Welcome to my final video of the recent self-sufficiency series celebrating the launch of my latest book: geni.us/SelfSufficiencyGarden - I look forward to seeing you guys next week where it is head down for a new growing season! I hope you find the results as interesting as I did!
@HuwRichards hi Huw , im interested in this book but i live in a different climate ...im in Zone 10 , Mediterranean -- Do you think i can use this book considering we have less rain and more heat down here ? :) Thank you x
Hi Huw, great work on the book & new garden. I agree that everyone can be self sufficient in something but most people don't know where to start. Gardening is a lifestyle change that does require time effort & money. Could please set up 2-3 beds that are dedicated to growing a few herbs, flowers & easy vegetables for newbie gardeners? A lot of people plant seeds or seedlings from the hardware store, then walk away & wonder why they don't grow. Pests are also a bigger issue in other countries. I have netted most of my garden beds for birds & insect barriers but cannot keep the brushtail possums off the apple trees!
Waiting for my book…so excited! As I am starting seeds according to your list a couple of videos ago… 40 broad beans etc.…today you showed 72 m2 growing area. Is that soil with veg growing? If so I need to get out in the garden and fins space for more beds!!! Greeting from Oslo. Love what you two are doing, farmer and chef 🌞🍀🌾
Very well said. You summarize succinctly what it's all about. However, as a 72-yr-old with an aching back and a very painful shoulder, it becomes harder and harder to keep doing it every year! 🤣 But consider the alternative...oh my. As long as I can bend over and sow a seed or shovel a load of compost into my wheelbarrow, I will. At this point in mid-Nov, I'm contemplating our swede and parsnip "harvest" as soon as we have our first cold snap (in Alabama). How could one possibly put a price on that? BTW, Huw, there's only one word to describe your video: absolutely brilliant. Oops, that's two. Wow, thx for all the time you spent coming up with all those figures. My wife and I have often voiced the very questions you pose, without doing the hard work of calculating it all. Bravo.
Not to forget the joy of being outside, growing your own organic vegetables. Some years I have managed to grow around half of my veggies on a little less than 20 square meters :D
*laugh cries in getting sunburnt in 5 minutes even under multiple layers of clothes when its cloudy.* Being outside is not joyful for me, its pure pain and suffering.
And if u cant plant many, just plant the essentials and expensive ones. Like garlic, onion, shallot, green onion, parsley, basil, chili pepper, etc. The stuff that we use daily to make our food taste good. I want to do that but i still live in my parents' house. And the house is full with some useless decoration/ornamental plants like adenium and stuff 😒. Edit: hope i can move out as soon as possible and can get a job that can pay the rent. Even an apartment unit is okay. I can still plant some small plants indoor. I want the experience when u harvest your produce like.. at least monthly. I know many of food plants is like.. need 3 months to harvest. And that's why we need to care about the planting time so the harvest time is enjoyable and right
Is there space where you can have your own pots, or even a part of the garden you can use for growing your own? Might have to help your parents to maintain the rest. You could be surprised and find them letting you experiment for encouragement. Personally, I'd be over the moon if any of my grown children had your interest.
I would recommend learning how to harvest seeds for a portion of your crops. This means less money spent and generations of plants that will grow hardier for the climate/soil you are in.
One thing I think we fail to mention enough; get to know your neighbors! I think many of us would be surprised how many people around us are trying to be a little more self sufficient as well. We got to know our neighbors, and now four families are specializing in different things and swapping/selling amongst ourselves so we all end up with a much greater selection of produce than we could each have produced on our own.
So true! In our street many people where already doing things but only now the connections are being made. There is even a man who is a backyard beekeeper!
Way back when I was a little younger in my province, if I can't sell much of our produce like squash and bottle gourd. I sometimes go out to some of our neighbors to swap for sweet potatoes or bananas. Sometimes, we can swap like 2 medium squash for a kilo of white rice and for us, it's a trade we'll be happy with. They also swap their produce with something we can also offer in our backyard. What a nice memory to remember.
the adventure is starting now. a bit of warning: gardening is addictive! a garden is never finished, there are always new ideas and projects to try. one way I rate my success of the gardens I have designed for others how they change and grow as people live in them.
I grow about 90% of our fruit and vegetables now. It's taken a few years to get the soil healthy, but now I get really good results. Busy times for me are April, and then the harvests, preserving and planting late season and winter crops in July and August. I love it, and at the very least you know what you'r eating. Everything is pesticide free and no artificial fertilisers used.
Storage and preserve it is the big problem. Buying tomatoes at the superstore is meaningless because it just taste as wet toilet papers but you can at least buy them when you need them.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 Yea, you can preserve a lot of things though. In the north, winter diets would consist meat and food that is manageable to preserve (and fish).
I love the financial breakdown, that probably helps a lot of people conceptualize something that feels very theoretical if they haven’t done it yet. And even for experienced gardeners, sometimes we undercut just how much actual money we do save by growing food. We’ve all seen the memes about dropping $1000 on all the stuff to start a garden and then getting a single salad in return…and it can feel that way in the beginning, but fortunately the expensive infrastructure lasts through the seasons and the gardener gets more skilled every year. Add in the fresh air, exercise, pride, confidence, etc and of course the true value of growing food is priceless 😊 especially when you reach a point of excess and can give food to others as well.
I wish it worked like that. I live in Northern Ontario, Canada on 33acres. My sister is getting stuff to grow on her property but I can't get seeds to come up. It's not surprising, I killed a cactus once. Between the mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies I'm being eaten alive and I'm always second guessing the wildlife with wolves and bears particularly making me nervous. Lands cheap in some places for a reason.
It's a long term investment, you might lose some money in the beginning, but as time goes on, you should be able to save money on average when compared to if you were buying all your veggies and fruits at a supermarket or organic store if you want to compare it to the same quality. (Take this with a grain of salt, as I don't even own a house, but would like to grow a garden in the future haha)
What you save in dollars and cents growing your own food compared to buying it in a store is still being offset by the significant amount of time and labor that must be invested to maintain that garden. The property taxes for the space where the garden is contained. Ongoing repairs and maintenance. If your time is worth $15 an hour to you, justifying the investment, more power to you. But for most people, it's not worth the effort. Time is our most precious resource and many people optimize the use of their time by purchasing their produce at the market and benefiting from economies of scale.
@@shroomer3867 Despite the fact that someone with a large home garden saves money on the produce itself, there is still a real cost in terms of time investment and labor. To maintain a garden like in this video takes a significant amount of planning, labor, trial and error, and there are bound to be crop failures and blight. The goal should never be to save money with a home garden because no small home garden is going to compare to economies of scale. Not when you consider all costs (monetary, supplies, time, labor) that go into the process from start to finish.
@@Tamarocker88 yes, it’s all relative to your personal experience and life. To me, gardening and being outdoors IS optimizing my time because I find those things to be incredibly valuable. But to each their own 🖤
I have saved an enormous amount of money buying at auctions. I have bought tools, compost, perlite, fertiliser, shredder, rope, fence pins, hoses, loping pruner and on and on. A few months ago I hit the jackpot and bought what I thought was a couple of dozen seed packets only to discover literally hundreds of packets. I make compost mainly from stable waste. My growing areas are raised and I do this by keeping an eye open for house improvers and taking away their solid wooden doors obviously after getting permission. My larger seeds are sitting in compost filled Costco cups and my grow lights are industrial units from Screwfix. Once you start thinking like this more ideas dawn on you.
this! knowledge will take you far! i thought itd be impossible to do indoors realistically but apparently plants arent picky w light, and leds work just fine for them as long as it has the light’s wavelengths that it needs❤ love these vids
Here in South Africa with very hot dry summers in the Boland 60km inland from Cape Town, our greatest cost is water. Working on more rain water storage. 2X2500l gave me, including the seasonal winter rain, 8months of rain water. But these summer months are killing us financially. That is why I decided that if I have to pay that much for water, it would go for food, not ornamentals. I simply plant veg in clumps instead of rows, the way ornamentals are planted.
Here in the States and I have your book on order with Amazon. I can't wait to get it in my hands! My daughter (33) who is looking for a home with a larger lot to start homesteading will probably get a copy for her birthday. And this is someone who never showed much interest in gardening before!
Very encouraging and honestly the numbers are exactly what I would expect from my own experience in our climate. For these purposed of course you have to account time as a cost but we all know it is actually pleasure, exercise, mini wildlife safari and therapy!
I run 80 allotment plots and always start new gardeners of with a half plot, Its amazing what can be produced out of that size area. Great Video Huw 🙏🌱🌱
The most difficult thing being self-sufficient in a temperate climate is not growing the food , but figuring out how to store it. (It mostly is all ready at once)
Absolutely. Growing 50 kilos of potatoes/onions/carrots is not that difficult. Storing 50 kilos of potatoes/onions/carrots is simple in theory, but finding the space is the difficult part. I've found that creating the storage space can be more difficult and costly than creating the growing space. Sure, you'r freezer and pantry will get you started, but once you grow tens let alone hundreds of kilos of food for storage, things get a bit more complicated
@@klapiroska4714 not to mention one bad onion spoils the lot so you have to create separation and proper circulation to actually get them to last any amount of time. And there are only so many ways so combine root vegetables
i started my garden with just 2 large pots, a large bucket and fabric raised bed. It used up a total of 400 litres of soil and compost combined. I have planted many foods and had success with things like kale, broccoli, chives, cabbage, potatoes and also garlic. I have dabbled with onions, carrots, parsnips but they failed (mainly due to my son being too curious and ripping them out). Now I have a full allotment where I can do this sort of stuff with no interference from family. Also without my mrs going crazy over the fact that I took over the garden. Your tutorials have helped me greatly and I love them! I started with pots, now I have an entire garden to run with
Another consideration, after suffering a severe health crisis in 2020 & 2 years later finding the Medical Medium books, I threw myself into gardening. I'm happy to say after 9 months I'm completely off blood pressure meds & have healed beyond medical expectations. His combinations of food for detoxing & restoring the body is phenomenal. I would really like to become proficient in growing celery as I juice a head daily.. I'm not sure how something like this can be costed out.
Hello! Making your own seed allows you to select and adapt varieties to your very own garden... That way, after a few years, you have consistently good yields and few pests on your crops! Thanks for the video, Cheers
I love my garden so much, it's well worth the effort it takes to do. It brings so much joy every year! That said, there are a lot number of costs to growing your own food that are missed or undersold in this video. Most people will not be able to commit this amount of time or money to growing food (4 hours a week is a huge commitment, as is $4000), and will not get as much yield, and will then not get as much financial value out of their gardens. BUT, that's not necessarily a bad thing. All this is just to say I feel the values of gardening are mostly not financial. Everyone saying this in the comments is right, you can't put a price on the value of being outside in the garden, getting some exercise and enjoying the wonders of growing your own food. And then the value of the amazing flavor that comes from veggies that fresh? Forget about it! So good. I feel like thinking of backyard gardening in solely financial terms, like you say in the video, misses the most important values gardening has to offer.
Just a quick thank you for what you do from someone who remembers a young kid doing videos showing how to propagate roses from cuttings over a decade ago. I grew up in NYC, I now have a productive no dig garden in my yard. I also have come to explore my Welsh ancestry. Wishing more and more success in your future, thank you for all the information you have shared over the years
Hey Huw! I wonder, do you eat exclusively from the garden? If so, what does a day in your life look like in terms of the main meals breakfast, lunch & dinner? Would love to see you do a video and delve a little further into the self sufficiency topic! 🙂
Thanks for the breakdown, well done! Being self sufficient the way I do it . Means not buying compost, mulch, fertilizer. Organic gardening is dirt cheap if you don’t get caught up in buying all the latest gadgets & saving seeds of many plants.
I've been growing all our own vegetables and a lot of small fruit for a few years now. My garden is less than a quarter acre. My biggest ongoing costs are seeds (and seed potatoes) and compost (which I buy if I'm building any new beds) and potting soil. Fencing was the biggest initial cost, but absolutely essential for dealing with deer and groundhogs. I also had to terrace my hillside with cinderblocks and raised beds, so that was expensive too. I use low tunnels in the winter for growing salads and other cold hardy crops (zone 6-US), but I don't need a polytunnel in the summer here. I've estimated that we eat about $70 of food from the garden each week over the whole year, plus I sell some vegetables to a few families every week to help cover the out of pocket expenses. I started gardening to save money (single mother) and get the highest quality vegetables (vegetarian). But I fell in love with it. It's a hobby, it's a passion, and it's the place that I feel happiest.
Next step is seed saving. Keeping the seeds from your best performing plants not only saves money, but you get a cultivar that has been selected for growing well in your garden, rather than some production farm hours away and probably on a different soil.
We are doing the exact same here in Brisbane, Australia. We have our house block of 600m and we are using available space to be self sufficient. This year though, we have an aim to upgrade a bit of our infrastructure, but that is because we saved so much money last year by growing our own food.
I like the sense of community too in growing my own food. I live in rural Mississippi town and grow a variety of cucumbers, herbs, tomatoes and jalapeños. I'm only 28, but I'm out here gardening everyday like a retired boomer! 😂 I trade my veggies and extras to other neighbors that may have a hand in growing something better than I can, like yellow squash, cucumbers, other peppers, etc.
I'm just dropping a line to say thank you to you and Sam for the beautiful, signed book that arrived today. I think it's going to be a very handy tool for me for the rest of my life! There's everything I need to start growing fruit and veg, and I didn't realise you were putting recipes in there as well. I love it! Thank you both 😊💐
I need to garden for my mental health as much as my physical health ❤ And I find it's much cheaper and more effective than talk therapy or percription drugs. I think growing our own food is part of what makes us feel connected to the earth and our own spirit as a result.
Not to forget that you grow the highest score of organic food and save the monthly rate for the gymn and have less health issues.😊. Great video Huw, your book is on its way.
Ah Huw I bought your book a pre order. I received it the first day and actually it’s one of the best gardening books I’ve ever read. It’s a no nonsense approach to gardening that works for the individual. I love the straight forward approach that you offer. There is no preaching and it totally makes sense to me! I will happily follow along growing what we eat and what I want to grow! Thanks for being just a normal guy that gets it! Thanks for the no judgement approach! I have watched you for years and these last few videos have spoken the truth about gardening for the real people 💚
My joy is growing organic vegetables to provide for my family's daily meals. Intercropping will be very good to help me have enough vegetables to eat throughout the seasons. A product I make myself will help me feel more secure because I know it is safe ☺
And as a chef/gardener myself, there's nothing quite like growing a rare plant/herb and discovering what it tastes like fresh from the garden. It's priceless, in my opinion.
This video was brilliant. You are just my kind of guy breaking down all the numbers. Yield, area time and cost. This video was very well done and helped me a lot, subscribing imediatly. Keep up the good work
This is my second year gardening. I'm incorporating a lot of your advice this year to maximize my yield, namely the succession sowing and throwing plants in when plants come out! Super excited to see how much I grow this year
Grabbing a jar of pickles or green beans that I grew the year or two ago from the pantry is awesome and priceless . It gives me good memories of that garden yr and time spent with my mom canning 😊 can't say that with the store bought food .haha
Our plan is to be as self sufficient as possible, but not with our current tiny garden. Once we have moved and we have access to a bigger garden. As far as the "hungry gap" goes, we will be looking into cold room storage, different methods of food preservation. Best of all you know exactly what is gone into the soil and that no chemicals have been used. Happy growing, its growing season baby! 😁🌻🍅🌶
Just got my new allotment last week, and, obviously, your fantastic book to help me make the most of it. Very excited about both. Thanks for inspiring me!
Thanks for all the videos and advice for all these years Huw! Really like the idea of Sam's part of the book with how to preserve a lot of the food...I've ordered my to collect from waterstones tomorrow! 🎉
I discovered your channel in about 2019 and am learning so much. I moved from the subtropics to a cold climate in an alpine region a few years ago. I grew a productive vegie garden in the subtropics but struggled in my new climate until I discovered your channel. I have one of your books already and have preordered this new one. I live in Australia and have to wait until May. I am really looking forward to it. You do a fantastic job.
I've found that the best way to store garden produce is to swap it for pound coins, then grow more! The coins keep better on the mantle piece over winter, and can be turned back into food whenever you like! I grow veg, salad and berries, which I sell locally. I also grow seeds, which I sell on eBay, and take cuttings from trees, which I sell locally. I do seedlings in trays for my neighbours, and potted herbs. I don't actually grow much veg. There's not a huge market for it, and most of what I grow is my soup for winter. I sort my own firewood, do my own composting and vermiculture. This earns me well over £1,000 cash each year, with less than £100 going into it. There was some initial investment in a poly tunnel and some tools and seeds, but much of it was salvaged or scavenged second hand. I'm sorted for salad, soft fruit, tatties and herbs. I'm also sorted for soup all through winter. I've never tried to add it all up. That isn't the point. I know that not only am I making a four figure sum each year, I'm saving hundreds each year on those items, I'm getting the highest quality fresh produce with zero chemicals or food miles, I'm providing my community with cheap, organically grown fresh produce and I'm getting the exercise I need, and the connection with nature we all need into this bargain. If anyone wants to try putting a price on all that, they are welcome to try.
That depends@@Pikkson on your circumstances. Already working? It goes under 'other earnings' on your self assessment, and will depend on your tax code. On benefits? Universal credit only allows you to keep the first fiver, then they deduct a percentage of your monthly earnings out of your benefits. I think it's 51% now but used to be 61%. If you are disabled like me, you can keep the first £100 a week without it affecting you, then they take a percentage off your disability benefits. I've never found out what the percentage is because I haven't yet earned £100 in a week. I still submit a self assessment for the tax man, but it never reaches the threshold so it comes back as zero due, I think I'd currently have to earn more than £12k in a given year before they'd bill me, but that's down to my current tax code being high. Yours may be lower but it will probably be in the same ball park. Keep records. In's and out's. All your earnings and expenses, and see what they add up to in a year. DWP aside, you'll have to submit a tax return to HMRC if your earnings are over £1,000 but it's unlikely you'd be due them anything until it hit five figures. The figure in your tax code is your threshold. Of course, gifting garden produce to family, friends and neighbours is not taxible. Neither is barter or charitable donations, so with a bit of imagination you could be feeding half the village and not even be on the tax man's radar. Happy gardening!
Very inspiring Huw. I highly recommend your book, I received my copy over a week ago and it is excellent, extremely well put together, as well as being easy to use and understand, me being a novice gardener.
I've just received your book , and i am so excited! I can't wait to read it properly, and have a go at putting it into practise, It looks like an absolutely beautiful book. Thank you for sharing so much useful information. ❤❤❤❤
The time/effort/reward ratio is good imo. But the extra rewards are immeasurably beneficial. Working with soil and natural things works as a natural anti-depressant and same goes for being active in general. The digging and other strenuous parts help build muscle. The feeling of accomplishment you get from growing your own food and being more self reliant is amazing! You come to not only Understand but appreciate the food on your plate a lot more when you watched it grow and harvested it yourself. So many amazing little benefits that help you feel better about life in general! Can’t buy those at the supermarket that’s for sure!
@@HuwRichards it was well known that pre world wars that countries such as Holland and the US produced surplus produce from home grown society. It's all big corporate goals being rolled out . Current plan goes back to 1870. The tender years doctrine was a corporate decision just as lockdowns was corporate decision. To stop people doing things such as you are. But your the future my friend.
The only thing I have is a window. One window. I grow on it carrots, herbs- 6 kinds. I grow strawberries and several cactus. That is the most fun and tasty to grow my own! And the small space won't stop me. What a beautiful book! 😍
Dear Huw, thank you very much for this video. I was shocked about how little growing space you had and added up our 10 raised beds. We are eating 3 meals a day/2 vegetarian people (eating lots of veggies, herbs etc.). With careful spacing, succession planting +++ I am producing more than we can eat. I thought we had at least your size garden, but realized we only have *47.2 sqm*!! BUT - we live in Italy in a subtropical climate (Monte Argentario) where I can grow around the year. Congratulations on your book, it should eliminate the notion that a small garden is not enough.
I don’t know about comparing cost to waitrose - one of the most expensive uk supermarkets. I think it would have been good to say this and explain why you chose waitrose for comparison over more affordable options
I think its also worth considering a modest hydroponics system. If you're limited in space a hydroponic tower can allow you to utilize the vertical space you would otherwise have missed out on.
Thank you for ANOTHER great video huw! I ❤U! I ❤ U! I❤! I've learned so much the past years watching your channel and have implemented a number of practices you've suggested.... I began planning in January, seed starting in February, I've built a three-bin composting station (ACRE-adding, curing, ready), I have a cold frame and have built a cold frame hot box!!!! I'm having waaaaay too much fun!!! Thank you for sharing your knowledge, expertise and wisdom with the world. You're making a difference. ❤ I'm across the pond in the US (STL ZONE 6). I had to take notes while watching this one because of the conversions- currency and weights... I got it!!!! Thx again for another great video!😊
Loving your new book Huw ❤ I have so much going on atm and feeling quite overwhelmed by it all. Was worried about how I was going to fit my 'therapy' (veg gardening) into my life this year, and very concerned about cost of living. Your self sufficiency videos and your book have certainly taken some of the stress out of it as I have decided to just follow along with you, fitting your plan into my garden. Can't express how grateful I am for your videos, they always make me smile and make me feel more positive 😊😊
This year is the first real growing season for us in SW Missouri, USA. We have 6 beds and will build at least 4 more for two people. Also fruit trees and soft fruits. I will succession plant like mad this year and try not to have any blank places. We take the excess to church, like many of our congregation do. Hurray for Huw!
It’s crazy how similar this set up is to ours! Setting up perennials like asparagus, strawberry, and garlic has been the most fun and least amount of time commitment to yearly yield.
You cannot judge gardening by how much you save at the supermarket - what value can you place on fun and a rewarding hobby. Enjoy your garden, that is what it' about.
I grow because I love my garden and I love being in it. I love having the food, which is impossible to buy from the market. Nothing at the market tastes like the food outside my own door. I am not even that efficient, but I use all the parts of the garden. Anything not eaten is mulch and compost. I always have something I can harvest outside my door. It is worth so much to me to eat it and to not have to travel to have it. I definitely do not spend any money on seeds. I have seeds I still grow that are over 10 years old. I have collected more than enough seeds to keep going for the rest of my life. I might buy seeds every few years of plants I do not have and that seem interesting. I actually do allow myself some money to spend on plants and fertilizers, though I definitely use very little of it because once I had the plants I like, I do not have to buy seeds at all. Seeds people say are short lived I still grow years after people say they should not sprout. I have carrots growing from 7 year old seeds. Germination was very good. I just transplanted lettuce seedlings from seeds dropped by last year's lettuces. Once a garden is established, there is no need for inputs. All that is needed is only if the gardener finds something else interesting, but it is not necessary.
I preordered the book and can't wait to get it! I'm in the US though so still have to wait a while. All of our raised beds are made out of super nice pallets made out of decking boards and we got them all for free. It was more work to build compared to one long board but I'll take free any day. Our big cost was topsoil and compost. We have goats that contribute lots of fertilizer for beds but we'll still have to buy some for a large no till area we are adding on this year.
In the US certain counties have recycling plants that also do at scale composting - and the compost is of higher quality than store bought. The best part, if you're using it for personal use, it's free. Just show up with a truck, trailer, or bin and fill up. You can go as much as you want. So at least here that cuts out a starting cost
This is a really important discussion as few known gardeners, on TH-cam or elsewhere, discuss in real terms setup cost and ongoing costs. Of course factoring in labour costs makes it hard but still worthy of discussion. Sick vid dude. Much love from South Australia.
Picking crops actually takes pretty substantial time. Even for things like lettuce (based on the semi-large scale experience) picking can be 50+%-66+% of labor, which if you calculate raw economics can move a needle quite a bit.
Thanks @HuwRichards Great info as usual. 👏👏 Your latest book has arrived and I am enjoying the layout & content. Love the design throwback to Haynes Manuals! 🌱🌱😀 Jo
I'm looking firward to the arrival of the book. A mindset shift has taken place last year and it made the garden a succes instead of a disappointment. Yes, a lot of the harvest was destroyed by slugs and rats. But we were self sufficient in pumpkins, garlic, oca, Jerusalem artichoke, raspberry, cabbage (walkingstick cabbage is amazing!) different herbs, nettles and cider. Every year a little bit more. We'll get there. Oh! And plenty of composted manure from the horses. I should start selling it or trade it for produce. 😂
We had a different scenario growing up on a farm. Land wasn't a limiting resource so we didn't need to pack things in tight or deal with compost. Yard waste from moving the lawn was about the only soil amendment we did. Other than that it was rotating the garden location to avoid disease and insect build up and to restore fertility. The garden was around 150' x 50' if I'm remembering that correctly. Also the growing season is shorter here with hot dry summers so there was less opportunity for replanting. Boy did that garden produce. Between canning/freezing/drying it provided most of the tomatoes, peas, beans, carrots, onions, cucumbers, squash, potatoes, and beets we ate. And seasonally it also produced sweet corn, cabbage, greens, radishes and a few other misc vegetables. About our only direct costs were the seeds.
This was a really great video on an interesting topic. I really liked how you tied a monetary value of the food produced - and I can tell you that the value of the same amount of food in the US is double of what it is in Europe! The price of organic vegetables in the US west coast is twice as much as in Europe.
One of the great things about getting involved in the gardening community is sharing seeds and swapping produce. We have Seedy Saturday early on each year. It’s a great way to get seeds for nothing. I don’t think you can put a price on having your own organic foods, knowing where they come from, most nutrient rich produce, and no need to buy foods from far away places. Within a short time using permaculture practices you can become sustainable with your own compost, creating better soil and getting the most from the smallest amount of soil. For myself, I find getting in the dirt to be essential in maintaining mental health.
Soo... I don't typically watch these, especially finish these... but you caught me at a good time I suppose. BIG question, do you go over anything about different climates? I'm not entirely sure what climate you're in, but I'm curious how much of a difference it makes? I'm in a dryer "light" desert type climate, and curious how the book would work, and if there are any tips/advice for various climates.
Can't wait to get my hands on your book - here in Canada it's not being released until mid-May, but I've pre-ordered and keep hoping the publishing date will be bumped up - by mid-May I'll be neck deep in my sowing already.
Great video, thanks. I think of the 'costs' as investments. It will be a while until my greenhouse and polytunnel pay for themselves, but I'm getting there. If I discount the expenses of those then my garden pretty much pays for itself now after 7 years. Once you're making your own compost regularly and can save your own seeds, the game changes quite a bit. I try to buy quality tools where I can so that they last, rather than having to buy cheap ones more often. Taking a large harvest to a farmer's market also gives me extra cash to put back into the garden. Seed swaps and bartering can also reduce your outlay, give you more variety and is quite fun.
thanks for sharing your experiences. I think you could even go further, now you do a very intensive style of gardening, hence the many hours. My garden is probably half as productive (about the same size, but I harvest less), but I probably invest less than 1/4 of the time. That is a good thing, I can now trade a bit of space for a lot of time and still we harvest more than enough vegetables for most of the year for the 2 of us.
I live in S. Portugal and we are in a severe drought, so my summer gardening has to focus on the maximum kilo harvest from any one bed and how to preserve it in order to get the maximum yield per litre of water for irrigation. Winter planting is much easier and is the season for all the cabbage family, lettuce and other salad crops. The only veg I buy is garlic and frozen peas. Garlic doesn't do well in a hot climate. Good luck with the book.
I can’t wait for my book to arrive! I do feel like you’ve left out some additional economics\benefits to take into account, probably to be more ‘correct’ and that’s that growing your own veggies, for a lot of people would mean that they would be able to eat more ‘expensive’ options. I for instance love both raspberries, strawberries and green asparagus, but we hardly ever eat them because they’re so expensive. I’m planning on growing tons of these both to eat fresh and to preserve. So if you would compare the amount we spend on those at the supermarket now, it would be a low amount because we opt for cheaper options. Once we have our own garden going though, I’m planning on eating raspberries until I’m utterly sick of them, which would be a huuuge foodbill 😅
Absolutely! If I wanted to compare and highlight every single point and detail regarding this I would need to write a whole book in itself. But you raise a really great point, making high value food incredibly accessible ☺️
So true! I go for the produce that's on the cheap side at the grocery. With a garden, I can grow usually more expensive things like eggplants and herbs at home and have them as fresh as possible to boot! I don't think I've ever really bought leeks at the grocery, maybe one time? But I am excited to be growing them for the first time this year, for way cheaper!
@@bellatrix4204 That too! For commercial purposes (packaging and durability) you usually only find the ‘standard’ variaties of a vegetable or a fruit. I didn’t even know purple broccoli existed before I started looking into rarer seeds and forgotten vegetables. You have so many more possible variaties when you grow your own!
@@sayadaramdial1700 the freshness is also a good point. A lot of things taste their best when freshly picked, and lose flavour due to both time and being refrigerated for storage/transport purposes. And herbs are one of the most expensive things you can buy in the store when you look at the price per kg, while a lot of those are perennials you only have to plant once, and you’ll have a lifetime supply
I talked with my grandma and if you have a family member who went through the war i would(depending on how comfortable they are with talking about it obviously) recommend talking with them because a lot of people in that generation had to deal with a very real need to suddenly produce their own food in their backyard while not always having much experience with it. Their choices in crops, how they dealt with things like compost, getting seeds, pest control when many companies where making chemicals for the war effort, etc, etc is a good thing to learn about. If your family fortunately didn’t go through the war or you unfortunately lost that generation there are booklets from that era, either copies you can buy or PDF’s you can download. I think there might even be re-prints being done for some pamflets/booklets, not sure. Many countries in Europe had some kind of centralized effort to have people produce their own food, even in occupied areas. So information more specific to your country should be something you can find.
I envy you. I live in Sweden, zone 7, snowmelt is finished some date in early may. First frost is in late august, early september, though we get about 20 hours of proper dayligth and 0 night hours per day so growth is good. We barely get one harvest of potatoes, and that is with indoor precultivation to half a foot of sprouts and plenty of manure.
Awaiting delivery of the book eagerly. Brilliant videos and concept. Placing a cash value is great but if you add in to it health and mental health benefits of gardenning especially growing your own food it adds another dimension thats very hard to try and put a value on.. I will save on the gym subscription you barely use and grow mt own food instead, but going to start small 2 raised beds 😊
Waiting on your book in the US. Working to be self sufficient in veg and some fruit. There are some things I do have buy like avocados and the odd apple. While I do have an advantage in that I garden all year, I need to figure out how to grow some of my favourites when the weather is too hot or too cold such as greens in the summer and tomatoes & cucumbers in the winter. Otherwise, I am trying to eat seasonally. May try setting up a temporary greenhouse situation. Cheers.
And don’t forget the value of barter. I’ve gotten lovely avocados and numerous seedlings by sharing my harvest. Today, someone I share fruit and veggies with is coming to plant my strawberries.
The label self-sufficiency seems somewhat misleading. At 586kg a year, you get about 1.6kg a day, which comes around at about 320kcal. So you cover your need for basic fruit and veg, but to be truely self-sufficient you'd need to grow 7 times the amount or grow a lot more high energy plants.
Welcome to my final video of the recent self-sufficiency series celebrating the launch of my latest book: geni.us/SelfSufficiencyGarden - I look forward to seeing you guys next week where it is head down for a new growing season! I hope you find the results as interesting as I did!
@HuwRichards hi Huw , im interested in this book but i live in a different climate ...im in Zone 10 , Mediterranean -- Do you think i can use this book considering we have less rain and more heat down here ? :) Thank you x
Mine should be coming to me in Belgium within the next 2 weeks! 💪🤗
Got ur book yesterday in the Netherlands....love it
Hi Huw, great work on the book & new garden. I agree that everyone can be self sufficient in something but most people don't know where to start. Gardening is a lifestyle change that does require time effort & money. Could please set up 2-3 beds that are dedicated to growing a few herbs, flowers & easy vegetables for newbie gardeners? A lot of people plant seeds or seedlings from the hardware store, then walk away & wonder why they don't grow. Pests are also a bigger issue in other countries. I have netted most of my garden beds for birds & insect barriers but cannot keep the brushtail possums off the apple trees!
Waiting for my book…so excited! As I am starting seeds according to your list a couple of videos ago… 40 broad beans etc.…today you showed 72 m2 growing area. Is that soil with veg growing? If so I need to get out in the garden and fins space for more beds!!! Greeting from Oslo. Love what you two are doing, farmer and chef 🌞🍀🌾
The mental and physical health gained from gardening and eating organic, regenerative produce, is priceless.
Very well said. You summarize succinctly what it's all about. However, as a 72-yr-old with an aching back and a very painful shoulder, it becomes harder and harder to keep doing it every year! 🤣 But consider the alternative...oh my. As long as I can bend over and sow a seed or shovel a load of compost into my wheelbarrow, I will. At this point in mid-Nov, I'm contemplating our swede and parsnip "harvest" as soon as we have our first cold snap (in Alabama). How could one possibly put a price on that? BTW, Huw, there's only one word to describe your video: absolutely brilliant. Oops, that's two. Wow, thx for all the time you spent coming up with all those figures. My wife and I have often voiced the very questions you pose, without doing the hard work of calculating it all. Bravo.
Not to forget the joy of being outside, growing your own organic vegetables. Some years I have managed to grow around half of my veggies on a little less than 20 square meters :D
Well said indeed!!
Me too. I'm self sufficient in veg all summer and then through the winter we eat whatever is available. I only have an average size garden.
There is also all the future medical expenses you won't have because you didn't eat all the poisons in all the store bought food.
*laugh cries in getting sunburnt in 5 minutes even under multiple layers of clothes when its cloudy.*
Being outside is not joyful for me, its pure pain and suffering.
what's non-organic vegetables? 3d-printed?
And there is the added benefit of being in control of what is (or is not) sprayed on your food. That is priceless.
💯
Some degree of. You never know what next door could be doing with a spraybottle. But yeah.
@@ellenorbjornsdottir1166 So true! There’s a golf course behind me…so I can only control what I can
@@ellenorbjornsdottir1166how do you life each day with so much paranoia?
It’s not paranoia. The FDA does a cost benefit analysis in order to approve usage, not a safe/not safe analysis. China bans chemicals that we don’t.
You don't need to grow 100% of your food. Every little helps.
Amen! That's exactly what my last video was about!
AGREE 💯
And if u cant plant many, just plant the essentials and expensive ones. Like garlic, onion, shallot, green onion, parsley, basil, chili pepper, etc.
The stuff that we use daily to make our food taste good.
I want to do that but i still live in my parents' house. And the house is full with some useless decoration/ornamental plants like adenium and stuff 😒.
Edit: hope i can move out as soon as possible and can get a job that can pay the rent. Even an apartment unit is okay. I can still plant some small plants indoor.
I want the experience when u harvest your produce like.. at least monthly. I know many of food plants is like.. need 3 months to harvest. And that's why we need to care about the planting time so the harvest time is enjoyable and right
Is there space where you can have your own pots, or even a part of the garden you can use for growing your own? Might have to help your parents to maintain the rest. You could be surprised and find them letting you experiment for encouragement. Personally, I'd be over the moon if any of my grown children had your interest.
I would recommend learning how to harvest seeds for a portion of your crops. This means less money spent and generations of plants that will grow hardier for the climate/soil you are in.
One thing I think we fail to mention enough; get to know your neighbors! I think many of us would be surprised how many people around us are trying to be a little more self sufficient as well. We got to know our neighbors, and now four families are specializing in different things and swapping/selling amongst ourselves so we all end up with a much greater selection of produce than we could each have produced on our own.
So true! In our street many people where already doing things but only now the connections are being made. There is even a man who is a backyard beekeeper!
@@rubenskiii That is fantastic to hear!
Way back when I was a little younger in my province, if I can't sell much of our produce like squash and bottle gourd. I sometimes go out to some of our neighbors to swap for sweet potatoes or bananas. Sometimes, we can swap like 2 medium squash for a kilo of white rice and for us, it's a trade we'll be happy with. They also swap their produce with something we can also offer in our backyard. What a nice memory to remember.
I wish my street was more than lawns , barking dogs and trampolines....
Can’t wait for my book to arrive! Bought a little farm last week with a gardening area to die for. Serendipity 😃
Massive congratulations 🎉!!!
the adventure is starting now. a bit of warning: gardening is addictive! a garden is never finished, there are always new ideas and projects to try. one way I rate my success of the gardens I have designed for others how they change and grow as people live in them.
I grow about 90% of our fruit and vegetables now. It's taken a few years to get the soil healthy, but now I get really good results. Busy times for me are April, and then the harvests, preserving and planting late season and winter crops in July and August. I love it, and at the very least you know what you'r eating. Everything is pesticide free and no artificial fertilisers used.
That's amazing!!
Storage and preserve it is the big problem. Buying tomatoes at the superstore is meaningless because it just taste as wet toilet papers but you can at least buy them when you need them.
@@lubricustheslippery5028true, but you have to learn to eat what's in season like in the old days.
@@davidrn5600 I live far north it's nothing that is in season most of the year. If you live farther south it may be possible.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 Yea, you can preserve a lot of things though. In the north, winter diets would consist meat and food that is manageable to preserve (and fish).
I love the financial breakdown, that probably helps a lot of people conceptualize something that feels very theoretical if they haven’t done it yet. And even for experienced gardeners, sometimes we undercut just how much actual money we do save by growing food. We’ve all seen the memes about dropping $1000 on all the stuff to start a garden and then getting a single salad in return…and it can feel that way in the beginning, but fortunately the expensive infrastructure lasts through the seasons and the gardener gets more skilled every year. Add in the fresh air, exercise, pride, confidence, etc and of course the true value of growing food is priceless 😊 especially when you reach a point of excess and can give food to others as well.
I wish it worked like that. I live in Northern Ontario, Canada on 33acres. My sister is getting stuff to grow on her property but I can't get seeds to come up. It's not surprising, I killed a cactus once. Between the mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies I'm being eaten alive and I'm always second guessing the wildlife with wolves and bears particularly making me nervous.
Lands cheap in some places for a reason.
It's a long term investment, you might lose some money in the beginning, but as time goes on, you should be able to save money on average when compared to if you were buying all your veggies and fruits at a supermarket or organic store if you want to compare it to the same quality.
(Take this with a grain of salt, as I don't even own a house, but would like to grow a garden in the future haha)
What you save in dollars and cents growing your own food compared to buying it in a store is still being offset by the significant amount of time and labor that must be invested to maintain that garden. The property taxes for the space where the garden is contained. Ongoing repairs and maintenance. If your time is worth $15 an hour to you, justifying the investment, more power to you. But for most people, it's not worth the effort. Time is our most precious resource and many people optimize the use of their time by purchasing their produce at the market and benefiting from economies of scale.
@@shroomer3867 Despite the fact that someone with a large home garden saves money on the produce itself, there is still a real cost in terms of time investment and labor. To maintain a garden like in this video takes a significant amount of planning, labor, trial and error, and there are bound to be crop failures and blight. The goal should never be to save money with a home garden because no small home garden is going to compare to economies of scale. Not when you consider all costs (monetary, supplies, time, labor) that go into the process from start to finish.
@@Tamarocker88 yes, it’s all relative to your personal experience and life. To me, gardening and being outdoors IS optimizing my time because I find those things to be incredibly valuable. But to each their own 🖤
I have saved an enormous amount of money buying at auctions. I have bought tools, compost, perlite, fertiliser, shredder, rope, fence pins, hoses, loping pruner and on and on. A few months ago I hit the jackpot and bought what I thought was a couple of dozen seed packets only to discover literally hundreds of packets. I make compost mainly from stable waste. My growing areas are raised and I do this by keeping an eye open for house improvers and taking away their solid wooden doors obviously after getting permission. My larger seeds are sitting in compost filled Costco cups and my grow lights are industrial units from Screwfix. Once you start thinking like this more ideas dawn on you.
this! knowledge will take you far! i thought itd be impossible to do indoors realistically but apparently plants arent picky w light, and leds work just fine for them as long as it has the light’s wavelengths that it needs❤ love these vids
I dont drive so free stuff is not accessible to me.
@@PadraigpI use a bicycle with storage strapped on, or just public transit with large bags. Assuming no trailer I can use them both together too.
Here in South Africa with very hot dry summers in the Boland 60km inland from Cape Town, our greatest cost is water. Working on more rain water storage. 2X2500l gave me, including the seasonal winter rain, 8months of rain water. But these summer months are killing us financially. That is why I decided that if I have to pay that much for water, it would go for food, not ornamentals. I simply plant veg in clumps instead of rows, the way ornamentals are planted.
Here in the States and I have your book on order with Amazon. I can't wait to get it in my hands! My daughter (33) who is looking for a home with a larger lot to start homesteading will probably get a copy for her birthday. And this is someone who never showed much interest in gardening before!
Thank you so so much!! And best of luck with your daughter's home hunting☺️
Very encouraging and honestly the numbers are exactly what I would expect from my own experience in our climate. For these purposed of course you have to account time as a cost but we all know it is actually pleasure, exercise, mini wildlife safari and therapy!
I run 80 allotment plots and always start new gardeners of with a half plot, Its amazing what can be produced out of that size area. Great Video Huw 🙏🌱🌱
The most difficult thing being self-sufficient in a temperate climate is not growing the food , but figuring out how to store it. (It mostly is all ready at once)
Store it and not go out of your mind with boredom of the same preserves over and over…
Also a lot of the veg that keeps longer like winter squash etc takes up more room
For sure. I think it would be wise for anyone looking into being self-sufficient to learn how to pickle.
Absolutely. Growing 50 kilos of potatoes/onions/carrots is not that difficult. Storing 50 kilos of potatoes/onions/carrots is simple in theory, but finding the space is the difficult part.
I've found that creating the storage space can be more difficult and costly than creating the growing space. Sure, you'r freezer and pantry will get you started, but once you grow tens let alone hundreds of kilos of food for storage, things get a bit more complicated
@@klapiroska4714 not to mention one bad onion spoils the lot so you have to create separation and proper circulation to actually get them to last any amount of time.
And there are only so many ways so combine root vegetables
i started my garden with just 2 large pots, a large bucket and fabric raised bed. It used up a total of 400 litres of soil and compost combined. I have planted many foods and had success with things like kale, broccoli, chives, cabbage, potatoes and also garlic. I have dabbled with onions, carrots, parsnips but they failed (mainly due to my son being too curious and ripping them out). Now I have a full allotment where I can do this sort of stuff with no interference from family. Also without my mrs going crazy over the fact that I took over the garden. Your tutorials have helped me greatly and I love them! I started with pots, now I have an entire garden to run with
Another consideration, after suffering a severe health crisis in 2020 & 2 years later finding the Medical Medium books, I threw myself into gardening. I'm happy to say after 9 months I'm completely off blood pressure meds & have healed beyond medical expectations. His combinations of food for detoxing & restoring the body is phenomenal. I would really like to become proficient in growing celery as I juice a head daily.. I'm not sure how something like this can be costed out.
Hello! Making your own seed allows you to select and adapt varieties to your very own garden... That way, after a few years, you have consistently good yields and few pests on your crops!
Thanks for the video,
Cheers
A gardener friend has suggested letting one plant go to seed is worth its space if it produces enough seeds for next year etc.
I love my garden so much, it's well worth the effort it takes to do. It brings so much joy every year! That said, there are a lot number of costs to growing your own food that are missed or undersold in this video. Most people will not be able to commit this amount of time or money to growing food (4 hours a week is a huge commitment, as is $4000), and will not get as much yield, and will then not get as much financial value out of their gardens. BUT, that's not necessarily a bad thing. All this is just to say I feel the values of gardening are mostly not financial. Everyone saying this in the comments is right, you can't put a price on the value of being outside in the garden, getting some exercise and enjoying the wonders of growing your own food. And then the value of the amazing flavor that comes from veggies that fresh? Forget about it! So good. I feel like thinking of backyard gardening in solely financial terms, like you say in the video, misses the most important values gardening has to offer.
Just a quick thank you for what you do from someone who remembers a young kid doing videos showing how to propagate roses from cuttings over a decade ago. I grew up in NYC, I now have a productive no dig garden in my yard. I also have come to explore my Welsh ancestry. Wishing more and more success in your future, thank you for all the information you have shared over the years
Hey Huw! I wonder, do you eat exclusively from the garden? If so, what does a day in your life look like in terms of the main meals breakfast, lunch & dinner? Would love to see you do a video and delve a little further into the self sufficiency topic! 🙂
Thanks for the breakdown, well done!
Being self sufficient the way I do it . Means not buying compost, mulch, fertilizer.
Organic gardening is dirt cheap if you don’t get caught up in buying all the latest gadgets & saving seeds of many plants.
Monday will be my happy day, the book is being delivered that day!! 🎉
So looking forward to it, just in time for my second garden season ❤
I've been growing all our own vegetables and a lot of small fruit for a few years now. My garden is less than a quarter acre. My biggest ongoing costs are seeds (and seed potatoes) and compost (which I buy if I'm building any new beds) and potting soil. Fencing was the biggest initial cost, but absolutely essential for dealing with deer and groundhogs. I also had to terrace my hillside with cinderblocks and raised beds, so that was expensive too. I use low tunnels in the winter for growing salads and other cold hardy crops (zone 6-US), but I don't need a polytunnel in the summer here. I've estimated that we eat about $70 of food from the garden each week over the whole year, plus I sell some vegetables to a few families every week to help cover the out of pocket expenses. I started gardening to save money (single mother) and get the highest quality vegetables (vegetarian). But I fell in love with it. It's a hobby, it's a passion, and it's the place that I feel happiest.
Next step is seed saving. Keeping the seeds from your best performing plants not only saves money, but you get a cultivar that has been selected for growing well in your garden, rather than some production farm hours away and probably on a different soil.
How big is your family to get $70 of vegetables out a week?!
We are doing the exact same here in Brisbane, Australia.
We have our house block of 600m and we are using available space to be self sufficient.
This year though, we have an aim to upgrade a bit of our infrastructure, but that is because we saved so much money last year by growing our own food.
I like the sense of community too in growing my own food. I live in rural Mississippi town and grow a variety of cucumbers, herbs, tomatoes and jalapeños. I'm only 28, but I'm out here gardening everyday like a retired boomer! 😂 I trade my veggies and extras to other neighbors that may have a hand in growing something better than I can, like yellow squash, cucumbers, other peppers, etc.
I'm just dropping a line to say thank you to you and Sam for the beautiful, signed book that arrived today. I think it's going to be a very handy tool for me for the rest of my life! There's everything I need to start growing fruit and veg, and I didn't realise you were putting recipes in there as well. I love it! Thank you both 😊💐
I need to garden for my mental health as much as my physical health ❤
And I find it's much cheaper and more effective than talk therapy or percription drugs. I think growing our own food is part of what makes us feel connected to the earth and our own spirit as a result.
Not to forget that you grow the highest score of organic food and save the monthly rate for the gymn and have less health issues.😊. Great video Huw, your book is on its way.
Ah Huw I bought your book a pre order. I received it the first day and actually it’s one of the best gardening books I’ve ever read. It’s a no nonsense approach to gardening that works for the individual. I love the straight forward approach that you offer. There is no preaching and it totally makes sense to me! I will happily follow along growing what we eat and what I want to grow! Thanks for being just a normal guy that gets it! Thanks for the no judgement approach! I have watched you for years and these last few videos have spoken the truth about gardening for the real people 💚
My joy is growing organic vegetables to provide for my family's daily meals. Intercropping will be very good to help me have enough vegetables to eat throughout the seasons. A product I make myself will help me feel more secure because I know it is safe ☺
I'm in the states so I won't get mine until May, but your last book was a game changer for my garden. I can't wait to read this one!
Thank you so so much!
And as a chef/gardener myself, there's nothing quite like growing a rare plant/herb and discovering what it tastes like fresh from the garden. It's priceless, in my opinion.
This video was brilliant. You are just my kind of guy breaking down all the numbers. Yield, area time and cost. This video was very well done and helped me a lot, subscribing imediatly. Keep up the good work
This is my second year gardening. I'm incorporating a lot of your advice this year to maximize my yield, namely the succession sowing and throwing plants in when plants come out! Super excited to see how much I grow this year
Just received your new book love the size of the book and great content thank you
Awesome, thank you so so much!
Grabbing a jar of pickles or green beans that I grew the year or two ago from the pantry is awesome and priceless .
It gives me good memories of that garden yr and time spent with my mom canning 😊 can't say that with the store bought food .haha
Our plan is to be as self sufficient as possible, but not with our current tiny garden. Once we have moved and we have access to a bigger garden. As far as the "hungry gap" goes, we will be looking into cold room storage, different methods of food preservation. Best of all you know exactly what is gone into the soil and that no chemicals have been used. Happy growing, its growing season baby! 😁🌻🍅🌶
My copy of the book arrives today... Can't wait to read it we are so excited for our third year gardening 🙌🙌🙌👍👍👍
Wonderful! I really hope you enjoy it 😊
Just got my new allotment last week, and, obviously, your fantastic book to help me make the most of it. Very excited about both. Thanks for inspiring me!
Thanks for all the videos and advice for all these years Huw! Really like the idea of Sam's part of the book with how to preserve a lot of the food...I've ordered my to collect from waterstones tomorrow! 🎉
I discovered your channel in about 2019 and am learning so much. I moved from the subtropics to a cold climate in an alpine region a few years ago. I grew a productive vegie garden in the subtropics but struggled in my new climate until I discovered your channel. I have one of your books already and have preordered this new one. I live in Australia and have to wait until May. I am really looking forward to it. You do a fantastic job.
I've found that the best way to store garden produce is to swap it for pound coins, then grow more! The coins keep better on the mantle piece over winter, and can be turned back into food whenever you like! I grow veg, salad and berries, which I sell locally. I also grow seeds, which I sell on eBay, and take cuttings from trees, which I sell locally. I do seedlings in trays for my neighbours, and potted herbs. I don't actually grow much veg. There's not a huge market for it, and most of what I grow is my soup for winter. I sort my own firewood, do my own composting and vermiculture. This earns me well over £1,000 cash each year, with less than £100 going into it. There was some initial investment in a poly tunnel and some tools and seeds, but much of it was salvaged or scavenged second hand. I'm sorted for salad, soft fruit, tatties and herbs. I'm also sorted for soup all through winter.
I've never tried to add it all up. That isn't the point. I know that not only am I making a four figure sum each year, I'm saving hundreds each year on those items, I'm getting the highest quality fresh produce with zero chemicals or food miles, I'm providing my community with cheap, organically grown fresh produce and I'm getting the exercise I need, and the connection with nature we all need into this bargain. If anyone wants to try putting a price on all that, they are welcome to try.
Just out of interest, at what point would you need to report this extra income in your tax report? Do you know?
That depends@@Pikkson on your circumstances. Already working? It goes under 'other earnings' on your self assessment, and will depend on your tax code. On benefits? Universal credit only allows you to keep the first fiver, then they deduct a percentage of your monthly earnings out of your benefits. I think it's 51% now but used to be 61%. If you are disabled like me, you can keep the first £100 a week without it affecting you, then they take a percentage off your disability benefits. I've never found out what the percentage is because I haven't yet earned £100 in a week. I still submit a self assessment for the tax man, but it never reaches the threshold so it comes back as zero due, I think I'd currently have to earn more than £12k in a given year before they'd bill me, but that's down to my current tax code being high. Yours may be lower but it will probably be in the same ball park.
Keep records. In's and out's. All your earnings and expenses, and see what they add up to in a year. DWP aside, you'll have to submit a tax return to HMRC if your earnings are over £1,000 but it's unlikely you'd be due them anything until it hit five figures. The figure in your tax code is your threshold.
Of course, gifting garden produce to family, friends and neighbours is not taxible. Neither is barter or charitable donations, so with a bit of imagination you could be feeding half the village and not even be on the tax man's radar.
Happy gardening!
@@JoesWebPresence Thanks so much for the in depth answer.
Very inspiring Huw. I highly recommend your book, I received my copy over a week ago and it is excellent, extremely well put together, as well as being easy to use and understand, me being a novice gardener.
Your book arrived on Sunday. Great layout, great advice.... can't wait to put it into practice and try the recipes..... well done Huw and Sam xx
I've just received your book , and i am so excited! I can't wait to read it properly, and have a go at putting it into practise, It looks like an absolutely beautiful book. Thank you for sharing so much useful information. ❤❤❤❤
Amazing content yet again, can't beat growing your own veg. Some veg may be wonky, but I love it, it's your home grown lovely stuff
Thank you so much I really appreciate it☺️
The time/effort/reward ratio is good imo. But the extra rewards are immeasurably beneficial. Working with soil and natural things works as a natural anti-depressant and same goes for being active in general. The digging and other strenuous parts help build muscle. The feeling of accomplishment you get from growing your own food and being more self reliant is amazing! You come to not only Understand but appreciate the food on your plate a lot more when you watched it grow and harvested it yourself.
So many amazing little benefits that help you feel better about life in general! Can’t buy those at the supermarket that’s for sure!
A VALUABLE post. Really great issue to raise and one which you're years of attention will validate. Excellent! Excellent!
I really appreciate that Brian, thank you! It has been something very important to me to measure and put forward a strong case
@@HuwRichards it was well known that pre world wars that countries such as Holland and the US produced surplus produce from home grown society. It's all big corporate goals being rolled out . Current plan goes back to 1870. The tender years doctrine was a corporate decision just as lockdowns was corporate decision. To stop people doing things such as you are. But your the future my friend.
The only thing I have is a window. One window. I grow on it carrots, herbs- 6 kinds. I grow strawberries and several cactus. That is the most fun and tasty to grow my own! And the small space won't stop me.
What a beautiful book! 😍
Dear Huw, thank you very much for this video. I was shocked about how little growing space you had and added up our 10 raised beds. We are eating 3 meals a day/2 vegetarian people (eating lots of veggies, herbs etc.). With careful spacing, succession planting +++ I am producing more than we can eat. I thought we had at least your size garden, but realized we only have *47.2 sqm*!! BUT - we live in Italy in a subtropical climate (Monte Argentario) where I can grow around the year. Congratulations on your book, it should eliminate the notion that a small garden is not enough.
I don’t know about comparing cost to waitrose - one of the most expensive uk supermarkets. I think it would have been good to say this and explain why you chose waitrose for comparison over more affordable options
Awesome! Thanks for going into all that detail. Something I have wanted to do for a while.
I think its also worth considering a modest hydroponics system. If you're limited in space a hydroponic tower can allow you to utilize the vertical space you would otherwise have missed out on.
I devoured the book and put pen and paper to it! Today is my first day applying your method on my brand new 80 m2 allotment 😊
Wow! You put a lot of work into this project for us! Thanks, Huw!!
Thank you that means a lot to me Judi
Thank you for ANOTHER great video huw! I ❤U! I ❤ U! I❤!
I've learned so much the past years watching your channel and have implemented a number of practices you've suggested....
I began planning in January, seed starting in February, I've built a three-bin composting station (ACRE-adding, curing, ready), I have a cold frame and have built a cold frame hot box!!!! I'm having waaaaay too much fun!!!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, expertise and wisdom with the world. You're making a difference. ❤
I'm across the pond in the US (STL ZONE 6).
I had to take notes while watching this one because of the conversions- currency and weights...
I got it!!!!
Thx again for another great video!😊
I like the variety I can get from my home garden. Many things I can't find elsewhere.
Book received yesterday❤thanks so much Huw it’s going to be so helpful and handy,looking forward to the new gardening season 🌱 🪴 🌽 🍆🥒🍅
Loving your new book Huw ❤
I have so much going on atm and feeling quite overwhelmed by it all. Was worried about how I was going to fit my 'therapy' (veg gardening) into my life this year, and very concerned about cost of living. Your self sufficiency videos and your book have certainly taken some of the stress out of it as I have decided to just follow along with you, fitting your plan into my garden. Can't express how grateful I am for your videos, they always make me smile and make me feel more positive 😊😊
This year is the first real growing season for us in SW Missouri, USA. We have 6 beds and will build at least 4 more for two people. Also fruit trees and soft fruits. I will succession plant like mad this year and try not to have any blank places. We take the excess to church, like many of our congregation do. Hurray for Huw!
Great video! I hope more people become more self sufficient because of it
Loooving the book Huw, thankyou for all your hard work. 😊
Thank you so much Jane!!
Interesting that you made the price comparison with Waitrose? Notably one of the most expensive supermarkets in the UK.
It’s crazy how similar this set up is to ours! Setting up perennials like asparagus, strawberry, and garlic has been the most fun and least amount of time commitment to yearly yield.
You cannot judge gardening by how much you save at the supermarket - what value can you place on fun and a rewarding hobby. Enjoy your garden, that is what it' about.
I grow because I love my garden and I love being in it. I love having the food, which is impossible to buy from the market. Nothing at the market tastes like the food outside my own door. I am not even that efficient, but I use all the parts of the garden. Anything not eaten is mulch and compost. I always have something I can harvest outside my door. It is worth so much to me to eat it and to not have to travel to have it.
I definitely do not spend any money on seeds. I have seeds I still grow that are over 10 years old. I have collected more than enough seeds to keep going for the rest of my life. I might buy seeds every few years of plants I do not have and that seem interesting. I actually do allow myself some money to spend on plants and fertilizers, though I definitely use very little of it because once I had the plants I like, I do not have to buy seeds at all.
Seeds people say are short lived I still grow years after people say they should not sprout. I have carrots growing from 7 year old seeds. Germination was very good. I just transplanted lettuce seedlings from seeds dropped by last year's lettuces. Once a garden is established, there is no need for inputs. All that is needed is only if the gardener finds something else interesting, but it is not necessary.
What a lovely Garden
Like it
My friend thank you for good sharing 😊
I preordered the book and can't wait to get it! I'm in the US though so still have to wait a while. All of our raised beds are made out of super nice pallets made out of decking boards and we got them all for free. It was more work to build compared to one long board but I'll take free any day. Our big cost was topsoil and compost. We have goats that contribute lots of fertilizer for beds but we'll still have to buy some for a large no till area we are adding on this year.
How much does a therapist cost because I feel like my garden provides that service
4 euro and still need it, do not underestimate some people s strugle
@@Karincl7€4 per appointment?
They cost your health, when they make their subsidized prescriptions or repeat what they were indoctrinated with in college.
In the US certain counties have recycling plants that also do at scale composting - and the compost is of higher quality than store bought. The best part, if you're using it for personal use, it's free. Just show up with a truck, trailer, or bin and fill up. You can go as much as you want. So at least here that cuts out a starting cost
This is a really important discussion as few known gardeners, on TH-cam or elsewhere, discuss in real terms setup cost and ongoing costs. Of course factoring in labour costs makes it hard but still worthy of discussion. Sick vid dude. Much love from South Australia.
Really appreciated!! Thank you so much
Picking crops actually takes pretty substantial time. Even for things like lettuce (based on the semi-large scale experience) picking can be 50+%-66+% of labor, which if you calculate raw economics can move a needle quite a bit.
Well, it's intriguing. And I suppose it might be relaxing also... If one had this kind of space.
Thanks @HuwRichards Great info as usual. 👏👏
Your latest book has arrived and I am enjoying the layout & content. Love the design throwback to Haynes Manuals! 🌱🌱😀 Jo
Book arrived yesterday, here we go 😁😁😁😁
Woohoo!!
Thank you for your clarity, honesty and inspiration. Hope to start my own garden in a few years, your info helps a lot. =)
I'm looking firward to the arrival of the book. A mindset shift has taken place last year and it made the garden a succes instead of a disappointment. Yes, a lot of the harvest was destroyed by slugs and rats. But we were self sufficient in pumpkins, garlic, oca, Jerusalem artichoke, raspberry, cabbage (walkingstick cabbage is amazing!) different herbs, nettles and cider. Every year a little bit more. We'll get there.
Oh! And plenty of composted manure from the horses. I should start selling it or trade it for produce. 😂
We had a different scenario growing up on a farm. Land wasn't a limiting resource so we didn't need to pack things in tight or deal with compost. Yard waste from moving the lawn was about the only soil amendment we did. Other than that it was rotating the garden location to avoid disease and insect build up and to restore fertility. The garden was around 150' x 50' if I'm remembering that correctly. Also the growing season is shorter here with hot dry summers so there was less opportunity for replanting. Boy did that garden produce. Between canning/freezing/drying it provided most of the tomatoes, peas, beans, carrots, onions, cucumbers, squash, potatoes, and beets we ate. And seasonally it also produced sweet corn, cabbage, greens, radishes and a few other misc vegetables. About our only direct costs were the seeds.
This was a really great video on an interesting topic.
I really liked how you tied a monetary value of the food produced - and I can tell you that the value of the same amount of food in the US is double of what it is in Europe! The price of organic vegetables in the US west coast is twice as much as in Europe.
One of the great things about getting involved in the gardening community is sharing seeds and swapping produce. We have Seedy Saturday early on each year. It’s a great way to get seeds for nothing. I don’t think you can put a price on having your own organic foods, knowing where they come from, most nutrient rich produce, and no need to buy foods from far away places. Within a short time using permaculture practices you can become sustainable with your own compost, creating better soil and getting the most from the smallest amount of soil. For myself, I find getting in the dirt to be essential in maintaining mental health.
Soo... I don't typically watch these, especially finish these... but you caught me at a good time I suppose. BIG question, do you go over anything about different climates? I'm not entirely sure what climate you're in, but I'm curious how much of a difference it makes? I'm in a dryer "light" desert type climate, and curious how the book would work, and if there are any tips/advice for various climates.
I'm a few miles away from you -- and I have been trying to convince so many people of this -- and they still go to the supermarket.
Can't wait to get my hands on your book - here in Canada it's not being released until mid-May, but I've pre-ordered and keep hoping the publishing date will be bumped up - by mid-May I'll be neck deep in my sowing already.
Book arrived , it is excellent, you can change the language to ANY language ,via GBT and self printing
Great video, thanks. I think of the 'costs' as investments. It will be a while until my greenhouse and polytunnel pay for themselves, but I'm getting there. If I discount the expenses of those then my garden pretty much pays for itself now after 7 years. Once you're making your own compost regularly and can save your own seeds, the game changes quite a bit. I try to buy quality tools where I can so that they last, rather than having to buy cheap ones more often. Taking a large harvest to a farmer's market also gives me extra cash to put back into the garden. Seed swaps and bartering can also reduce your outlay, give you more variety and is quite fun.
thanks for sharing your experiences. I think you could even go further, now you do a very intensive style of gardening, hence the many hours. My garden is probably half as productive (about the same size, but I harvest less), but I probably invest less than 1/4 of the time. That is a good thing, I can now trade a bit of space for a lot of time and still we harvest more than enough vegetables for most of the year for the 2 of us.
Picking several peach trees from a ladder showed me the time for harvest can be worth accounting for.
I live in S. Portugal and we are in a severe drought, so my summer gardening has to focus on the maximum kilo harvest from any one bed and how to preserve it in order to get the maximum yield per litre of water for irrigation. Winter planting is much easier and is the season for all the cabbage family, lettuce and other salad crops. The only veg I buy is garlic and frozen peas. Garlic doesn't do well in a hot climate. Good luck with the book.
I can’t wait for my book to arrive! I do feel like you’ve left out some additional economics\benefits to take into account, probably to be more ‘correct’ and that’s that growing your own veggies, for a lot of people would mean that they would be able to eat more ‘expensive’ options. I for instance love both raspberries, strawberries and green asparagus, but we hardly ever eat them because they’re so expensive. I’m planning on growing tons of these both to eat fresh and to preserve. So if you would compare the amount we spend on those at the supermarket now, it would be a low amount because we opt for cheaper options. Once we have our own garden going though, I’m planning on eating raspberries until I’m utterly sick of them, which would be a huuuge foodbill 😅
Absolutely! If I wanted to compare and highlight every single point and detail regarding this I would need to write a whole book in itself. But you raise a really great point, making high value food incredibly accessible ☺️
I've done that in the past. We grew crops we wouldn't be eating otherwise like purple sprouting broccoli and new potatoes.
So true! I go for the produce that's on the cheap side at the grocery. With a garden, I can grow usually more expensive things like eggplants and herbs at home and have them as fresh as possible to boot!
I don't think I've ever really bought leeks at the grocery, maybe one time? But I am excited to be growing them for the first time this year, for way cheaper!
@@bellatrix4204 That too! For commercial purposes (packaging and durability) you usually only find the ‘standard’ variaties of a vegetable or a fruit. I didn’t even know purple broccoli existed before I started looking into rarer seeds and forgotten vegetables. You have so many more possible variaties when you grow your own!
@@sayadaramdial1700 the freshness is also a good point. A lot of things taste their best when freshly picked, and lose flavour due to both time and being refrigerated for storage/transport purposes. And herbs are one of the most expensive things you can buy in the store when you look at the price per kg, while a lot of those are perennials you only have to plant once, and you’ll have a lifetime supply
Just ordered the book , I have been looking forward to this :D , picked a cauli, purple sprouting and a savoy today. Resullltttt.
I talked with my grandma and if you have a family member who went through the war i would(depending on how comfortable they are with talking about it obviously) recommend talking with them because a lot of people in that generation had to deal with a very real need to suddenly produce their own food in their backyard while not always having much experience with it. Their choices in crops, how they dealt with things like compost, getting seeds, pest control when many companies where making chemicals for the war effort, etc, etc is a good thing to learn about. If your family fortunately didn’t go through the war or you unfortunately lost that generation there are booklets from that era, either copies you can buy or PDF’s you can download. I think there might even be re-prints being done for some pamflets/booklets, not sure. Many countries in Europe had some kind of centralized effort to have people produce their own food, even in occupied areas. So information more specific to your country should be something you can find.
Good point.
I envy you. I live in Sweden, zone 7, snowmelt is finished some date in early may. First frost is in late august, early september, though we get about 20 hours of proper dayligth and 0 night hours per day so growth is good. We barely get one harvest of potatoes, and that is with indoor precultivation to half a foot of sprouts and plenty of manure.
Love the financial breakdown, and the book has such a great amount of information as well!
Awaiting delivery of the book eagerly. Brilliant videos and concept. Placing a cash value is great but if you add in to it health and mental health benefits of gardenning especially growing your own food it adds another dimension thats very hard to try and put a value on.. I will save on the gym subscription you barely use and grow mt own food instead, but going to start small 2 raised beds 😊
Waiting on your book in the US. Working to be self sufficient in veg and some fruit. There are some things I do have buy like avocados and the odd apple. While I do have an advantage in that I garden all year, I need to figure out how to grow some of my favourites when the weather is too hot or too cold such as greens in the summer and tomatoes & cucumbers in the winter. Otherwise, I am trying to eat seasonally. May try setting up a temporary greenhouse situation. Cheers.
And don’t forget the value of barter. I’ve gotten lovely avocados and numerous seedlings by sharing my harvest. Today, someone I share fruit and veggies with is coming to plant my strawberries.
The label self-sufficiency seems somewhat misleading. At 586kg a year, you get about 1.6kg a day, which comes around at about 320kcal. So you cover your need for basic fruit and veg, but to be truely self-sufficient you'd need to grow 7 times the amount or grow a lot more high energy plants.
Please do a video on herb self sufficiency or something for cold climate balcony growers.