Permaculture Garden Tour & Planting Plan – Self Sufficient Living UK

Join us for a FULL TOUR of our PERMACULTURE GARDENS – What crops we are harvesting and growing in early Spring and our planting plan for the season ahead. Self sufficient living saves us a LOT of MONEY, which gives us a non financial security and rewards us with the irreplaceable gift of TIME and FREEDOM 💚

We are Dan & Laurie and our land is called Freedom Forest – Its 3 acres in the South of England where we are creating an edible oasis and trying to provide as much for ourselves, from our land as possible, where we are completely off grid.
Our food growing journey began together in 2017 when we created our first No dig lasagne bed. Every year we grow more and more and now we are currently around 60-80% self sufficient in our food needs.
Our style and methods are inspired by permaculture and we try to be thoughtful about how and what we do, to be as gentle on the planet as possible.

We are MASSIVELY grateful that you choose to watch our Videos and support us in this way, however, If you appreciate and get value from what we share and would like to help us a little more, you can become a Freedom Forest Patreon (link below).
It takes us about a day to film some video and another few evenings to edit it, Patreon provides a way you can support what we do with any size donation you wish, it could simply be the value of a packet of seeds! We have many projects coming up, as well as wanting to improve our videos with better camera equipment… maybe even a drone one day to make our videos even more detailed and better quality for you to enjoy! You can help make it viable for us to keep putting the time into making these videos by becoming a Patreon. In return your name will appear in the end credits of our videos and we’ll message you a password for the ‘members area’ of our website where we share more of our favourite recipes exclusively for our Patreon’s 💚

https://www.patreon.com/freedomforestlife

Other Youtube Channel Mentioned:

Craig from @GrowParadise

Enjoy & Thanks for Watching

✌️🌿 Peace and Plants

#Freedomforest #gardentour #permaculturegardening #selfsufficientliving

hi folks thanks for joining us today’s
video is going to be a full tour of our
growing areas showing what we’ve got
growing already and also sharing some of
our plans for the growing season
ahead so this is the bed we call our
Village Green bed and right now we have
got a lot of peas planted all along the
fence and we just make use of this uh
metal fenc in so that the peas can clim
climb up um and it gives a really nice
support so we’ve got snap peas down
here and then over this side all of the
peas down this Edge and going around the
corner are going to be peas for
shelling and we got these in the ground
just about a week
ago and going forward this bed is going
to be one of our Three Sisters beds so
we’re going to be planting painted
mounting corn into this bed mixed with
our delicate winter squash which is a
small really sweet squash
variety and then we’ll also add beans
that will grow up the corn and I’ll
probably also add the fourth sister into
this bed as well which will be
sunflowers so in a few months time this
bed will be absolutely packed out with
loads of different crops and probably
the peas will still be cropping up the
fence as well so really making the best
use of the
space so we’re in our food Forest now
and we have been doing a lot of work in
the food Forest over the winter months
we have been putting in lots of new
plants Chang in some areas up you can
see here we’ve got a big bed which we
are just in the process of working
on and yeah lots of new exciting plants
have been going into the Food Forest it
is just springing into
life we’ve got Blossom just coming on
this family pear tree here our
blueberries have been looking absolutely
beautiful and I will be doing a full
tour in the food Forest really soon
sharing a lot more about what’s been
happening in here so make sure you stay
tuned for that video as
well but I’m just waiting for everything
to Green up just a little bit
more and then we can show you in its
full Glory of
spring
okay up into our main growing
area and Dan has been working super hard
up here over the last few weeks he has
literally weeded all of these beds we
have just got the wood chip down on the
paths everything is looking fresh and
ready to go for the growing season and
it is such a good feeling to have a bit
more organization up here and for it to
be looking tidy because we do actually
find this is quite a hard area to manage
we have sheep Sor on our land here which
runs everywhere and it does make
maintaining these beds more
difficult and so by the end of the
season it tends to have got the better
of us and the weeds take over we still
have loads of crops growing but always
at the begin of the Season we have to
have a really big sort out so
consequently we are actually playing
with some ideas of what to do with this
area going forwards and how we can maybe
better manage it so we’ll be sharing
more about that as we think about it and
work out more what we’re going to do but
right now we have
got a beautiful run of garlic in this
this bed this is mainly French garlic
other than just a few elephant garlics
that I’ve got at the beginning here and
you can really see the difference in the
size of these these elephant garlic
stems well they look more like leaks
really but they’re not and then we’ve
got the smaller French garlics here and
the coloring on the stems is just
beautiful when the sunlight catches them
they’re all red right at the bases and
it just looks so lovely with the red
against the lush
green we’ve got our strawberry bed here
which I have given a feed of wood chips
all over the top of the strawberry beds
and they really really love that we’ve
been doing it for about 3 years now and
the the strong strawberry plants always
grow up back through and we’ve been
getting some great harvests from this
area um without having to divide the
plants down
really we’ve got our first plantings in
the ground now as well for spring which
again is such an invigorating thing to
see in this bed here we’ve got col rabi
which I planted out about three or four
days ago and this was from uh sewing in
February end of
February in this bed here under the
planks I’ve got a run of carrots and
then next to that which hasn’t come up
yet I’ve got a run of spring onions so
that the spring onions will act as a
companion plant for the carrots
hopefully deterring the carrot root fly
which we have an increasing issue with
over the last few years so I’m doing
lots of experiments this year to uh see
how we can manage that
better and then just yesterday I planted
out salad into this bed as well so we’ve
got a mixture of salad and then we’ve
got some herbs some Cherville and some
rocket in this bed
also and the covers are just on at this
time of year for bird
protection so we tend to find when we
put new plantings out the birds seem
really interested and they want to
scratch all around um so yeah that’s
what the Nets are for and they do offer
a little bit of wind protection as well
which can be beneficial um at this time
of the year when conditions can be quite
changeable
still over in this bed here this is more
new plantings that I did just
yesterday and this is a bed of beach
roots this is three different types of
beetroot in here I’ve got bardy I’ve got
golden beets and then I’ve also got
candy cane beets so they come out
beautiful stripy red and
white so they’ll be getting settled in
over the next couple of
days so plans for this area moving
forward bed three here is going to be a
big onion bed and I can never grow
enough onions because I use so many of
them in cooking so I’m going to get as
many onions as I can in this bed and
we’ve already got those growing on from
seed in our poly tunnel and then the
onions will come out around the end of
July beginning of
August and then I will do a second
planting in this bed and it will be
Autumn turnips and an Autumn sewn of col
rabi bed two here will be leaks and
lettuce and I’ll probably put parsnips
in this bed as well and then that may be
followed with some other Autumn sews
probably a later sewing of beetroots and
maybe some Florence fennel as well the
bottom bed where the garlic is pretty
much that is just a fixed garlic bed
because the garlic comes out around the
end of June beginning of July and is
only a couple of months before I then
start SO sewing it again so it’s not
really enough time to get a second crop
into that area but I am hopefully going
to try sewing um mustard good at the
same time is my garlic this year as uh
like a companion plant kind of cover
crop for the winter as well so excited
to try
that this bed here I’m hoping to do a
mixture of grains and green greens and
I’m hoping to try things like amaran and
quinoa this year and then that’ll be
mixed in with some um probably some
rainbow chard and just any Greenery any
leafy greens that I need to find a space
for this top bed here we’ve got a
beautiful amount of leaks still growing
in here and we are cropping these leaks
just as we need them at the
moment and whilst we have had quite a
lot of slugs and snails around in fact I
didn’t show you as we walked through but
we had our first planting of peas out on
the poles just down by the gate and they
got really badly attacked by slugs and
snails so we’re not sure how they’re
going to bounce back but other than that
I’m feeling really grateful because I’ve
been seeing lots of posts of people’s um
leaks absolutely packed out with slugs
and snails in the necks of them so we’re
feeling really really lucky
that we haven’t got them on that volume
here just yet but we’ve got a good
amount of leaks and they really cover
the gap this time of year when we’ve
pretty much finished up our onions we’re
getting to the end of our garlic but we
have still got beautiful Lush leaks in
the ground like I said we just Harvest
them as we
need so we just come around the top here
now some of these beds here these empty
beds we um Dan’s mom grow some crops in
these so should be putting these beds to
use this year and this is Al another one
of her beds um that she grows cut
flowers in so she’ll be coming around
soon and having a good tidy up and this
bed looks lovely with all of her daers
in in the
summer this is our kind of semi
permanent Bean
bed and right now in these three areas
here we’ve got our broad beans
growing and they’ve been munched on a
bit by the Slugs and snails but they are
pulling through so that’s really good to
see so fingers crossed but growth on
them has been quite slow and you can see
you know they’ve been stripped quite a
lot on the bottom but they are picking
up and I’m sure they’re going to pull
through and then after the broad beans
obviously this area will be followed
with our tall beans and the beans that
we grow here are all beans that we save
for drying um to store for the winter so
it gives us a really good plant protein
that we can grow ourselves
here this is my elephant garlic bed if
you’ve been following our channel for a
while you will know that I love garlic I
use a lot of it and for the last couple
of years we have been trying to work up
to having a enough garlic to be able to
sell I think garlic would be a really
good cash crop for us um we just need to
get the volume up enough so that we have
enough for our own seed for the
following year and then also enough for
us and then we can sell the Surplus last
year I had a bit of a problem with
drying the garlic so it didn’t I didn’t
have as much to plant back as I was
hoping but hopefully this year will be
the
year so like I said Dan has had a really
good tidy up of this area he’s been
working really hard up here we do still
have this area here to sort out and all
these stems at the back here this is our
Jerusalem artichokes and they look
beautiful in the summer they grow really
tall they have little yellow flowers
late in the season and then they give us
a beautiful tuba to be harvest in all
through the winter we just Harvest them
again as we need we have got five more
than we need but that is the nature of
Jerusalem artichokes they do tend to
multiply incredibly readily and you
never get them all out so we’ve
basically kind of turned this bed over
to Jerusalem Arch chokes just let them
do their thing we always have them we
will have a tidy up along the front here
and then our plant cett all along the
front of this bed here and they can just
Trail down the bank and that worked
really well last year so we’ll be doing
that again this
year come on
murfs come on boy have you been
harvesting Yak on M come on
boy okay so over this side of our land
we have got lots of really exciting
improvements going on as
well so this this area here has had
black plastic on it for about 2 years or
more now purely to help us manage the
areas until we um get to a stage where
we can use them and again Dan has been
working super hard and he has been
turning this into a new potato bed for
this year so we’ve pulled back the
plastic we’ve been bringing in lots of
compost and using other materials that
we had on site already from our hot bed
from last year to make a really good
base layer on here and he has planted
our first early potatoes in here already
just a few days ago I think he did those
on the 25th or 26th of
March and then yeah I was just talking
about the Elephant Garlic so we thought
we were going to lose a lot of our
elephant garlic last year because we had
a difficulty drying it in The Damp
conditions and we’d actually thrown a
load of it in the bush to break down
because we didn’t think it was any good
and Dan spotted the other day that it
was all sprouting so a bit of an
experiment it’s late going in but he’s
put uh some of the elephant garlics into
this bed as well and we’re just going to
see what happens it might be that we
just use it a bit like a spring onion um
and slice it up if it doesn’t form
properly because elephant garlic does
need a really long time in the ground to
form up its massive bulbs but yeah
hopefully we’ll still be able to make of
what we thought was a lost
crop and then over here you may have
seen one of our recent videos about
putting in raised beds we have got four
new beautiful metal raised beds that we
are really really impressed
with and so plans for this area this is
going to be parsnips and carrots and and
spring onions in this
bed and I’m doing this as a trial to see
if lift in these crops off the ground
helps to protect them against the carrot
rust or carrot root fly because the
carrot root fly only flies very low to
the ground so yeah excited to see how
that turns out this
year these two beds here are going to be
sweet potatoes we will still be planting
sweet potatoes in the ground
also but again as many of you know who
have been following us for a while we
had quite an issue with rats enjoying
our sweet potatoes last year so again
this is another method we are trying to
see if we can get the better of the rats
and protect our Harvest so that we have
more of it to enjoy for ourselves which
is after all the aim of the game when
growing all of these
vegetables this bed here is another
little trial
bed and this bed I’m seeing how many
beautiful fresh veggies I can get out of
one small space um so it’s going to be a
lot of leafy greens in this bed crops
that I think if you have only got a
small space to grow in crops that I feel
are some of the most valuable ones that
you can relatively easily grow for
yourself so things that we use a lot of
so cut and come again salads green
leaves
herbs that’s going to be my focus on
this bed but I’m going to be sharing a
lot more about that as we move through
the season
in our net house uh you may have seen on
our last video I talked quite a lot
about our net house we grow our basas in
there it gives us protection from the
Cabbage White Butterflies which are
everywhere come June July and it means
again we can grow really good Cale and
any other brascas that we like purple
sprouting broccoli is is what we’re
harvesting at the moment and yeah we
just over the the season it will get
absolutely packed out with green in
there that will see us right through the
winter so this is our first poly tunnel
and and in this tunnel we grow a
beautiful winter crop of salad and over
the last couple of weeks the salad has
just upped its game for growth and we
cannot keep up I’ve actually already
been in here this morning and from this
section here I have picked two massive
bowls of salad today to take to our
family who we’re going to be seeing
later on and I literally could have
harvested four times the amount already
but it is such a beautiful crop to have
all through the winter to have that
lovely fresh crunch to add to
meals I’ve never really been into winter
salads before I started growing it
myself but I value it so much
now something I’m trying for the first
time this year in this tunnel as well is
we’re going for an early crop of broad
beans so I planted out broad beans in uh
late January in here they were beans i’
had already started from seed um in
trays and they’re just starting to
flower now so these ones should crop
quite a way ahead of our outdoor broad
beans so that should help bridge the
hungry Gap a little bit and then over
this side of the tunnel we have got lots
of beautiful herbs I’ll just hop over
the salad so we’ve
got French parsley here so that’s the
flatter leaf parsley and again this
literally in the last week has burst
into life we’ve got curly parsley
here and we’ve got lots of sherille down
here and some of this wasn’t supposed to
be here I think last year I added a lot
of seeded cherille to our compost bin
and so this is kind of self-seeded but I
I’ve let it be here because I love it as
a herb I use handfuls of it in cooking
and also as some of you will know we
should have had kale growing all along
here I was doing an over winter um kale
crop but the rats got in and put pay to
most of the cow to my surprise one of
them has actually grown back from a tiny
little stem and so we do have some caval
Nero growing in here but it should have
been all the way down the length of this
also um the spinach has bounced back the
rats chew the spinach right down as well
and actually some of it has come back
really nicely and we’ve been getting
some great harvests of spinach this was
a giant leaf spinach here it’s actually
getting a little bit too hot for the
spinach in here now on the sunny days
we’re actually getting up to about 35°
in here when the sun is shining so the
spinach is getting close to
bolting but yeah really really stoked
that we did end up getting some Harvest
from it because I thought pretty much
this whole side was a loss the spring
onions that we’ve got here we’ll be
harvesting those really soon a couple of
those are pretty much ready actually so
we do have lots of spring onions down
this side lots of beautiful salad and we
let things go to flour because these
flowers also make a really tasty
addition to salads at this time of year
too and come the middle of may all of
this will be stripped out and then we’ll
be planting our summer crops in here so
it’ll be Tomatoes OB jein Peppers all of
the beautiful summer crops
cucumbers they are all going to be being
started from seed or they already are
are in the poly Tunnel right
now this is our second poly tunnel and
in here we are growing an early crop of
new
potatoes and they are coming along
beautifully again like I keep saying the
last two weeks everything has just leapt
into life our sunlight hours haven’t
been great we’ve had a lot of rain well
for the whole of the last year really
but the plants they just still know what
to do they know what time of year it is
and they are growing like mad this
variety here is our earliest and our
strongest variety we’ve got four
different varieties in here they’re all
kind of coming through at different
stages we’re going to be sharing a lot
more about our early potatoes so stay
tuned for that video but we will be
harvesting these before the middle of
may excuse me and then this poly tunnel
will also be being turned over to all
the summer crops we do more tomatoes in
here and this tunnel we also grow lots
of different melons in which is an
absolute delight and I just sewed the
seed of all of our melons yesterday so
if melons is something that you have got
an inside space that you can grow
yourself then I would highly recommend
them and get sewn the seeds as soon as
possible because they do need quite a
long season to grow
so another crop that we tried in this
poly tunnel for the first time last year
and also outside is tarot and as you can
see tarot has this beautiful tropical
leaf and the leaves get really really
big and then we enjoyed harvesting the
beautiful tuba that grows under the
ground and Tarot isn’t something you
hear a lot about in this country but Dan
is really passionate about exotic crops
and so this is something that we’re
doing lots of trials with to see if we
can hone growing it in the UK and we had
a really good harvest last year for our
first year so these are plants that here
has
overwintered so we should have even more
of a head than last year um which will
hopefully give us a better yield overall
so we’ve got some plants here and then
he’s got some more plants under the net
here and this this one here is known as
a tree tomato or a tamarillo and I
actually grew that when I lived in New
Zealand and they kind of produce a fruit
which looks a bit like a cross between a
plum and a tomato and this plant was
actually gifted to us from Craig at grow
Paradise so you can check out his
YouTube channel as well he also loves
growing lots of tropical plants here in
the
UK and this is where it all begins in
here this is where we start all of our
seeds um we use these propagation domes
uh for protection from Bratz and mice
because a few years ago I did all of my
first sewings left the wall out the
first night and they all got dug up
overnight so we have learned again every
year we’ gardening we learn so much they
also really help to increase the
humidity and keep the soil temperatures
up and keep everything nice and moist as
well so just yesterday I sewed all of
our melons as I was just saying I also
sewed some lofers and some Armenian
cucumbers we’ve got Tomatoes coming on
really well here we’ve got about four
different varieties of tomatoes a
mixture of cherry tomato
and bigger beef steak
tomatoes um we’ve got Peppers so sweet
peppers and also hot peppers coming on
here and some Ober jeans I always find
particularly with the hot peppers I get
quite patchy germination so I do always
sew a lot more of those than I need and
sometimes like last year we end up with
a lot more hot chili plants than we
anticipated but that’s okay with we’ve
got bagfuls of chilies in the freezer
which we are still enjoying
now I’ve got Cape gurries coming on here
that we also have in our poly tunnels um
a second sewing of um spring onions
we’ve got some flowers some more greens
and lettuce garlic kale is something I’m
growing for the first time this year
that I’m really excited to
try we’ve got lots of onions here this
was my first sewing of
onions more herbs coming through this is
parsley parsley takes a long time to
germinate so it’s a bit behind the other
things I sewed it with again more herbs
in this tray we’ve got deal
coriander uh celery coming
through a second sewing of lettuce for
this year that will be going into um the
bed uh bed two
outside more onions
and these are just the spare plants that
are left over from my plantin over the
last week and it is a good idea to hold
a few plants back because if things um
get munched or if you lose plants then
it’s good to have a couple that you can
put back in to feel the gaps but April
is just about the biggest month you can
get for sewing seed and I will be doing
a lot more sewing over the next few
weeks you can pretty much sew everything
in April the next big sewing I’ll be
doing will be things like cucumbers
corett
pumpkins all of those gorgeous crops
that we will be enjoying through summer
and right into autumn and winter next
year so you may be thinking that growing
all of this food seems like a lot of
effort and you’re right it is however
growing all of this beautiful fresh food
saves us a lot of money and gives us
Security in a nonfinancial
way and this gives us back the most
precious gift of all which is time and
freedom I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing
what we’re growing and hearing our plans
for the season ahead if you have enjoyed
this video today then please make sure
that you click the thumbs up button just
down below also leave us some comments
letting us know what your plans are for
your garden this year we love hearing
from you guys as well and hearing what
you have to share
too make sure you’re subscribed to our
Channel also if you haven’t already and
we will catch you here for another video
soon thanks for watching guys peace and
plants
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]