What Can I FIND to EAT in Our OVERGROWN Vegetable Garden?

In this video, we brave our overgrown vegetable garden to see what we can find growing to eat and then harvest and cook for an amazing dinner!

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Self Sufficient Me is based on our small 3-acre property/homestead in SE Queensland, Australia, about 45kms north of Brisbane – the climate is subtropical (similar to Florida). I started Self Sufficient Me in 2011 as a blog website project where I document and write about backyard food growing, self-sufficiency, and urban farming in general. I love sharing my foodie and DIY adventures online, so come along with me and let’s get into it! Cheers, Mark 🙂

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I’m carrying this scissors and this pointy steak around to make sure if there’s a snake attack I can quickly pin it to the ground and it won’t bite me well that’s the Hope anyway good day I’m Mark from self-sufficient me and in this video I’m going to go through this

Jungle mess of a veggie garden and we’re going to find something to eat for dinner tonight and you’re coming with me let’s get into it But it has not stopped raining for this past month you might have seen my last video complaining about our overground veggie garden well I did want to get back into it and clean this all up but guess what it’s still raining the problem is if I get Machinery in here or

Walk around in here too much the already soppy muddy ground will just turn into a big mess and I don’t want that so I’m waiting to get a clear break for about a week so that the garden can dry out and particularly the ground underneath so

That I can get in and properly throw the weeds out mow it all over whip a snip around and tidy the garden up and then we can find all our food crops hopefully still growing let’s start at the front of the veggie garden because that’s a lot easier I’ve got a container

Here will fill this up well hopefully and it will feed a family of four so four of us I was thinking about getting a protein from the butcher but you know what I reckon we’ll just go vegetarian tonight for dinner and we’ll see if we can find enough food in the patch to

Make a nice vegetarian meal whatever that is I don’t quite quite know yet it depends on the ingredients the first three garden beds here the plants aren’t really mature I’ve got two lots of corn and I doubt whether they’re ready to eat I can have a bit of a

Peak the corn cobs are developing but you can see they’re very green just yet n I’m not even going to bother peeling that back and checking it you got to wait till at least the tops die back so no corn here we’ve got Ros and although you usually Harvest Rosella

Cix’s to make mainly jams is what we use it for but the leaves are very nice to eat in the salad they give a really beautiful Tang so I’m going to pick a few of the good young shoots ones that haven’t got too many blemishes haven’t been eaten by

Grasshoppers and that should do now this is summer here it’s a subtropical climate that we live in so you can’t grow regular salad crops like lettuce and baby spinach leaves and those types of things at this time of year so I’ve got to be a little bit more adventurous

To get a salad for dinner tonight corn corn corn can’t use it but here in this last bed this is really interesting because I was growing cucumbers on this lean to trus here and the whole idea was in summer it would get overtaken by the next crop that was coming through which

Is asparagus pee and that’s exactly what has happened but something really extra weird happened on top of it there are a few cucumbers that at the end of the season I didn’t Harvest and they fell onto the ground look at what’s happened here the rotting cucumbers they came up in a bunch of

Seedlings it’s the wrong time of year maybe it’s the extra rain and I don’t know but you’d think the humidity would be killing it off but it’s not and it’s also even growing up and connecting with the asparagus PE and trying to grow back up to the trellis from the ground here I

Think this is crossbreed from a few other cucumbers that were in the garden because look at this that’s not a Lebanese cucumber that is a Puna well it looks like a elongated Puna this is going to add to the salad let’s see if we can find a few more of

Them that’s a good s cucumber that’s a big fell so I think we’ve nearly got the salad sorted but I want to find another leafy salad veggie to be able to add to this I’ve just spotted a couple of things here that would go good to spice

Things up and to perhaps make some sort of Curry give some flavor to dinner tonight seeing that it’s a vegetarian dinner you’ll want a little bit bit of mph in there to make it appetizing on this side here we’ve got some turmeric growing so I wonder if I can Harvest

Some of that to get a bit of flavor this is a young turmeric or what you would call Young so we’ll just cut the bulb straight off or the ryone there you go that can go into the compost and here we have the roots what we’ll be able to do here’s a

Fairly mature piece is grind this up blend it up or mash it up and we can use some of this to add flavor to the dish that we’re going to make on the other side here I’ve just noticed there’s some ginger that would have been a bit of the old

Ginger so that would be more mature and probably more spicier or stronger and here is what you would call Young Ginger because you can see how pink it is and how white it is this is really good if you just if you don’t want a real pungent Ginger and you want to harvest

It and have it uh in in a salad or something even you just want a nice sort of flavorful but not overpowering Ginger taste good for maybe a sauce or a salad dressing and we’ll get rid of the tops now there’s not much else down here but I have spied something that will

Give us a little bit of extra flavor the rest of this bed is fairly overgrown but I think we’ll Harvest some of these garlic chives cuz they look fantastic there we go and that’ll add a little bit of garlic flavor to our meal all right let’s keep moving

Down I can see in here there are some leaks that could be okay for some flavor in L of spring onion just to add a little bit more onion type flavor to the dish most of the leaks they’ve gone to flour and now have seeded always let leaks go to flour well

Not all of them I mean Harvest some to eat of course let them go to flour and then collect the seed because you will get literally thousands of plants out of just one or two heads of this it’s very easy way to regrow leaks there we go looks a bit like a

Spring onion you can use it as a spring onion except you notice the difference leaks have flatter leaves bit like garlic cut them off cut the bottom off here the roots and we’ll tidy that up and we will add that to our meal across here I can see some habanos

Growing some of them are maturing going red and others are green I’m not going to use these in the dish tonight this is great for sources but the family will not like me if I put too much heat in our dish so we will keep these something

Else the same here for these Sereno chilies there’s plenty of them there they’re not too bad they’re not that hot but I don’t want to use them either we’ve got other chilies I’m sure of it in the jungle down the back there that I might use this is in front of this large

Passion fruit Vine here it’s growing very well it’s not flowering yet but this is supposed to be a massive passion fruit it’s called a giant passion fruit well hopefully it does grow giant and I can show you in later videos but it is growing going well at the moment but

What I have spied and that is this here it looks like a weed but it’s actually Egyptian spinach and it’s a great substitute for standard spinach in a salad so we’ll definitely grab some of this the ones that aren’t eaten by grasshoppers just some nice young leaves you can harvest the big ones

Too big leaves taste really good as well ah yeah it’s a good one look at that wonderful it’s a really good Pleasant tasting green now what I’m looking for is something substantial a really good carb and I think I know what to get although I’m not sure if it’s ready to harvest

Yet in here is some tarot you can hardly see it because it’s over GS with weeds and other things like this pumpkin or gourd Vine nice sized web here let’s get rid of that what’s that belong to a there he is a little orb spider well I wouldn’t say little quite a big

Fella but that’s what made that Nest across the veggie garden probably because not many people are walking through there I’ll leave him sleep so we’ll Harvest from this side then so I don’t disturb that spider to be honest they’re a bit small so I won’t Harvest too many of them but

I’ll just Harvest enough for a feed really should wait till the end of the season and let them grow on but when you need a feed you need a feed yes look at that wouldn’t go on to get whacked on the head with that thing would you medieval weapon the old tarot

Over the old Noggin all right I’m after just another starch and you might be able to guess which one that one’s going to be down the back here if you watch my videos a fair bit and also a little bit more flavor so we’ll Harvest some chilies that I hope

To find in the jungle down the back here this is this is the one part that I was sort of not looking forward to at all but uh I’ve got my trusty bike here not that I want to hurt any snakes or anything but I just don’t want them to

Hurt me if you know what I mean okay wish me luck ouch I just got grabbed by this aeton tablein raspberry got really nasty spikes on it okay here is the sweet potato bed kind of overtaken by weeds but I’m sure we can find some more sweet potato in here

Somewhere soil’s actually fairly dry surprisingly that’s a raised bed for you it’s h keeping the soil dry enough even though everywhere else is is a bog that’s another good thing about raised bed gardening and the chilies well they’re over there so I’ve got to go through this and around and to there mhm

Great let’s harvest the sweet potato first you know what it might be easier if I just jump up somehow there’s there’s something oh it’s half eaten what do you want come on ready come on there you go made it well well done okay this one half eaten no

Good yeah that could be okay cut away the bad bits got a bit of a nibble on it yeah we’ll keep that let’s keep going that’s what I’m after uh a bit old that one this one here that’s that’s okay uh maybe a bit old but we’ll we’ll keep it Biggers can’t be

Choosers that is way too old the problem is I’ve harvested a lot of the sweet potato out of this bed over this last few months so there’s not a lot left couple of small ones that might do for another bite-sized piece to be honest this bed’s due for redo and I

Won’t grow sweet potato back in here again the sweet potato isn’t growing as good as it once was so it’s time to rotate grow something else in here why can’t you find the sweet potato for me Bella huh can you find any have you given up to Bella hey while I’m up here

I’ve noticed that I could probably reach these chilies these chilies they’re really good they’re pretty well mild or you could say a bit of a medium mild depending on how much seed you keep in there they’re a a long Joe cayenne and they they are quite long but

Yeah the flavor is nice and the heat isn’t too bad and because these are fairly mild I want I want quite a few I’m going to take the seeds out and I’ve got a good mixture of green and red to give a nice Tang to it

The greens do the red is a little bit more hotter and so yeah I think this will be enough now what we’re going to do besides me grabbing some extra tarot is we we’ll go upstairs we’ll give all this a bit of a clean and then we’ll

Prepare the meals so the video’s not over yet you’re going to see how we turn this into something amazing oh oh you ready Bella come on come on come come here good girl stop it Bella you’re going to get in trouble Mommy’s going to hate that you’re so dirty Oh [Applause] [Applause] And [Applause] [Applause] o Oh You [Applause] Oh I think we’ll have just one more cucumber I’m so wrapped that they’re growing at this time of year look I haven’t even haven’t seen the final outcome yet of what I cooked up tonight but I know it’s going to be good and that’s not just me having a big head

I’ve done this so many times we usually have a protein with the veggies that we Harvest but sometimes we just go full veggie and miss out the protein it saves money but it’s also good and I think healthy for us to skip the protein every now and again I hope you enjoyed the

Video it’s a bit different it’s uh something that I’m improvising seems that I can’t get into the garden properly and show you some other things I’ve got other videos in the PIP line that I’ll be bringing out in a few weeks time but if you did enjoy the video make

Sure you give a big improvisation thumbs up that we were able to find a good feed out of the garden and subscribe if you haven’t already thanks a lot for watching bye for now cheers