot of Red's that bolted too this year. Thanks for watching and replying too 🙏✌️🌿
I didn’t grow onions this year but I always get the same issues specifically with red onion sets
Thanks Gawain - Good to know 🙏✌️🌿