Hey everybody, Rob Greenfield here and
today I'm going to share with you some of
the most easy and abundant foods to grow
for those of you that are in a colder
climate, so this applies to people across
much of the Northern United States,
Northern Europe and around many climates
around the world. So if that fits you and
you want to grow a lot of food in your
garden and have a lot of food on your
table then this is definitely the video for you.
A lot of you know me for my year
of growing and foraging 100% of my food
where literally everything that I ate
for a year was either from my garden or foraged.
But I did that in Florida in a very hot
climate where I could grow food year
around. A lot of people saw what I did
and they thought "Oh, you can only do this because you're in a warm climate"
but the truth is: warm climate, cold climate,
as long as you work within your
region you can grow an incredible amount
of food, and a lot of the most
self-sufficient people that I've ever
met live in cold climate places like
Wisconsin or Ohio or New York so there's
so many foods that you can grow it's
just about growing what grows well and
abundantly in your area. So when I'm
talking about easiest and most abundant;
easiest means they grow really well, it's
hard to kill them, even if you have what
you consider a black thumb there's a
good chance you'll be able to grow these
and walk away feeling like you have a
green thumb.
And then abundant means that
they produce a lot of food but there's a
second part to that and that is that
they produce a substantial amount of
food on your plate and that they'll
actually be able to fill yourself up and
fill your pantry up to get through the
winter, because that's the key in the
colder climates if you want to grow a
large portion of your food - it's that you
produce as much as you can during those
growing months during the growing season
and then you store it in jars,
in freezers, dehydrating it and such,
in order to be able to make it through the
winter with the food from your garden.
So these foods are gonna help you
drastically reduce the number of times
that you need to go to the grocery store
and drastically increase the nutrition and
the abundance that you're getting
straight at home or on your farm right
where you are.
I have to start with the potato.
One thing that a lot of people
have the hardest time with is calories,
now I wanted to show you this potato in
particular, it might look crazy to a lot
of you but this is a potato that has
been stored in the pantry for about six
or seven months now. I'm in Southern
France and it's mid-May, and this was put
into the pantry in around October or November.
So these store for a very long time, so
as far as your calories go potatoes are
gonna be one of the most calorie dense,
producing a large bulk of your food and
they store really well so this knocks
out two really important things and the
potatoes that are left over that you
don't eat - this one right here
could be planted to produce more so that
is the wonderful potato.
The second one I
want to share with you is pumpkins and I
am in love with pumpkins, not just the
ones you see that you make
jack-o'-lanterns out of, there's many
different shapes, colors and sizes of
pumpkins. This is just a beautiful one at
the farm that I'm staying at. Pumpkins
are amazing because they store a really
long time, again it's May and this is
from the last season and it's just as
good as can be and you can also eat the
seeds, you can eat the skin - in a matter
of fact I will take the entire thing
except the stem and blend it up into a
soup. So pumpkin and different winter
squashes, they provide a lot of
sustenance, nutrients and a lot of them
are very easy to grow. Grow the ones that
are adapted to your climate.
Now next I want to share summer squashes,
so zucchini - this actually is more of a
winter squash but it looks kind of like
a summer squash so I'm using it.
Now, zucchinis are truly amazing.
I've traveled through Washington, through Wisconsin, through New York,
all across the Northern United States
and people tell me that they have so
many zucchinis that they
have to try to give them away but they
can't because everybody has so many of
them. They get huge, you can eat him when
they're giant or you can eat them when
they're small if you want them to be
more tender, so zucchinis are a must
for a huge amount of sustenance and
being extremely easy to grow.
The next one I want to talk about is beans
and beans are truly incredible, you can
either eat them fresh, right off of the
vine or the bush, there's there's pole
beans and there's bush beans, you can eat
them fresh, you can wait for them to dry
on the vine to have dried beans like you
would buy at the store, like your pinto
beans or your black beans or your lentils.
Or you can can them, these are
canned ones for example and another way
to store them is freezing them, so the
freezer is a really great way to store
food, it generally costs only a few
dollars a month to run a deep chest
freezer and you can store a few hundred
pounds of food. So again, one of the most
important things in the colder climates
is storing the abundance. Canning is one
way to do that, freezing is another and then
there's drying as well and then jams, I'll
show those as well there's also the
pantry for things like potatoes and
carrots that can store in the pantry.
So there's a lot of different ways to store
your food and that's the key. Beans are
very easy, very abundant and I also want
to mention peas which are kind of my
runner up to beans but very easy to grow
for a lot of people, some people have
problems with them and they're not
nearly as filling as beans but peas are
another really great crop as well.
Alright the next one is carrots, this is
definitely a favorite for me although to
be honest I just love all foods that
grow really abundantly and easily, I mean,
so this is a great video for me to be
filming because this is my passion.
But carrots, now these carrots have been
stored in boxes of sand in a cold pantry,
again these have been stored for about
six months so they're not your fresh,
super crisp ones, but let me give this a
bite - (chews) that's still pretty crunchy
these are about six months stored, well,
it's actually uh, wow, they're even sweet still,
nice, not as flavorful as some carrots
that I've had, but sweet, so these
can be stored, they can be canned as well,
I love to make carrot juice, I mean
that's one of my favorite things so
carrots that's an important one. And I
want to mention with carrots - beets, now
for a lot of people beets are super easy,
some people beets have been a challenge
so I don't necessarily consider them the
most easy but I have to mention them
because they can be very abundant for
some people, they're very easy but if you
grow beets you have to eat the greens, if
you're wasting the greens
you're wasting some of the best
nutrients and taste, they're one of the
most incredible greens if you ask me.
They're, they're absolutely my favorite
or one of my top favorite greens so
carrots and beets. To continue on I want
to mention a few more root vegetables
and that would be radishes and turnips.
So radishes are one of the easiest foods
to grow and you can actually harvest
radishes in about 30 days, the small
radishes, they're one of the fastest
growing crops that there are and you can
grow daikon radishes which get really
huge and I grew a lot of daikon radish
in Florida. And then turnips, turnips can
be pretty easy to grow as well, they are
a nice root they go really well with
potatoes and beets and carrots baked
together. I love baked turnip.
Living off of garden doesn't mean living
without flavor, in fact it can mean a really
delicious garden full of flavor, this
food can be grown right here and you can
harvest it within moments before you're
putting it on your plate so you can get
some of the most delicious foods that you'll ever eat.
But I really like, in order to have that for
me there's some key ingredients - onions
are one of them, herbs are as well which
I'll get into pretty soon. Now onions can
be extremely easy - I want to say that you
might have a hard time getting those big
giant onions that you would get at the
store, that's not something that every
gardener or beginner gardener will be
able to get. It's more likely that you'll
be able to be successful with small
bulbs and the other thing that's really
one of the easiest is bunching onions
and you can eat the greens. Now you can
eat the Greens of all onions as well and
actually if you eat just the right amount
you'll get a crop of green onions and then
a crop of the bulbs as well. So the
smaller ones are generally easier
for beginner gardeners.
Another one that I want to mention is garlic.
Now garlic is super important to me, it's a
wonderful medicine, it adds an incredible
amount of flavor. For some people they
found garlic to be super easy, it's a
little bit more of a challenging one
because you plant it in the fall and
then harvest it in the late spring. It
sits under the snow for the winter so
that makes it not quite the easiest, it's
a little more challenging especially for
beginners but it can be pretty easy. With
garlic this is a clove - pop that in the
ground, starts to sprout and then you've
got garlic. Now if you're not successful
with the bulbs you can grow it just for
its greens and you can get really, really
productive, abundant greens out of garlic
and they're very strong - that was quite
strong just like garlic. So onions and
garlic, those are also extremely
important for preserving food when
you're canning, and adding to soups,
those really fill out the meal and add a
whole lot of flavor.
I want to talk to you about greens now
and greens are where you get a lot of your nutrients.
They're one of the things that makes the
most sense to grow locally rather than
having them be shipped, they take up a huge
amount of space and they really are just
one thing that does not make sense to be
shipping long distance. So this is kale
right here and some of the beginner
greens that are really easy would
include kale, arugula, lettuce, mustard greens, swiss chard, spinach and amaranth.
Those are 7 of the easier ones to grow.
Amaranth, what's really special about
that is it's often self seeding and once
you get it going you'll have amaranth
coming back time and time again.
So greens are one of the most nutrient
dense foods out there and if you can eat
greens every meal you are, you have the
ability to change your life if you're
not eating healthy and they make a huge difference.
Now greens are generally what you're
going to be eating during the the months,
during the the growing season. A lot of
people don't preserve their greens so
much. You can and one of the greens
that's easiest to preserve is sauerkraut.
So this here isn't exactly sauerkraut,
this is more like preserved cabbage,
sauerkraut though comes from cabbage and
you can store away jars and jars and
jars of sauerkraut. It's just salt, cabbage
and not even water. And then you add
other things if you want like herbs.
But literally just salt and cabbage stores
easily for through the winter and it's
delicious, adds so much value to your meal.
The fermentation of it through wild fermentation
actually increases the nutrient value of it
so cabbage is one that grows pretty well,
stores and makes a really value added food
to add to each of your meals. Can't say
enough about sauerkraut. And if you're
interested in wild fermentation check out
Sandor Katz's book called 'Wild Fermentation' - it is a must read if you're going to
get into the storing and fermenting of foods.
Alright, next I want to talk to you about herbs.
These add incredible amount of flavor to
your meals, you can make teas with them and
they are often one of the absolute easiest things to grow.
Some of the herbs that I am going to mention
are basil, dill, cilantro, oregano, rosemary, thyme and mint.
Here is basil, this is being grown in a
greenhouse to get it started, i want to
mention one thing about basil and that's
that it likes heat. So this is more of the
peak of the summer. If you try to grow
this while it's cold in the beginning of the
year you're gonna have a really hard time.
And that's an important thing, growing
the right things at the right time of the year.
Now another herb that I want to mention,
this one is just, I mean for a lot of
people it's a problem because it's so
successful and it reproduces so well
that it takes over a garden. So when I'm
talking about easy and abundant,
mint is the picture plant for that. It
reproduces through these roots and they
just spread through the soil. So all you
have to do is take some roots from a
friends garden, put those down and those
will produce mint. So mint is definitely
one of my top recommendations and it
can end up being a problem, so if you
do plant it, I mean for me when I was a
beginner gardener I said that any plant
that becomes a problem is a friend of
mine and I still generally feel that way.
One thing I want to mention about herbs
and that is some herbs grow really well
from seed, like for example coriander, cilantro.
These are really great to plant from seed.
Now on the other hand mint is a
difficult one to start from seed so for
the one's that are difficult to start from
seed I would recommend buying those
as already started plants from your
local nursery or another gardener or a plant sale or something of that sort.
So, herbs galore, there are so many.
I just named seven but there are
a lot of other easy herbs to grow as well.
Now I want to talk to you about fruit trees
which are totally different from a lot of
these crops, most of these are annual
crops that you have to plant again and again each year.
If you can invest in fruit trees you're
investing in your future. You can plant
fruit trees and now the thing is, you are
investing in the future. To start getting
a lot of apples might take a few years
before you get your first apples and
five years before you start to get a lot,
but you'll have apples for decades to come.
So fruit trees that I recommend -
apples, pears, plums, mulberries and cherries.
Those are some the easiest ones to grow
in those more northern climates.
Apples can store just like this through
the winter, you can freeze them, you
can make jams - there's so much that you
can do with your fresh fruits and you
can also just enjoy incredible amounts
of them during the season. So fruit trees
are definitely a must, you can plant those
around the edges of the property and
make use of that vertical space with fruit trees.
It's starting to rain here in the garden
so I got to cruise through these but
we're getting towards the end.
Keeping along the lines with fruits
I want to mention some berries.
Raspberries and blackberries
generally are the easiest and those can
go crazy and become a problem for a
lot of people. Blueberries, on the other
hand need acidic soil so for a lot of
people they are not a beginner.
Strawberries also can be pretty easy
however generally raspberries and
blackberries are more abundant than
strawberries. So raspberries and
blackberries are my two biggest
recommendations for berries.
But I just want to say there's a lot of
other ones out there, got to mention
juneberries, also called Saskatoon or
service berries are a really great one as well.
Right here I am holding blackberry
chutney, and jams are an incredible thing
to make out of your raspberries and
blackberries. You can store lots and lots
of jam so that is a really, really great
thing about those berries.
Ok, next thing I want to mention is tomatoes.
Tomatoes grow super abundantly for so many
people, and with tomatoes you can make
huge amounts of sauce. I've just realized
how many times I've said 'huge and abundance'
over the last twenty minutes of so but
that's what we're talking about - plants
that produce a huge amount.
I've just said it again!
So, tomatoes, one that I absolutely
recommend in abundance. At my
friend's house this weekend we just planted
over a hundred tomato plants for a
family of four. It's a lot of tomatoes are,
I mean most people love them.
Hot pepper is another one, this is something
that can often grow in huge abundance
and be very easy. I took one seed from a
my friends serrano pepper plant and
that produced over a thousand serrano
peppers, just from that one seed.
Another thing that I want to mention,
sometimes this is a little bit harder but
cucumbers for making pickles.
Alright, I've got two last ones for you.
And these are perennials and with that
I want to mention that I really recommend
perennials. These are plants that grow for
year after year after year rather than
things that you have to plant each year
like carrots. So rhubarb is one of the most
incredible perennials. You plant
rhubarb and about, it will produce
for about twenty five years.
Really recommend rhubarb.
And then lastly we're going to finish
it off with Jerusalem artichoke, also called sunchokes.
And these another one where if you don't
contain them, they can spread though your
garden and they can become wild as well.
They produce a huge amount,
I just said huge again! (laughs)
They produce an incredible amount of food
and they're very tasty and I cook them
basically like a potato.
So there you have it, that is about forty
of my top recommendation for the
easiest and most abundant foods to grow
in your garden, I just want to say there's
a lot more out there. I picked a lot of the
common foods that people have a lot
of experience with and recognise
because it's easier to get started with
that, rather than plants that you might
never heard of - like gooseberries which
grow well in northern climates or like
Moringa Kale and Moringa Kotuk and Chaya which are more
southern climate. So I just want to say
that I did kind of pick things that are
more known but there is a lot of
unknown foods that grow extremely well.
I want to say try your best to get your
seeds locally. Locally adapted seeds will
grow much better in your area because they
are adapted to that area. And then buying
plants from local nurseries that are using
varieties that have been grown in the area
for decades helps a lot. Also for support
join a community garden if you feel like
you have a black thumb, it would be
incredible helpful to be around other
people. And then also volunteer at
farms and gardens. That way you can be
learning and you can be helping at the
same time, and the amount of knowledge
that you gain from volunteering at gardens
and farms is pretty priceless.
I hope that this video has really inspired
you to grow a lot of food this year and
the years to come. Start small, don't feel
like you have to grow all forty of these
crops this year and add on each year as
you start to get better and better.
I'm excited for you to get the out there
and start growing some of your own food.
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And see you again soon!