Year 3 – Spring Vegetable Garden Tour

Our third Spring Garden Tour. Almost 3 years ago, we bought a rundown small farm (less than 2 acres) and have worked to create a space where perennial plants are the star of the veggie gardens.

We show what’s growing now and how plants have developed in the short time we’ve been restoring the land to its former glory.

[Music]
[Music]
[Music] Welcome back to the 
Nearby Veggies garden. It’s  
mid April here in central Portugal, 
and this is my favorite time of the  
year in the garden. So I hope you’ll 
really enjoy this spring garden tour.
First of all let’s go into the 
vegetable garden. I’d like to  
show you what’s growing in here and doing 
really well because we’re getting absolutely  
rewarded with all the perennials 
this year. We’ve got the passion
fruit. These passion flowers are so beautiful 
and the fruit is absolutely delicious. Last year  
we got about 10 kilos maybe 12 from this 1 and 
1/2 year old plant. It’s 2 years old now isn’t  
it? Yeah so it’s 2 years old. We had planned 
on putting it back um when the leaves dropped  
off but this year wasn’t really very cold.
We had a few frosts and the leaves didn’t die  
back so we didn’t get around to pruning it. 
But that’s the story of this year. The lime.  
So last year we got a half a dozen limes, six or 
seven limes. This year it’s absolutely covered in
Blossom. There’s some 
lemongrass over there. Comfrey.
And the lemon is covered in Blossom and you can 
hear all the bees. I’m just about to pick the  
last of the lemons because they’re weighing 
down this Branch. They’re getting absolutely
massive. Look at the size of the
lemons. And that’ll hopefully give the 
blossoms a chance to turn into proper
lemons.
So this is Vietnamese coriander  
and it’s done exceptionally well. It’s bit like 
coriander but it’s easy to grow. I know many  
people struggle to grow coriander in this heat 
but this is wonderful and it grows from cuttings.  
It spreads. If you find the right place it does 
so well. Last year when we planted the mulberry  
tree I was pruning it and I thought I’ll take 
some cuttings and see if they grow, and they are  
taking. Do you know what, there’s even mulberries 
on them, so I better pick those off. I’ll put them  
in my hand so you can see little mulberry flowers, 
which are only going to slow down root production.  
They’re planted in just sand so I’ll leave 
these here. They’re in the shelter of the Olive
Tree. You can see some of my cactuses 
from The Veranda have been relocated.  
It’s not going to be an easy summer to 
try and save them. This was given to me  
as a small rooted cutting and it’s a 
thornless Blackberry. so we’ve got a  
few of those. One of our neighbors gave them 
to us and the fruit is exceptional andt it’s  
growing. Nice new growth and there are no spikes.
Of course we’ve got chard all year round and you  
know we like to make spanakopita with 
that cuz it uses quite a lot and it’s  
colorful and pretty. Because I think a vegetable 
garden should be pretty as well as productive.
These are the Welsh onions that we planted 
and they just continue on. We planted these  
from seed and they’re about to burst into flower. 
They have beautiful white flowers and here’s some  
Borage that has kind of finished. Rght here 
we’ve got this beautiful globe artichoke and  
a smaller one so we need two if Dan and I are 
going to have a meal. Unfortunately Dan is off  
to Denmark tomorrow for another week’s work and I 
might have to eat this on my own again. If you’re  
wondering… oh there’s loads coming. If you’re 
wondering what we do with them and how we eat  
them – our favorite way to eat them then do let 
us know in the comments and we’ll show you that  
in a future video. This plant was planted a year 
ago exactly a year ago from seed. So I grew all of  
these from seed and they produced in their first 
year. so this is our Second Harvest and it’s about  
I think about 3 months earlier than the original, 
the first year. So I’m hopeful we might even get  
double Harvest this year. And I’ve transplanted 
a few little self-seeded plants into another  
section of the garden but we’ll see that later.
This is another wonderful success story because  
we’ve got Blossom for the first time ever on 
what we think is a cherry tree. Over here,  
do you remember last year when we ate the 
nectarine and it was as hard as a brick?  
Well I’ll know to wait a bit longer, although 
Dan loves the hard crunchiness. so we’ve got  
hundreds of little well maybe not hundreds 
maybe a hundred nectarines. Right below the  
nectarines we have the Egyptian onions that 
Gary gave us through Carissa at Frankie off  
grid and they’ve done exceptionally well.
Dan has moved more of those around different  
areas of the land to see if we can increase our 
stock and maybe we’ll never even have to plant  
onions again in the future, which would be great.
We’ve eaten all the brassicas and the leeks and  
these beds now will be prepared 
for the summer summer planting. 
We’ve got the Roses along the front which 
are doing nicely. More chard and over
here we got some peas and Mangetout.They’re 
doing very well do you want to eat one? Sugar
snaps. Here we’ve got garlic chives.
We’ve got the sage. So the Californian 
poppies and the three cornered leeks  
are a lovely contrast. The Californian 
poppies aren’t edible but they are very  
pretty and they grow very easily here. I have 
planted I think about a dozen plugs last year  
that I grew from seed from my mom’s garden and 
yeah never I don’t think I’ll ever need to plant  
them again. They just do what they do.
These flowers are stunning on the three  
cornered leeks. Another alium and 
you can eat every part of an alium.
We’ll move on to the little Terrace Garden that 
Dan built last year and see how that’s doing,  
Got a lovely Cardoon here. Underneath we’ve 
got strawberries. Now those strawberries  
were initially in a bed further 
down but it was far too hot so we  
moved them. The Lettuces that I planted a few 
weeks ago are all doing really well hiding  
under this. This is finished I’m just letting 
the last of the flowers do their bit so those  
lettuces have come on. This is taunton Dean 
yes yeah yeah this is the Taunton Dean kale  
a perennial kale that Gary gave me. He gave 
me some cuttings and they’re they they grow  
into a lovely Bush shape as opposed to the more 
traditional Portuguese style of kale which grows
taller. At the end of the lettuces 
we’ve got some beetroot seedlings and  
on this side we’ve got some beetroot 
that’s left over from last year and  
slightly further down we’ve got some 
young beetroot. So we’ve got sort of  
succession of three different stages 
of beetroot because we like beetroot. 
All this coriander is now running to seed. It 
gave us coriander all winter and we’ll let that  
go to seed, save the seed, replant it.
Behind me we’ve got lemon verbena,  
little willow tree and some chives. 
The peas are nearly finished.
On this side we’ve got lots. We we 
haven’t really done anything here at all. 
We did nothing except a bit of this a bit of 
that and eventually it became what you see. 
Cerinthe. Rosemary here which is doing well again 
and the cerinthe which just self seeds does its  
own thing. So from when we planted this we have 
never watered it and everything is doing well. so  
we kind of do a style of growing things that can 
handle themselves the best without our assistance  
but this section has filled up beautifully.
Oh we missed all the broad beans. 
We’ve got broad beans everywhere here but as 
you can see a lot of them have flopped over.  
We had an exceptional amount of rain in the 
last couple of months and it came down very  
hard and heavy with these being so tall they 
did kind of flop, but most of them are okay,  
They’re still producing and they start 
to grow towards the light and they start  
to grow look at this it’s at a right angle 
so it’s lying flat and then it shoots up a  
new stem so that it’s nice and straight up to 
the light again. Now to the front of the veg
Garden.
oh oh oh this pepper plant 
has blossoms coming. Have a
look. These broad beans were planted 
a couple of weeks before the ones we  
just saw and they’re great. 
it’s a nice big one isn’t it
lovely, and this is the way I like them.
Not when they’ve got the a thick cover on
them. 
Next up is one of Dan’s babies – the compost.
Over the last year or so we’ve been putting all  
of our plant matter that we’ve pulled out of the 
ground, branches and other weeds and things like  
that into this pile here. we’re composting 
everything in situ here and in the future  
we’ll plant into this and have some wonderful 
composted vegetable matter. Plant Matter for  
things to grow in. This is building up the 
ground here to stop the water from running  
off down the hill. So our main compost pile 
is a large amount of goat manure mixed with  
straw and gorse and then this is just the day 
today kind of stuff that we Chuck down here. 
We have another compost bin for the vegetable 
matter from the kitchen and this is just so  
that we don’t have to carry all of this 
stuff down to the compost pile and then  
when it’s composted carry it all back again so 
we just put it here and build up the ground.
Here this was a bare root peach tree that we 
planted what 17 months ago and it is growing  
amazingly fast. A couple of weeks ago it was 
covered in Blossom. We hope we’re going to  
get some peaches. They’re the the flat kind 
of donut type of peach however it does have  
quite a bit of peach Leaf curl going on but 
hopefully the the plant will recover from
that. Well Dovey’s lemon treey suffered a 
little bit with the cold weather over the  
winter but it’s got Blossom coming on it. 
We planted this the same day as the flat
Peach. So the Blossom on this Japanese crab apple 
is an absolutely beautiful pink and white and the  
leaves are sort of green and red. It’s going to 
be absolutely stunning tree. We carefully selected  
this position so we had a line of sight between 
the barn and the Olive Tree from The Veranda.
I mentioned the compost pile and a few 
videos ago I planted potatoes there. Come  
on down with me and we’ll show you where 
the the compost pile and the potatoes
are. So this whole Space here was compost and we 
kept it covered in plastic for about 9 10 months  
and we’ve used a lot of the compost. It’s 
been been spread in the vegetable garden.  
it’s been put on the Second Terrace, around 
the trees in the food Forest. I think out of  
the four different batches of potatoes we’ve got 
around the land these ones are doing the best. 
This year we worked really hard to get 
this second Terrace uh prepared with  
beds and smaller beds and segments that we can 
work with. We put down tons of pine bark and  
we have still some onions and some cabbages 
in this particular bed but mostly it’s been  
cleared so that we can plant our squashes.
If we move on. We’ve had a lot of compost  
so this year these bags have been lying 
here nearly 6 months and we haven’t had  
to use them. We’ve still got a little bit of 
compost left but it’s been fabulous having  
our own compost for the first year.An actual 
decent amount, but it takes a lot of work.
We had quite a lot of these tall kales but 
with the wind and the rain they fell over  
but we let this one sit because it’s 
starting to grow tall again again it  
hasn’t broken so we’ll just leave 
it. It’s still productive and it’s  
not blocking anything too much.
Our garlic over here is doing
great. here here. This is the bed where I planted 
some of those little self-seeded artichokes Globe  
artichokes and there’s a couple of them two 
one two three so I’m hopeful that they’ll carry
on. and this plastic covered bed is 
kind of something special that Dan’s  
preparing and I’ll show you that now.
In the autumn, I planted a cover crop  
of clover here, but it’s now time to prepare 
this bed for planting. This bed is going to  
have sesame seeds in it. This is a drier zone 
of our land and sesame seeds are very drought  
tolerant they don’t need much wate after 
they’ve germinated. So in a couple of weeks  
when everything’s died back underneath the plastic 
I’m going to sow some sesame seeds in this space,
this is the ‘Sao Bartolomeu’ pear. 
It’s a small red pear which they  
dry in this area and the dried pears 
are absolutely beautiful they taste
amazing.
Let’s go down to the asparagus bed 
The Mulberry Terrace.
He just said that because 
he didn’t get any asparagus.
is this is the MulberryTree that this terrace 
is named after and it looks like it’s going to  
produce some fruit. It is looking very happy in 
its little enclosure. so we planted what kind  
of ‘Alrocheiro’ oh yeah alfrocheiro grapes 
here all along this Terrace and they’ve all  
taken except for this one but I’m not so 
sure that’s even dead yet. They’re coming.
oh no another casualty and one more one more so I 
think three casualties but you know that’s okay.  
The asparagus looking well.
We’ve got
beans we’ve got beans that are regrowing. 
The big white gigantie beans are known to  
be perennial if you get a mild winter which 
we have done so we’ve got I think three of  
them that are regrowing from the original Roots. 
The big cabbages that I planted under the beans,  
well they’re getting big and yeah I’ve 
planted some beans in there already.  
Asparagus looking good. Well the bean 
frame needs a little bit of repair but  
we’ll do that before the beans are up 
so we’ll do that in the next week or
so.
The plum  
tree is doing super good this 
year let’s have a look. Look at
that it’s just dripping with Plums. still needs 
a good pruning but later on next year the end of  
the year for that.
Well last
week while we were while we had some time off 
Dan and I were doing a lot of tidying up in  
the garden and my job was to clean this wall I 
didn’t get it finished it was 29 – 30° by 11:00  
in the morning and I just didn’t get the whole lot 
done [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music]
At last the kiwis are doing really really 
really. Great this year they’re – I don’t  
know. They stepped into like a new planet! 
They’re just growing properly. It feels  
like they’ve finally established.
Well it’s hard to believe that in less  
than 3 years when we bought this abandoned land, 
there was nothing here except for the orange tree,  
and three tiny little Olive trees. That one 
that one and that one. Aside from that it was  
just brambles and grass almost 2 m high. 
And now it’s excellent. But we haven’t  
got time to show you all of this food Forest 
area but we’ll save that for another video.