Productive Permaculture Inspired Kitchen Garden | Practical Self-Sufficiency in Action

In this video, we revisit Saronne’s beautiful permaculture-inspired kitchen garden. It is amazing to see just how healthy and thriving this space is, and I always enjoy my visit there, so I just had to film an update!
First visit video: https://youtu.be/2YJz4EeqcBc?si=E_8sljNe8p0psKnI
Saronne’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYqj9ViZ4d4AiMR1KgETykg

The Self-Sufficiency Garden: https://geni.us/SelfSufficiencyGarden

Ambassador for Gardena: https://www.gardena.com/

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/huwsgarden/

#selfsufficiency #permaculture #kitchengarden

A garden without flowers is just a garden but a garden with flowers is a special Garden it just adds that little extra something that color that it’s just the I think it just adds a little bit of soul to the Garden hi I’m siron and I live in mwest

Wales and this is my garden a couple of years ago Hugh came along and videoed uh me in my garden and this is a bit of an update just to see how things have progressed or changed over that time I like growing flowers around my vegetables cuz I think it just adds

Interest it encourages the pollinators and oh I’ve got a nice butterfly just there it makes me feel happier to be in it and it provides cut flowers as well I’ve got some helenium here and Holly Hawks and some flocks and eonia and Campanula growing and sunflowers somewhere and poppies as well

A lot of things actually self seed so you might from one year to the next find things coming up where you hadn’t planned on seeing them this started out as a bed for five um blueberry plants which you now can’t see because there’s so much other stuff growing in here but

When I planted them last Autumn there was so much empty space I thought I’ll turn it into a bit of a polyculture bed so I planted a few kale plants cular plants and just a bit of this and a bit of that but actually this year a lot of

Stuff just kind of came up on its own including surprise surprise about three tomao plants which I totally hadn’t expected I grew tomao plants in the poly tunnel about 2 years ago 3 years ago and they produced so heavily I hadn’t planted them again but clearly some of

The seeds ended up in the compost and when I added the compost to this bed they’ve come up and they’re actually producing so I’m really delighted about that they’re a very useful thing to have in Latin American cook I’ve got this one uh raised bed here that’s grown lots of different things

Over the last couple of years and this year I thought I’d try some winter squash um and I’m not going to collect the seeds from them so I’m growing quite a variety of winter squash um Hubbard squash spaghetti squash priest’s hat acorn squash and I just love the way the

Leaves just kind of EXP expand and take over the garden I do have to train them a little bit because they’re going to start climbing the bean trellis if I’m not careful but I do love the depth the height and the just oomph that these plants just give when you put them

Anywhere that they’re happy in I think if I could only plant one I would go for the iiki curry because they’re manageable in size they’re very tasty and they store quite well for a bit of fun I thought I’d try some sugar beads a bed of sugar beads I

Thought the idea was I could grow them partly to feed to the livestock but I know they’re edible for humans as well you can make molasses out of the roots by grating them soaking them and boiling them down to like a thick syrup you can eat the leaves syrup it like uh well

Like any beetroot leav or swiss CH they’re very similar slightly sweeter I think that sweetness kind of gets throughout the plant not just the roots and if they do well and the animals like it I might plant a few more next year I don’t have menus each week what I tend

To do is I come out to the garden and I see what’s coming ripe or ready to pick and I kind of look through cookery books to give me ideas and inspiration for what might make over the next couple of days so it’s very free flowing and I

Change an adapt recipes I never really follow a straight recipe cuz I just find that sort of rigidity a little bit limiting it’s much more fun to kind of create so recently I picked some of my climbing beans and I’ve got some purple ones some yellow ones and some of the

Bolatti beans which are still in sort of uh green bean form and I cooked those till they were tender and I boiled up some beetroots and I made a salad with a really nice vinegrets and put a whole load of fresh chopped herbs in that and it was absolutely delicious and I’m

Going to be doing that again and again because I’ve got a lot of beetroot and a lot of beans this year like many years is a challenge with regards to the weather so we had a really cold winter which killed quite a lot of things that I thought would be okay like brassas

Brussels sprouts died okay Whoever thought a brussel sprout could be killed by the cold but apparently they can and then we had a very cold cool dry spring so that made things very um slow to kind of develop and then we had a very hot dry June and I had to water continuously

Because stuff just wasn’t growing due to a a drought sort of condition and now we’re having way too much rain so we’ve had a little bit of everything all the weather has been a challenge but stuff is still growing at the end of the day so I’m not overly worried a couple of

Years ago we planted a load of Willow sticks along the width of our vegetable garden just to create a little hedge to um stop the wind cuz we get quite a lot of exposed weather here we’re we’re open we’re in a field area and they’ve grown

Really well and they create a little bit of a microclimate now so we don’t tend to feel the cold in here as much as we did a couple of years ago equally we’re making a dead hedge to surround the entire vegetable garden partly to keep the chickens out and partly to create uh

A little Wildlife friendly hedge and all also to have a use for the Brash and branches that we create when we compus our Hazel and willow trees next year I’d like to be able to be um a little more sustainable with growing food for ourselves and our livestock so maybe

Growing more things like kale more of the sugar beet and things like more Willow um to create microclimates and forage for our goats but we also want to keep on top of the everchanging weather cuz that’s always a challenge and I need to find vegetables that are very

Adaptable to drought and wet conditions the poly tunnel this year is a bit of everything so I’ve got my tomatoes down the center and rather than just leave it as Tomatoes I’ve put other things like CL rying beans and basil and funnily enough a lot of self-seeded parsley

Fennel kandula other things have come up mint funnily enough coriander it’s all coming up and it was unexpected but it’s always a bonus I’ve also got sweet corn and I’ve got sweet corn in here to stagger my Harvest so I can get some hopefully in the next couple of weeks

And then the ones outside will be a couple of weeks later so I won’t have everything all at once I’ve got a lot of brassas in here and carrots again just a bit of everything so it extends my season on both ends so I get an earlier start and a later Finish I love the creative process of gardening and I love being able to provide for myself and my family is just something that’s always been hugely important to me um I get such a thrill from watching things grow and the entire process so it’s not just the Harvest it’s not the

Finished product it’s the entire seed to plate so we’ve got two poly tunnels this is the lower one I refer to them as the lower and the upper and normally I plant tomatoes in here and some batti beans but this year I thought I’d mix it up a

Bit and I’ve planted more beans for drying mainly and brassas and because there’s no wheat membrane underneath the um compost here I think the roots get right down into the Earth and take up more nutrients and I always feel that they do better here than they do in the upper tunnel which

Has got uh weed membrane but I’ve got popping corn on this side and I just come along and I knock them to get the pollen to come down and pollinate everything including myself I’ve got cucumbers back there in tubs and hopefully all of this Christmas’s brussel sprouts but you can’t see them

Cuz the beans are like taking over the world it appears in here my channel on YouTube is called so grow and cook and I talk a little bit about what we’re doing here on our small holding um I show you what I’m growing and I sometimes do recipes and cooking

From the garden onto your plate and I try to keep things quite simple it’d be great if you could join me on the channel and if you like it you can always subscribe and then you’ll know what’s coming up in future Videos