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How to grow your own fruit and veg in a small family garden
Is it possible to grow enough produce to feed yourself if you don’t have a lot of outdoor space? A gardener and a chef decided to find out – here’s what they discovered. By Sharon Smith
Self-sufficiency has become a buzzword in recent years, as more and more people turn to growing their own vegetables and fruit, both to save money and for the pleasure and sense of reward it brings. But how much is it really possible to grow if you don’t own a lot of land? It’s a question that inspired Huw Richards and Sam Cooper to run an experiment to see whether they could become self-sufficient over a year in food grown on a plot the size of an average UK garden.
Richards, whose YouTube and Instagram gardening videos have had more than 100 million views in total, calculated that they could grow 365kg of food over one year from a site measuring just 10m x 12.5m. So they decided to write a book about the experiment – a practical self-help guide to show people how they can grow their own and what to do with it in the kitchen, advising growers on how to cope with gluts and shortages from their plot, including how to interchange ingredients and combine flavours.
“I want to free people from rigid recipes by talking about how flavours interact with each other,” says Cooper, 35, a professional chef and author. “We don’t like the idea that recipes dictate what people are growing. It should be the other way round. So you go into the garden, pick what is ready, then go into the kitchen and think, ‘What am I making now?’ It’s land-first cooking.”
“It’s a forage-first mentality. Forage first, create later,” says Richards, 25, an author who also started his own YouTube gardening channel when he was 12. He has 796,000 subscribers on YouTube and 192,000 followers on Instagram.
Growing your own ensures a food supply, saves money and provides “fresh air, exercise, nutrition and the best flavours”, says Cooper, who has 559,000 followers on Instagram as Chef Sam Black. “With any homegrown crop you will taste the world of difference – and with no pesticides or plastic wrapping.”
The idea for the experiment first took root after the pair met in late 2019. Richards had already been thinking about extending his gardening tips into the kitchen, so he asked Cooper to join forces with him on his YouTube channel.
Last year, they decided to run their year-long experiment and to record their experience. The plot is on a site they have leased in Aberystwyth, Wales, where they both live. The experiment follows Richards’s three basic tenets: “How to create a healthy soil; how succession planting works; how to be flexible in the kitchen. There are other things, but those three comprise the Holy Trinity of self-sufficiency skills.”
Laying the groundwork
Before you attempt to grow anything, you need to prepare your soil.
“It’s the foundation. It’s better to grow less in higher-quality soil than more in low quality,” says Richards. “To address almost any problem you encounter in the garden you need to add organic matter to the soil, such as well-rotted manure and compost, because that’s going to balance it out.”
Planning is also key. Richards drew up a detailed month-by-month planting plan for more than 50 crop varieties. About 80 per cent are vegetables, 10 per cent herbs, and 10 per cent fruit.
“Fruit is a lot less productive, so it’s a nice supplementary thing,” he says. He selected vegetable varieties for their ease of growth, taste and productivity – for example, vegetables offering more than one food source, such as onions, whose leaves can be eaten as an alternative to spring onions, and beetroot, whose leaves can also be eaten, as well as the root.
Food for all seasons
The first seeds were sown on March 1 2023. Richards’s plan covers year-round growing, including using handmade hotbeds – where organic matter decomposes in an enclosed frame – to enable you to sow seeds in March to harvest in