How much FOOD did I grow in my Backyard Vegetable Garden this Winter? (South Africa)

Welcome! In this video I’ll be taking you on a tour through my South African back yard vegetable garden. We’ll also be harvesting the last vegetables from the backyard garden for this winter season as we prepare for summer!

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Winter has come to the end here in South Africa. We’re on the brink of spring, which means there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in the garden. In this video, I’ll be taking you through my final harvest for this winter and giving you a tour through my mountainside garden. Kicking it off with the first bed on the right as you enter. I tried an experiment in this bed by direct sewing everything. For the most part, things like beets and radish prefer that anyway, but I made the mistake of trying it with onions as well. This was a mistake because there just wasn’t enough time for them. And the beets were in here for a long time, but most of them didn’t grow particularly big. And those that did had some weird shapes. Like look at this one. It also looks like I was sharing my food with a bunch of bugs in the ground. But hey, I’m still working on improving the soil here. And the bugs need to eat, too, I guess. [Music] As I picked one of the radishes out, I found a tiny slug on it. And I think I’m starting to have an idea of what’s been eating my food. By the way, look at how funny some of these radishes were growing. I don’t know if that’s a feature of this variety or a bug in my soil. This is the sparkler variety, known for that pink top look with a white area at the bottom of the radish. All in all, not the most thriving bed with all the weeds in between and slug damage, but a decent harvest nonetheless. Now, as we move to the left of the bed, past the containers of beet and radish we just harvested down this little staircase, we arrive in the heart of the bottom level garden beds. Now, look at all that lettuce. Don’t get too excited, though. I don’t have the best feeling about them. The first thing we need to check out, though, is the cabbage right at the bottom of the garden bed from before. Full disclaimer, I had no flowers in the garden with minimal companion planting and questionable soil health this winter. I believe all these factors contributed to an enormous aphid infestation among the cabbage. These first two cabbage bore the brunt of the aphford attacks, while the next two are probably the best cabbage I’ve ever grown in my life. [Music] [Music] Not really sure how that works, but I’ll take it after the brassica massacre of 2025. And just to the right of that cabbage, we’ve got some Swiss chard and a few onions. Swiss chard is probably one of my favorite things to grow because you can harvest the outer leaves every 2 weeks or so and the plant just keeps regrowing. I do plan on allowing them to grow bigger now just to see what kind of leaf size is possible though. I’m also pulling these onions out prematurely, but I need to free up the space to prepare the beds for summer. Moving on a little further, we have another patch of beets. They didn’t come out the best, but they still look much better than the lettuce next to them, so I can’t complain. It seems like one of them was starting to bolt in the 28° C weather we’ve been having this winter. So, honestly, I’m not even sure what to expect for summer. Now, we can move on to the beds all along the main path through this bottom level of the garden. Right at the start, we have a bit more Swiss chard. I think there’s about 10 of these plants throughout this bottom level. On the bright side, we didn’t have to go buy any Swiss chard at the shops once these plants were established. Moving further down the main path, I’ve got about 70 lettuce plants, which probably about 90% of them flopped. It was a confusing winter, colder than normal in the middle where we actually got some frost which I really wasn’t expecting. And then it jumped to summer before spring even officially began. There’s not much more to show regarding the lettuce. So, all I have left to say about it is that I’ll be experimenting the summer with the leaf lettuce instead of these iceberg head style lettuce. However, things started getting a lot more exciting as we move down to the end of the main path. The beets over here were not looking too bad at all. Apart from a few weird spots on them that looked like they started molding. Uh I’m not sure what causes that though. That was kind of weird. And apart from this one that just about cracked open across the middle and formed the perfect shelter for more vegetable eating bugs. And hey, would you look at that? There’s some more Swiss chard. Wow. But one of the highlights from this area for me was the radish just to the side of those beets. I didn’t have the highest hope for these. The soil wasn’t particularly great. There wasn’t much organic matter in it or anything that really grew in it in the past. But it surprised me with a harvest of probably the most consistent average radish size I’ve harvested to date. Just look at all of these radishes. Editing me can reassure you they were delicious in the salad over the weekend. And on the opposite side of that bed, we’ve got another weird shaped bed here. I was just working with a landscape when I built these. Nonetheless, we’ve got a few more onions in here, which I harvested prematurely for the whole bed preparation thing. And can I just say these roots were really in there. Like I’m not sure what was going on, but these felt really strong. [Music] And it looks like there are a few more beads to end this path off with. Now there’s another bed at the most right hand side of the path. Spoiler alert, this bed blew me away compared to the previous crops we harvested. The beets came out easily with a good size and barely any damage. Not to mention, the Swiss chard grew aggressively. But let me point out this bed was properly mulched. This is a clear indication of how important mulching is in your vegetable garden. It will reduce your soil temperature and preserve the water in there for much longer, resulting in healthier, happier, stronger, and bigger harvests. Learn from my mistakes in the previous beds where the soil was exposed to the sun. I’m not going to show too much of the rest of the cabbage. They all came out incredibly small and had a really tough time from all those aphfords, but editing me can reassure you. We did manage to salvage a few of these cabbage and lettuce. This section over here I planted with radish as a cover crop. Our chickens used to be here and I’m preparing the beds for summer as well. I’ve got high hopes for the summer and I’m starting right away with the preparation of these beds to get them all in a much better state. If you’d like to see how I tackle these beds using the chop and drop method, subscribe to the channel.