How I Feed My Family From 1 Container Bed

[00:00:02]Welcome to Lovely Garden where we encourage you to grow your own food the organic way. If you're new here, hi, my name is Vivian. And today I want to show you how much food you can grow in a small container. This specific bed is 8 ft by 1.7 ft and it has so much food, a lot of food on it.

[00:00:25]So, one of the best vegetables that you can grow in a small space, in a container, in your limited garden is spinach. Spinach is so so easy to grow and after transplanting you can start harvesting your spinach between 30 to 40 days. You're going to have a good amount of leaves and also the size will be okay for you to start harvesting.

[00:00:49]Spinach also does well in partial shade.

[00:00:52]So, if you're growing this on your balcony, it's going to do so well. If you're growing it just next to your house where there is shade, that's also fine. If you're also growing it next to a wall or just next to a tree that casts a shade, it that's also fine.

[00:01:09]Spinach does really well and I want to boast because look at this. The myth that is out there is that when you're growing organic food, you can't get such big leaves. It has to be the small ones that are attacked by pests. No, even when you're doing organic farming, you can get leaves as big as this.

[00:01:31]Look at this. 100% organic.

[00:01:35]Pest free, very clean. Yeah? So, even when you're doing organic, you can still get the biggest and the healthiest of vegetables. Let me measure this because I really want to demystify that myth that when you're growing things organically, you can't get big vegetables. They have to be the small ones that look sick and all that. No, this is 1.6 ft long of a leaf of a spinach. Just tell me if I harvest just six of this, I have enough for my dinner. So, I want to encourage you to grow your spinach because spinach is so easy to grow. We harvested this spinach together. You saw me prepare this bed and plant this spinach. And I had planted sweet potatoes here previously. The sweet potatoes didn't do well.

[00:02:30]And then we planted the spinach. And this bed, the wood we're using is recycled.

[00:02:38]Nothing new, nothing crazy. This is just recycled material, something that we've made from scratch. It's just a DIY. And then the soil, it's not also it's not bought. It's not a potting mix or anything fancy. It's just soil that we get here and our soil is really bad.

[00:02:54]It's the black cotton. It's just like clay soil.

[00:02:58]So, it get really compacted.

[00:03:00]>> [snorts] >> And then when it rains, it gets really mushy and it's it's it's hard it's one of those difficult soils to work with.

[00:03:09]But that is what we are growing all these beautiful vegetables in. So, what we do to our black cotton, we usually add a bit of sand, river sand. So, that one helps.

[00:03:21]It helps with drainage and it also helps with aeration. Another thing that has been helping me is compost. And my compost is also nothing fancy. It is one of those lazy compost. The ones where I don't even do measurements, I don't do ratios. I just dump my browns, the dry leaves and the and the grass and things like that. If I get the wet leaves, the fresh leaves and weeds, I dump them there. If I have kitchen scraps, I kitchen uh kitchen scraps from my kitchen. I dumped them there.

[00:03:55]It's just like that. It's just for dumping things. So, it has no ratios.

[00:04:01]It's just a lazy compost. But still, uh even that way, I'm still able to get uh compost. This is what we use to um amend our soil with, and it has really helped. As you can see for yourself, these are 1 2 3 4 Around seven plants of spinach, and yet we are going to get a very good harvest from this. Another thing I do is I make sure to mulch. So, I use uh wood shavings, but you can do you can use hay, you can use the some clippings from the tree, the shredded ones. You can also I see other people using Is it wool from sheep?

[00:04:41]Yeah, whatever you have, you can use it.

[00:04:43]Um so, yeah, that's what I'm using to That's what I'm using to mulch this bed.

[00:04:50]Another vegetable that I'm growing in this bed, because one thing on Lively Garden in Lively Garden on Lively Garden, we don't do monocropping because that is disastrous. So, we try to mix as many vegetables as we can. We try to do companion planting as much as possible.

[00:05:08]So, away from the spinach, maybe we can also have a look at these kale, which is also not small. Imagine if I planted like five of these. Look at this leaf. It's also as big as the spinach leaves. And it's so healthy. We don't have aphids.

[00:05:28]I have not sprayed anything on them. So, right now I wish I planted more kales. They would be looking so beautiful just next to the spinach, but I only planted this one.

[00:05:42]But that's fine, because I have planted other kales um on one of my other beds and it also looks very very very very healthy. Again, you can get very big leaves even if you're doing organic farming.

[00:05:59]You see how they say when you go to the shop and you want to know if something is organic, you look for the one that is small and you look the one that and you look for the one that has been nibbled on by pest. Sometimes that is not the case because mine is big and clean and it is organic.

[00:06:18]Anyway, um, the next thing we're planting on this 8 ft by um, almost 2 ft 8 by 2 uh, container is spring onions. So, I made sure to plant uh, spring onions or bunching onions just next to my spinach.

[00:06:37]One for pest control and also and another thing is because we consume a lot of um, onions. So, those are one of those things that we use every day. When you're starting a garden on any when you're doing a garden, one thing I always advise people is just sit down and ask yourself, what is it that we use every day in our garden?

[00:07:01]Because if you just go into planting blindly, you will just plant things that you see other people plant and maybe you don't even use them. I'm sure there are people here who plant radish just because they see other people planting radish and they end up not eating them.

[00:07:15]So, don't plant things just because other people are planting. Plant things that you actually consume. Things that will actually help you save money. So, spring onions is that thing which I must plant in the garden and I've also planted the chives. I want them to the garlic chive.

[00:07:38]I want it to multiply.

[00:07:40]So, those are three vegetables that we have already tackled, which we have planted on this 8 ft by 2 ft bed, and maybe we can move on to another vegetable.

[00:07:54]So, another thing we are planting on this our one bed is lettuce. So, I also use lettuce a lot, especially for breakfast. You see, when you're taking a sandwich, for example, when you just have bread and eggs, it always feels like something is missing. But, when you just add lettuce, a leaf, just a leaf of lettuce, it elevates that sandwich. Takes it to the next level. So, I always plant um what? I always plant lettuce. I love this lettuce. I don't know if this is what we call loose leaf, but it's the one that does not form a head like a cabbage. So, I find it very easy because one slugs don't hide as much. Like, you're able to spot the uh the slugs.

[00:08:43]The other one that looks like a cabbage, it's so easy for slugs to hide in there, and you might not be able to see them.

[00:08:50]But, this one looks like a spinach, so it opens up. The leaves are loose and separate. So, you can be able to see through and see if there are any pests hiding, if there are any slugs hiding.

[00:09:01]Another thing I love about this specific lettuce is that you don't have to harvest the whole head. You can just be removing the single leaf as you need them. So, I have These are just two lettuce heads, as you can see, and they're doing so so so well. And I also have others uh which I've planted as companion not companion, succession planting. Such that when this one gets a bit old, then I will have another batch ready uh for harvesting.

[00:09:37]So, I have planted [clears throat] the lemon thyme. I really love this in my black tea. It's [snorts] like a substitute for lemon. It smells like lemon. It tastes like lemon. It is very good for your tea, and you can also use it as a marinade for your chickens and your white meats. I always talk about planting herbs at the edges of your garden if you're using a raised garden, but even if you're planting on ground, uh it's advisable to plant herbs at the edges because they help to repel the pests. Like this one has a really strong lemon scent, like I had mentioned, and that will help to dis- to deter some pests. And also with time, they do produce some flowers, some white flowers, and also those ones help to attract the good uh pest or the good insects in your garden. So, in this my small bed, I have also planted tomatoes. So, I have three tomato plants. So, you can always throw in uh a few tomato plants. You can plant it in the middle of the bed because they grow taller. That means it will grow taller than the rest of the plants, and it won't be shaded. So, you can plant it at the middle, or you can plant it at the edge at the far end. So, for this specific uh bed, I have planted my tomato plants at the edges of the bed.

[00:11:00]So, we have one plant there, and we have two plants here. Can't remember what variety they are, but they look healthy.

[00:11:11]I'll show you how the fruits look like once we get to that stage. But this is how you maximize space, and this is how you get a lot of food in a small space in a container. This is a lot of food.

[00:11:25]You get your onions, you get your spinach or Swiss chard, you get your kales, you get your lettuces, which is a lot. I can use this lettuce for a long period of time. You also get your herbs cuz apart from the lemon thyme which we've just mentioned, I also have some garlic chives. And apart from the garlic chives, I also have celery. And everything seems to be doing fine and they are all coexisting.