Growing Your Own Dinner - Gardening with Brendan - video Dailymotion

Derry Journal

One of the most popular eco trends these days revolves around growing your own food and it is, indeed, a great way to cut down on costs and your carbon footprint. It’s also better for your health. But is it hard to do?

Transcript

00:00Good morning, today I'm going to be sowing some lettuce. I'll just be taking you around

00:20to show you some of the vegetables that I've been growing as well. Some of them from seed,

00:26some of them from a garden centre. I'm also going to try and plant some spuds. I'll show

00:35you here, just spuds that have gone bad with loads of eyes on them. I don't know if anything

00:41will come of that but I'll throw them in. I've got these gold bags here. I just need

00:47to get more compost for this. I'll leave them. These are Morris Piper potatoes and I have

00:55two types. An old packet of lettuce seeds here and a newer one here. I've prepared some

01:08seed trays. I'm just soaking them in water here at the minute. I'm just going to throw

01:13these in and see if they come up. We'll just get on that now and then I'll take you around

01:19and show you a few of the things that I've been growing. You can just see behind me here.

01:23I'll just take you around.

01:29These are, although they're a fruit, they'll be used as a vegetable in salads and things

01:34like that but you can see this is tomatoes now. They're about five foot in height, grown

01:40from seed back in February. You can see the wee cherry tomatoes here. There's two types

01:49of tomatoes in here. There's some money maker which are an average sized tomato and the

01:55one down here if you can see it. I'll focus on it. It's green at the moment but it's growing

02:14rapidly. It'll take a month or two to turn red. But I haven't pinched these tomatoes

02:23or anything so they're quite spindly but there's loads of flowers on them. Little yellow flowers

02:33you can see there. So these will add some more over there. So hopefully these will all

02:40turn into tomatoes. I just love the smell of tomato plants as well. I'll be using some

02:48of the leaves. They make fragrance as well later in the summer with some flowers and

02:55some herbs and things like that.

02:58So we'll get the seeds into the trays now. Firstly I'm going to do these older lettuce.

03:09These seeds might be redundant but we'll give it a go. I might as well use them up. I have

03:16here quite a lot of lemons. I'll just show you them up close now. Different colours of

03:28seeds. These are both mixed. Different types of lettuce. These are pretty dry. The soil

03:37is pretty dry as well. You can see there I'm watering from underneath through. It's just

03:49a wee tray with water on it. I'm just going to soak the top of them too.

04:19You can see what happened there. This is actually, there's a real smell of garlic in there now.

04:24This is actually garlic spray from what I've been trying to protect the plants with. That

04:29will do no harm. So just throw a couple in each cell. Actually on top of it, more than

04:40a couple. There's just so many of them. I'm just going to press them down so that they

04:59have good contact with the soil. What I'll do now is get some more. I'll just take a

05:11wee bit from here and push that into the top of them. I haven't been growing a lot of vegetables

05:31this year. I have some sprouts, some broccoli, watercress and some Swiss chard too that I

05:42planted about a month ago and that's in the greenhouse there. It's started to come up

05:48and I'll only put it on pretty soon. In the next few days. I think next year I'd like

05:59to do a lot more in terms of vegetables. I have a lot of seeds, a lot of old seeds. Things

06:08like carrots, parsnips. I bought some new herbs and things like that but they were too

06:15late to plant this year so hopefully next year I'll be in well.

06:26This is the newer pack of seeds now. I've just made wee holes here so I don't have to

06:32go and get more. I've kind of ploughed out of that storage box. As you can see, a very

06:41similar looking mix anyway. Some light, some dark. Then again, just going to pour the whole

06:53lot in, see what comes up, see what doesn't. This is probably far too many seeds for the

07:04amount of cells but we'll throw them in and see what happens.

07:23You can always send them out later if you get good results from them.

07:39Now some of these are on the surface. I'm not really sure. I haven't looked up any expert

07:46tutorials or anything on growing lettuce but I've heard they're pretty easy to grow so

07:51we'll see what happens. So somewhere under this side, somewhere on top of this side.

07:56It's giving a good watering now. I'm just going to move these out to the greenhouse.

08:04That's not really a greenhouse, it's just a very small plastic version but it's worked

08:11very well for me this year. So I'll move these out and then I'll take you around and I'll

08:16show you what else has been growing.

08:21That's the lettuce seeds now out here in the wee greenhouse and I'll just show you some

08:27of the other things that are growing. So this is some more tomatoes which have been, these

08:33were in with the others but it became a bit of a crowded house in those pots so I took

08:38them out and I put them into these other pots and left them outside just to see how they'd

08:43fare. Now they've done alright. Plenty of flowers, they're actually a bit bushier looking

08:50probably because they have a lot more room. This one up here I've just noticed today has

08:56already got some tomatoes on it as well. Plenty more flowers and it's hitting the ceiling

09:03here so I may have to move it down. This is mint beside it which I'm growing for to make

09:13a fragrance later on in the year and here we have some lavender growing from seed which

09:21is already smelling incredible and that too will be thrown in with the tiara oil and the

09:27alcohol to make the perfume and some oxide daisies and here we have some Swiss chard

09:36which are coming up and need transplanted pretty soon because their roots will be coming

09:43through. So I'm putting them in an Argo bag as well to get a bit more compost. So we'll

09:51just take you around and show you a few other things. Here's some watercress as well. It

09:59takes a lot of water. This is looking a bit dry but this is how big it gets. Here's the

10:05same watercress as we tiny sort of garnish on dishes but if you let it grow it grows

10:12very big and you can throw it on the salads and all sorts. It's got like a peppery strange

10:17taste but it's very very good for you. And up here in this raised bed it's very very

10:28crowded. This is, on this side is all brussel sprouts. Planted far too close together I

10:34didn't realise how big these would get. So you can see in there there's just, there's

10:42about a dozen in here but they're all looking very healthy but there's just too many of

10:47them in the one spot so I may have to dig some of them out. These were bought as tiny

10:54wee plants in the garden centre. I did have some peas in here but I don't think, no they've

11:02been eaten. They had come into flower but they weren't getting any light in a way because

11:08of these others. And here is broccoli grown from seed and this is looking brilliant and

11:15now you can, it's the first time there you can see the heads of broccoli coming on. There's

11:22another one too, yep. And another. Ah here's an even bigger one. So these are all doing

11:31great, every one of them now. These were just thrown out to the elements, the curly and

11:36the spring. Survived everything and are looking very healthy actually, so pleased with that.

11:45But as a result over here I've got more sprouts, I really like Brussels sprouts. Some of these

11:53were completely eaten in the ground, you can see there's some damage but these are a wee

12:00bit more spaced out and most of them have survived, surprisingly. And I'll just give

12:11you a quick look around the flower bed here, everything's sort of shooting up in height

12:16because they're all competing for space now. And there's a lot more flowers opening. And

12:23you can see here, these are wee sweet alyssum and just all sorts of wee flying bugs, I'm

12:30loving them. Up the back here we have some sweet pea coming on, hollyhocks taking off

12:36as well, they probably won't flower until next year. Some lupins which I wasn't expecting

12:43to flower this year, they were planted from seed in March and they're up. These are California

12:48poppies and corn flowers, planted from seed. These are great growers now and they only

12:54open when there's a wee bit of sunshine. But these caddisha, there's a million heads on

13:01these but they haven't opened yet, but they're all about to. And this is some baby's breath,

13:07a nice white in amongst the colours. This is marjoram, which is coming on the bud as

13:14well. And here we have a white, a kind of creamy white California poppy, which is unusual,

13:27I've never seen one of those actually. That's pretty interesting. And then a whole sea of

13:35marigolds, well pot marigolds, and these big giant poppies. These seeds are about six years

13:46old, I didn't expect these to do anything, I actually thought they were radishes because

13:52a couple came up and were radishes, you can just see here in the ground. The radishes

14:00are getting nibbled at, but the little white flowers are the radish flowers. I have to

14:07say there's a ton of bees and other insects making use of all this, which is great to

14:13see. And just up along here you can see nasturtiums are doing what I wanted them to do, which

14:19is shooting out over the pavement, creating that cottage garden effect. Here's some of

14:29the lupins, different colours. And at the back there, sweet pea. And there's some white

14:39stasis. So there's a lot coming up here, some pansies, some lobelia that were left over

14:50from pots. It's quite random looking, which is what I wanted, I didn't want a kind of

15:00formal looking patch, I wanted a cottage garden style, so it's working out ok. And

15:09around here we've got, this is all rosemary, which is starting to take off. Growing from

15:15seed as well, cold stratification, this is more lavender. Very slow growing, but these

15:24will come back every year, so you expect that with perennials, that they will be slower

15:30to take off, because they're in no rush. The annuals have to do everything in one year,

15:37so they tend to grow up faster. Here we have some strawberries. Ah, they're ripe. I better

15:48get picking these, I don't know, there's two different varieties here. There's another

15:53one, they're a bit dry looking, so I'll get them watered while they're looking. Blueberries

15:59haven't really been doing well. Oh, some more strawberries, ripe for the picking. There's

16:11a lot on there, and there's another big one. So that's great, it's a blackcurrant bush,

16:18and that is basically everything. I don't know what this was here, I think it was a

16:25seed that I just threw in, for the blueberries, but it's kind of taken over, the blueberry

16:31bush. I think that's a cosmos too or something there, in there, I'm not sure what that is.

16:38But, here's the first cosmos flower. Other seeds I grew, more marigolds, night-scented

16:47flocks, it's started to bud. And that is everything I think, here.

17:08Thanks for watching!

Growing Your Own Dinner - Gardening with Brendan

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