This Amazing Urban Vegetable Garden is ONLY 6 Months Old!

Today we visit Alessandro (aka Spicy Moustache) in his urban allotment in London. What an incredible example of what can be achieved in a matter of months. Follow him here:
Alessandro’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SpicyMoustache
Alessandro’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_spicymoustache_/
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The Self-Sufficiency Garden https://geni.us/SelfSufficiencyGarden

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But I I believe it’s such an important thing to have like green areas like this in London just because there is loads of wildlife that lives here there are foxes there are birds and so many other things imagine if you remove this area where they’re going to go they were here

Before us so so yeah it’s it would be great if you know people could give some help and preserve these areas So here we are uh my new allotment uh it’s just 10 by 11 M so it’s not massive but it’s quite a big space compared to my actual garden and we grow a variety of different things and in this pathway only I planted loads of flowers which is

Side like a sort of welcoming for insectes pollinators Wildlife to access the area and we got a variety that I can’t even list because it’s loads and loads of different flowers some of them are medicinal which is great some of them are edible which we use in the

Kitchen H and some others are literally just for beauty and we keep the seeds and we replant them next year so yeah I I would say that one of my favorite flowers it’s Teddy beer and flower like whenever it whenever it sprouts such a show is so cool but also helan is

Another amazing plant uh or we got a couple of few varieties of um nerum there are super cool the food plant is edible and they are all actually a trap crop for pests it’s a win- win you so yeah I would say those two varieties are definitely my favorite so we started

This uh around January so in January I literally had weats as tall as my chest I had an old tree growing over there uh we had to clear the entire area and we used a combination of different methods permaculture no dig and so on to like

Trying to awaken the life of what was already here and improve it and this is how we got now to like the plants that are like growing so healthy and full of life around us yeah in this on this side here we got a few different varieties of

Tomatoes uh we got an asparagus plant that obviously stopped producing at the end of the RIS bit carrots along the borders and then some beetroots and chard at the end some stuff I self seeded just because I had in my compost at home and by placing it around the

Plants they just started to sprout and and I didn’t even remove them I don’t really mind it’s extra food you know then we go here I try to create a sort of uh Tepe style to support it’s not really a Tepe but kind of uh to support

The beans uh this variety is called Bob’s dbang so it’s green outside but purple and black with black stripes inside super cool I love it uh and we interplanted in the middle lots of different things like onions uh corett uh but we also have flowers like

Borage at the two ends uh to borage is edible it tastes like cucus and obviously it encourage pollinat again to get into this area but also mainly predatory insects because beans tend to have lots of black flies so as a natural P control you know we have overflies le

Birds and all these and then as well we got Strow because obviously it’s hard to keep on top of the watering schedule uh so the straw helps to retain that moisture into the ground but also we inoculate the straw with wine cups which helps so much to have extra food

Production in between the plants so this border was made with bricks that we found here so like the area like all over the place it was full of old bricks so rather than throwing away uh materials that you know we could have used here like voods uh timers uh bricks

And lots of other things we decided to reuse it and we created this border that contains mainly flowers uh except of this big plant of Rosemary that was already here and we decided to keep and also at the end we got rose hips and uh a few Berry

Plants and it’s made like entirely all about attracting a biodiversity of insects so um Pride insects or or just pollinators whatever it is just to encourage all this insect and Wildlife to again to come into the area because it’s not only about producing food it’s about like you know trying to create

That ecosystem so here we add some extra bricks so what we did was to create the spiral initially it was a herb spiral and the herbs were placed strategically in a way that like um herbs the light Sun more placed at the top and so on like going down the

Spiral but then we decided to interplant some cets that took over the space and then this is what happens whenever you forget to harvest your cets they turn into marrow and we should pick them as soon as possible just because they withdraw Lads of energies from the plant

And Yeah we actually one of the mistakes if I could say that we did here like at the beginning of the year was to plant too many cetes and yeah we have lots of varieties but still it’s a lot behind me there is a shed that was

Already here uh it was in pretty bad conditions so what we did we painted the whole thing we fixed the door uh we added more support and we created a small seting area trying to make it look nice we used again stuff that were here to make shelves and so many other things

Inside and we keep it as a storage for tools um herds but also natural inputs that we use in the garden like fermented juice um and behind me as you can see unfortunately there there are lots of new buildings that in January they were not here and it’s they want to expand

The area to get even this plots but I I believe it’s such an important thing to have like green areas like this in London just because there is loads of wildli that lives here there are foxes there are birds and so many other things imagine if you remove this area where

They going to go they were here before us we should learn how to cooperate rather than you know destroy their habitat just because we want to build more so so yeah it’s it would be great if you know people could give some help and preserve these

Areas are any have any foxes got names no really I got videos super up like literally that closed so in this area in front of me uh we got a two Bay composting system at the end that hopefully will produce some compost for next year and then uh we uh

Dig down to create these uh race beds in ground but mainly we dig to make some borders and underline where uh they end and begin um we got a variety of loads of plants and flowers at the borders interplanted actually and they produce cucumbers cor Jetts marrows again uh broccoli and cabbage chilies

And so many cool varieties of vegetables I try to plant unusual varieties like hloom varieties as much as I can and save the seeds for the next season and these are actually the last race bits that were created here at the allotment because we started by creating this

Whole Space the right hand side first and then we mve to the left hand side and it took quite a bit to create this last two or three race beds and behind me we decided to dig half a meter down and put this green house and small

Poly tunel and the reason is because we didn’t have enough soil to cover the ra uh to fill up the race beds because as you can see inside we got loads of different race beds and uh like it would have been like too much work to bring here compost

And again it’s it’s better to use what’s already here but most of all we didn’t want to shade the neighbors I noticed there are lots of poly tunnels and green houses around and like you know in the middle of the day they create shade for whever is onside of you and it’s not

Really nice so we try to be a bit considerate and uh I surrounded every single race bit with flowers in this case marigolds just because they create that sort of masking barrier for your main crops uh so hopefully we won’t have many pests on our vegetables main crops

And there are lots of different things growing here I also left some self-seeded stuff uh like chard U tomatoes and other things basil that were already in my compost and we have uh an amazing production of food in just like a 3X3 met you know size uh we have as you can

See cucumbers everywhere uh different varieties Crystal lemon cucumbers uh pickling cucumbers but also auin uh a few different varieties of tomatoes and I kept the M middle middle row for melons that hopefully will come up as soon as possible we are a bit late because we planted them late

And cover the ground with boot chips pretty much everywhere so you know you feed the life even in your Pathways well I learned if I have to be honest I learned so many things like uh it’s completely different it’s obviously like in a small garden you still have

Like a pretty intense watering schedule just because you have small pots and lots of things that you need to keep an eye on uh but in a big Garden like in a bigger space like this one uh as well you know you need there are plants that uh require more water you’re

More exposed to um weather conditions that could be wind like we add damages to the polyon so you need to like secure everything in place uh there are lots of different factors that you need to take into consideration um but it’s it was an amazing experience to start a space like

That because now I know that I can scale up you know and so rather than going big straight away better to you know to have like a a space that it’s 10 times sorry like three times the space that I have home so yeah yes you’re always like

Taking doable steps rather than like a 10 acre that’s corre exactly yeah yeah if I took over like a 10 acre space I don’t know where I would be now like just doing that nothing else so what I think what I’m going to do to for this

Base is I’m going to do lots of cover crops uh because I want soil doesn’t need to rest so it’s contrary to what people think like that you need to leave your soil for like a season to rest it’s not true you don’t need time for your

Soil to to to rest at all you can keep feeding it you can keep it’s going to constantly produce so having these cover crops that then you can chop and drop you can uh like use them as mineral accumulators and then you give back to

To the soil to the ground and but also I’m going to hopefully use the compost that I’m going to produce here so uh I can you know enrich the life and the biodiversity of microorganisms and I’m going to try try to use the poly tuner for winter

Crops and a few other spaces to over winter stuff so like planting I don’t know uh things like U beetroots or or other stuff that like could potentially come up early in the season whenever the climate starts to get a bit better so you plant them uh late of at the end of

You know the growing season that’s soal growing season uh and then you can Harvest them early like whenever like early spring so it’s like a super early Harvest like a fresh crop that you can Harvest so that’s that’s pretty much what I’m going to do to this bace like over the winter