Planning your vegetable patch - Use your favourite reciepe

Here are my tips to choosing the right vegetables and herbs to grow in your garden. 

  I didn't start with any plan, at first it was "see patch of soil,  plant something," then my plan changed to "look smart, grow as many different things as possible". These plans generally fail as they don't really consider local conditions and nor do they consider the capacity of the grower to eat, store or trade the output. Why grow artichoke if you don't eat it or even like it?

3 years into my farming, self sufficiency, homestead journey I found what worked for me to improve my productivity to the maximin. grab you favourite recipe book, this is easy.

Watch the video or read on.




Growing by cuisine. This is the method of planning I now use and the one that makes most sense to me. I generally like to cook Italian and Thai food so my planning is around producing the necessary ingredients all to be ready at the same time. For example to make a good Italian tomato sauce I'm planting tomatoes, basil, garlic, onions, eggplant and numerous herbs. For Thai food I'll have lemon grass, chillies, a lime tree, a kaffir lime tree, ginger, and coriander as a staple set. In summer its about having the ingredients for a nice salad, types of lettuce, radish, kale, purple cabbage, cucumber, purple onions, celery and carrots.  In winter I'll have potatoes, pumpkins, onions and herbs to add to  stews. I guess in summary my planning process is about growing what I prefer to eat and making sure I have the necessary base ingredients all being ready at the same time.  Don't get me wrong, I still preserve food as well as swap and trade food when I have excess.

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