Top 10 Vegetables for A Self Sufficient Garden: Grow Your Own Food

If you would like to grow your own food and be more self-sufficient then this is the video for you. I'm going to share my top 10 essential vegetables that anyone can grow to help feed themselves all year round. The 10 vegetables that I am about to share are all fairly easy to grow and most can be stored right through the winter. They offer great nutrition and many have additional medicinal benefits as well. But however we dress it up, all food can be medicine and that is why it is so important we choose carefully about what we nourish our amazing bodies with. In our modern world where chemical farming is now called traditional and our supermarkets are packed full of foods which have been flown in from all around the world and are wrapped in endless amounts of plastic which is slowly suffocating our beautiful planet, now is the time we need to step back to how we were living barely 50 years ago and again begin to take more personal responsibility for feeding ourselves. Just picture the joy of tasting your first organically grown tomato of the season, plucking it from the plant and then popping it straight into your mouth exploding with flavour and nutrition or pulling fresh buttery new potatoes from the soil with your bare hands and the peace of mind that comes with knowing you can shop fresh straight from your garden or allotment. That to me is worth way more than money in the bank. And once you've watched and heard our list of top 10 vegetables for self-sufficiency don't forget to drop us a comment down below this video sharing what your top 10 would be. I cannot wait to hear what grows best for you and what you wouldn't be without wherever you are in the world. So let's get into it. The humble potato is my number one crop for self-sufficiency. They offer an amazing source of carbohydrates and they grow fairly easily here in the UK and they are really versatile as well. Potatoes can be grown in big pots or bags if ground space is limited and if you are blessed with having polytunnel or greenhouse space you can plant an extra early crop in February to harvest in the beginning of May and it is the best thing in the hungry gap. We mostly grow a variety by Sapo because they are blight resistant which takes away one of the main challenges you may face when growing potatoes. Pumpkins or winter squash are another really versatile crop that can be kept for up to a year if cured and stored correctly in a cool airy space. This pumpkin is actually one from our harvest last September and I absolutely love making big pots of pumpkin soup or pumpkin curry and stew. I mash pumpkin and I even add it to sweet treats and cakes too. Pumpkins are a great source of vitamins and minerals and have the added bonus of their seeds being highly nutritious too. We've actually grown a variety specifically for seed this year alone and I think it is this one here. We absolutely adore seasoned roasted pumpkin seeds either just as a snack on their own or added to salads or topped on to other dishes. As you can see pumpkins do need quite a lot of space to grow so if space is limited try growing some of the smaller varieties like Uchikikuri or Delicator which are two of our favourite winter squash. Dried shelled beans are a brilliant low fat source of plant protein and black beans are even more nutritious and once fully dried beans can be easily stored in jars for two years or more. Towards the end of the summer we begin harvesting the drier beans in batches at the end of a dry day like today would be perfect for harvesting some of these and then we finish them off in drying trays in a warm space or later on we put them on racks above our fire once that goes on. You can easily save your own seed for replanting each year too and you can have so much fun choosing different colours and varieties and sizes. Beans are really exciting. Number four on my list is garlic and I don't think words can describe my love for garlic. We have made many videos about how we grow both French and elephant garlic here on our land if you would like to take a deep dive but for me garlic is the king of food flavouring and it is also highly nutritious and has many medicinal benefits as well. It's antimicrobial, antifungal, it can help boost your immune system and it may also help with your heart health too. I use garlic in health tonics as well like my fire cider and in nearly everything that I cook and one of the things I love most about garlic is that it grows right through the winter. The best time I have found to plant garlic is between the middle of September and the middle of October for a June harvest and again if it is stored and dried correctly garlic will last you a whole year. The other benefit with garlic is this is a 100% self-sufficiency crop because you actually just save your biggest and best cloves or bulbs of garlic and break them down in September or October and then you replant the individual cloves. And if you love Sian Murphy in our videos don't forget to drop a load of hearts down in the comments for him too. He's given us a few scares recently, he's an older guy and he's had a few funny turns so we are just enjoying every minute that we can spend together. Onions are another staple daily use crop in my kitchen and much like garlic they offer amazing flavour, nutrients and medicinal properties too and they can be stored in a crate once dried for nearly a year. I find I get the best results growing onions starting them from seed in February rather than growing them on from set and it's best to start each new year with new seed for both onions and leeks. Tomatoes are number six on my list and that is because they are so versatile in the kitchen and because homegrown tomatoes are so much more packed with flavour and nutrients than anything you can buy in the supermarket. As well as enjoying lots of tomatoes fresh when they are in season I also bag up and freeze whole cherry tomatoes to use in cooking throughout the whole of the winter and my other favourite way to use and store tomatoes is to make a delicious roasted tomato paste which I jar and freeze or you could water bath it as well to extend the shelf life. If you are growing tomatoes for yourself I recommend choosing heritage or heirloom varieties because these usually offer the best flavour and also the most nutrition. So you may be surprised by my next choice so I'll explain. Number seven on my list is chillies and that is because of their flavour and health-giving potential. I've selected this list with self-sufficiency in mind so I'm choosing plants that could replace things that we sometimes buy in right now. So say for example if I couldn't buy black pepper anymore I could still use chillies to flavour food and if you can only grow one chilli plant I would recommend choosing one that is fairly mild because that will make it more versatile. Chillies do need quite a lot of heat to grow well but they do grow well in pots so if you haven't got an undercover growing space you could actually grow a chilli on a window sill in a pot in your house or in a sheltered place on a patio or a warm spot in your garden. And sometimes one productive chilli plant can be more than enough to cover most people's needs but if you do have an excess of chillies they can be stored in quite a lot of ways. We actually make harishi paste with chillies that I'll either use fresh or freeze and they freeze whole really well as well. We're actually using frozen chillies from two years ago still. Another thing I love to make is a fermented hot sauce and we also make our own smoked paprika with the more mild chillies that we grow here. Number eight is a slightly more unusual choice but I feel that it makes for a great self-sufficiency plant and that is holy basil or tulsi and I grow lots of this in our polytunnel because I absolutely love it in teas. It is so delicious so I dry this plant and store it and give us a year's worth of herbal teas and tulsi is a really sacred adaptogenic herb and that means that it can find out where you need support in your body in different ways. I think that it is absolutely delicious. It can also be added to salads and I also make medicinal tinctures with this too. Now if you haven't got an undercover growing space it can be grown in pots in a really warm sheltered place too. Number nine is kale and kale is an absolute powerhouse superfood. It is high in vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin C, manganese and it is rich in antioxidants too. Kale is fairly easy to grow and it is cold hardy so we normally have kale growing somewhere on our land all year round. We love kale so much we actually built this net house to protect our plants from the pesky cabbage white butterflies so that we can grow it without the need for chemicals and insecticides. If you have grown any type of kale or any plant in the barassica family you will begin to understand how much must be sprayed on those perfect leaves that you see in our supermarket. Kale can be steamed, it can be sautéed, you can eat it raw and you can add it to nearly any dish or pot that you are cooking. We also really enjoy it dehydrated or crisped up with just a little bit of salt. It is lovely as a snack or sprinkled on top of food. Number 10 is another herb which I absolutely love for both its flavour and medicinal properties. Rosemary is a stunning multi-purpose perennial herb and I absolutely love its flavour in most things that I cook. I also tincture this as well and it gets added to my fire cider brews and it's also in my roasted tomato paste. Rosemary does prefer well-drained really quite rough soil so I do actually struggle to grow enough of it here but this plant in our chicken run is actually doing really well and next year I'm going to grow a lot on in pots too so that I've really got enough to use for everything that I would like it for. So as you can see my list of top 10 crops for self-sufficiency comprises mainly of vegetables and herbs that can be used to make the base for many different meals and that is why they are my top 10. Obviously this list could go on and on because diversity is one of the main keys for self-sufficiency and resilience in the garden. I do of course understand that one of the main challenges for growing your own food for some people can often be space and some of you may not even have a garden but have a real desire to grow food. So my message to you is to think outside of the box here. You don't have to have your own garden to be able to provide food for yourselves. Put your name down for an allotment. Now this could take a while but in the meantime look into things like local community gardens or volunteering in places where they are growing food because most likely the exchange for your time will be beautiful fresh produce. Don't forget to drop a comment down below sharing your list of top 10 veggies for self-sufficiency. It will be a lot of fun comparing them all. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and we look forward to seeing you here again soon. Peace and plants!