Saving seeds can go a long way towards creating a sustainable lifestyle. Seeds have the power to grow an endless supply of food if they are continuously saved. Saving your own seeds will not only provide you with a sustainable food source but will also save you money in replenishing your seeds each year.
Saving your seeds is a great step towards self-sufficiency and when a world crisis happens, (hello 2020) the seed shelves are empty. People become more aware that they are relying on others to provide for them. Having your own seeds will mean you will have more resilience and can be more self-reliant.
Saving seeds from your best vegetables will help you develop your own SUPER plants! Selecting for pest resilience, size, strength, taste or timing, means you can grow more plants with those desired traits.
You will also get seeds and vegetables that are acclimatised to your exact growing conditions. They have adapted to their surroundings and will thrive! If you are already growing these vegetables you may as well save the seeds!
Can you save any seeds?
Heirloom or open-pollinated seeds are the best to save. These are varieties have been passed down for generations and have been bred “true to type”. This means they haven’t been cross-pollinated so they will produce the same or very similar vegetables each time they are planted.
Hybrid seeds have been cross-pollinated with two different varieties to get the 3rd outcome. The seeds saved from these can have extremely varied results, that can often be less desirable.
Over the years many heirloom seed varieties have been lost forever as more and more hybrid seeds are produced by large corporations that control the market. Saving your own heirloom seeds can help keep those varieties alive for future generations.
Saving seeds from the best-performing vegetables in your garden is such a valuable skill to have. It means you will have direct access to high-performing vegetables that you know and love.
Our family have tomato seeds that have been passed down from our grandpa and they produce the most incredible tomatoes for making sauce! Each year we grow the tomatoes and come together to make a big batch of tomato sauce. It is a fun, family tradition.
Annuals, Biennials, and Perennials
Not all plants go to seed in the first season. Annuals are often most of your common seasonal vegetables such as lettuce, tomatoes, watermelon, pumpkin, beans, peas and cucumbers. These produce seeds at the end of each crop or are in the ripe fruit. This means you can save the seeds from these each year. By choosing the best fruit and vegetables to save seeds from, each year your plants will get better depending on the desired traits you have selected for eg: biggest fruit, best flavour, most pest resistant.
Biennials will only go to seed in their second season and you will need to keep them growing throughout winter. This can mean you need to transplant them to a greenhouse if your winters are too cold. Biennials can be a little trickier to save seeds from. They also take up a lot of space whilst not producing much food while you wait for the seeds. These are many of the root vegetables and vegetables such as beetroot, carrot, onions, cabbage, kale, rainbow chard, and cauliflower.
Perennials are even trickier again as they are plants that regrow by themselves every year such as asparagus. It is often easier to transplant perennials by splitting the plant and transplanting than saving seeds.
Cross-Pollinating Varieties
When deciding to save seeds from your heirloom vegetables make sure that they are not getting cross-pollinated. Pollination can happen from insects or even wind for some varieties. So it is best to keep varieties of the same vegetable separate and in different corners of the garden. Another great way to protect and avoid cross-pollination is to stagger your planting. So if you want to plant two different types of tomatoes then plant them so that the first variety has finished flowering before the second one starts. This will just help ensure you get true-to-type seeds and know exactly what tomatoes you will have to plant the next year.
If you are growing multiple varieties at the same time, they may cross-pollinated but you can still save the seeds as this process will be good practice. If you plant those seeds out it will be a bit of an experiment to see what will regrow.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun and try to cross-pollinate each season and see what happens.
Wait Until They’re Mature
Many fruit and vegetable seeds are only viable once they become over-ripe. This means you may miss out on getting to eat them. To save the seeds from vegetables you want to leave them on the plant until they are either dry or with fruit such as tomato and cucumbers they should be so over-ripe that they are starting to rot or go way past eating quality. This is how they naturally produce seeds in the wild.
Plants such as lettuce, celery, chard and radish will send off flowers once they get ripe and then these flowers will turn to seed pods. You will want to wait until the seed pods start to go brown and dry before harvesting for seeds.
Selecting Plants to Save Seeds From
This is an important step to make sure you save the best seeds! It can also be one of the hardest steps to commit to, as you will often have to forfeit eating that top-performing vegetable. If you see the perfect cucumber or tomato growing during the season, you will have to let it go overripe and bad before saving the seeds. This can often be disheartening, but just remember you will have even better crops in the years to follow!
Selecting “the best” vegetables to save seeds from is completely up to you. You may select for the biggest fruit, best tasting, plants that produce a lot, early fruiting, cold-hardy, disease-resistant, colour, or pest resistant.
How to Save Seeds?
There are two main ways to save seeds depending on the plants.
1 . Wait for the flowers to turn to seed or the seed pods to dry on the plant (beans, peas, flowers, radish, parsley, fennel). Once dry, pick and allow them to dry even further. Seed heads such as flowers can be hung upside down with the seeds heads secured in a paper bag. Once they are completely dry, you can shake off the seeds into the bag.
For seed pods such as beans, peas, and radish, once they are completely dry, you can remove the seeds from the pods and place them in a jar or brown paper bag. This can be quite time-consuming, especially with smaller seed pods.
2. Let fruit or vegetables go overripe on the plant to mature the seeds. They may change colour or start to break down ( tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, chilli, capsicum, squash).
Once they are overripe, pick them and cut them open to reveal the seeds. Clean off the flesh and dry.
FermentFleshy Fruit Seeds
When saving seeds from fleshy fruits such as cucumbers, melons, or tomatoes, it can be hard to separate out the slimy layer surrounding the seed. This layer is to protect the seed when it is ingested by animals, birds, or from soil bacteria, and allows the seed to make it safely to the next season.
In nature, the fruit will rot on the plant producing mature seeds, then fall to the ground and the slimy film will protect the seed while the soil bacteria and microbes start breaking it down. Then, by the time the soil has warmed up again the following season, the seed will be ready to burst into life! This is why your volunteer tomatoes that grow from the compost are so hardy and fast-growing! They have been processed correctly.
We can mimic nature by squeezing the fresh fleshy seeds into a jar of filtered water to ferment (will be stinky) for a few days. Leave a lid loosely on the top of the jar and you will notice a white film starting to cover the surface. This is the lacto-fermenting process.
The viable seeds will be at the bottom of the jar and the bad seeds will float. Once the film covers the top of the surface you can separate off the bad seeds, rinse your seeds, dry them, and store them.
The easiest way to do this, is to dry them on a paper towel and when they are completely dry fold it up and place them in a brown paper bag or jar to store.
Is Fermenting Necessary?
No, you can simply rinse your seeds and dry them out. The fermenting phase helps eliminate the bad seeds, remove the protective layer and kill off some of the seed-borne diseases.
Dry the Seeds Completely
You want to make sure your seeds are completely dry before storing them. Lay them flat on a tray, moving them around every day or so until they are dry. Thicker seeds such as pumpkin may take a week or so to fully dry. Remove as much of the extra plant matter as possible (seed pods, petals, protective layers).
Storing the Seeds
Store your seeds somewhere cool, dark, and dry. I like to keep my seeds in brown paper bags, envelopes or recycled vitamin/pill canisters. Make sure you label them well with the name and/or desired trait (early tomatoes, best-tasting pumpkins, etc) and put the date.
Store your seeds in the coolest room or area of your house. Seeds can also be kept in the fridge in airtight containers.
How Long will Saved Seeds Last?
It is best to plant your seeds and resave each year or two, but if they have been stored correctly, some seeds may last over 10 years. Saving seeds and gifting them to friends and family, will mean you will be able to keep heirloom varieties available for generations to come.
If in doubt don’t throw them out! Old seeds can still be sown, you may just get less successful germination.
Saving seeds and figuring out how to save seeds from each plant can be tricky. Let me know if you have any questions about saving your seeds. This guide may also come in handy to determine whether plants are annual or biennial and how they are pollinated.
Welcome to my garden in July. It is the middle of winter here in Perth, Australia and although the temperatures have been quite mild, we have been getting a whole lot of rain! Today we take a look around my sustainable permaculture garden to see what we can find to harvest! I will also go through what I am going to make or preserve with what I pick.
It has been non-stop raining for two weeks with more rain forecast. Two days of fine weather finally arrived and I managed to get out and see what was ready. Heavy rains can cause some issues when your fruit and veggies are starting to ripen. Extra water can cause them to split open and then bugs can get in and I want to make sure I harvest as much as I can.
Citrus are ripening over winter and I have quite a few young trees. Citrus grow really well here in Perth, as they can handle our hot dry summers. Citrus trees are also a little more pest resilient than many other fruit trees. So, I have quite a few varieties – Lemon, Blood Orange, Lemonade, Lime, Finger Lime, Kumquat, and Mandarin.
Click to Watch my July Harvest
Sustainable Permaculture Garden Harvest
Just for fun I decided to weigh out my produce. Listed below is how much I harvested.
Lemons || 2.078kg
Blood Orange || 683g
Arrowroot || 170g
Lemonade || 682g
Broccoli || 93g
Parsley || 477g
Lettuce || 300g
Rainbow Chard || 127g
Purple Sweet Potato || 1.251kg
Hawaiian Sweet Potato || 667g
Fennel || 506g
TOTAL: 6.578kg
Harvest Gallery
Most of my Citrus trees are still young and this is the first harvest of fruit. What I love about fruit trees, is that they continue to grow more and more fruit each year. Fruit trees are powerhouses in abundance and such a valuable food source for any sustainable permaculture garden.
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Make these Easy Organic Fertilizers at home using everyday ingredients so that you can feed your plants naturally and grow lots more food! It is important to feed your plants as they use up the nutrients in the soil to grow and produce food. It is also important to use organic, natural fertilizers so that we..
1 – don’t consume harmful synthetic toxins but also..
2 – don’t have harmful toxins upsetting the microbiology and killing off all the amazing beneficial insects and pollinators.
There are a bunch of natural ingredients you use every day that can be easily turned into natural, organic fertilizers to help feed and nourish your plants. There are also some plants that you can specifically grow to make your own organic fertilizers. Keep reading below to find out how you can level up your garden’s production with these easy organic fertilizers.
Plus, it’s a great way to reduce waste and get the most out of everything in your home. We can be so quick to throw things out or put them straight in the compost but many items can be used again first! This also means you are getting more bang for your buck and saves you spending money on fertilizers. So you can spend more money on plants.
The water that is left behind after rice has been cooked makes an easy organic fertilizer for your plants. It contains starch and small amounts of NPK. Which are Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium. These are all essential for plant health and growth. In basic terms, Nitrogen is good for producing leaves and greens but if your soil is too high in Nitrogen, you will get all leaves and no actual fruit or vegetable. Phosphorus is good for cell growth and division, so it is essential for seedlings. Potassium is great for promoting fruiting and flowering in plants. Having a good balance of NPK in your soil is important. As your plants grow they will use up different levels of each so it is important to replenish with fertilizers.
The NPK in Rice water is low in quantity so you won’t have to worry about over-fertilizing and it helps you build healthy soil, whilst minimizing waste. Make sure that you don’t add salt to the water or this will not be good for your plants. It is also important to make sure the water has completely cooled down first. Use the rice water fresh as you make it as it doesn’t store well.
2. Pasta Water
Just like the rice water, pasta water will leave behind starch, which can be used to feed your plants. Dilute the mixture if it looks too cloudy or there is not much liquid and this will give you more fertilizer and ensure you don’t overfeed.
3. Potato Water
When you have boiled potatoes, the leftover water will be full of starch and beneficial nutrients. Again, similar to the Rice and Pasta, make sure you haven’t added salt and let the water cool completely.
4. Eggshell Water
Don’t throw out the water left over after boiling eggs. Let it cool, and use it to feed and water your plants. This is such an easy organic fertilizer! This water will add a small boost of nutrients and calcium to the soil. You can also boil leftover eggshells that have been cracked to fry eggs or have been used for baking. Then after that, crush up the eggshells and add them to the compost for extra calcium or sprinkle them around your seedlings as natural pest control to help deter slugs and snails. There are so many ways eggshells can be used to boost your garden’s health.
5. Vegetable Water
Reuse the leftover water from boiling or steaming vegetables as a natural organic fertilizer. For most vegetables that you boil or steam, the water can be used to fertilize your plants. Just be aware that some ingredients may cause strong odors so for Brassicas, Broccoli, Cauliflower, or Cabbage. Only use on outdoor plants as the water will start to have a strong odor. No one wants their house to start smelling like farts!
6. Banana Peels
Banana peels are something that many of us have at home, and they make a great natural fertilizer for your plants. As many of you might know, bananas are high in Potassium and in the plant world Potassium is an essential nutrient for plant growth. Here in Perth, our sandy soils often leach out Potassium, so it is important that we add it back in regularly. Fruiting plants can often require extra Potassium to produce good yields, improve the flavour of the fruit, and increase flower production. Potassium also helps strengthen plants – it thickens their cell walls to make them grow big and strong. I will often prioritize feeding my fruit trees when I’m making this Banana Peel Fertilizer.
There are a few different ways to make Banana Peel Fertilizer and I rotate through using them all. The easiest way by far is just to put the peel in the compost or bury the banana peel in the garden. This will slowly break down and release nutrients into the soil to feed your plants. However, there are a few ways to speed up the process of extracting the nutrients.
Chop up your banana peel and add it to a jar of water. I leave this on my bench with a cloth over the top. You don’t want bugs to get in, but you want it to breathe. Then over the next few days, as I only eat one banana a day, I add it to the jar. You can start using this after one day, but I like to let mine go for about 3 day,s stirring it each time I add another peel. Then you can strain off the banana peels, keep them to add to the compost or bury them in the garden. Then dilute your water by 50% or more. If I just have one banana peel, I may not dilute I,t but with three, there are plenty of nutrients to be diluted and spread across more plants.
You can also chop up your banana peels and let them dry out in the sun and then blitz them up into a powder. Add this powder to water or just sprinkle it around your plants.
7. Coffee Grounds
Used coffee grounds are great for the garden and can add a boost of nutrition to your plants while building healthy soil. Used coffee grounds ( filtered through water) are nearly pH neutral. They are rich in Nitrogen and Potassium, which are both essential nutrients. Although they are brown in colour, they are rich in Nitrogen, so coffee grounds are classed as “green” when you are composting.
There are heaps of ways to incorporate coffee grounds into your garden. You can add them straight to your compost, sprinkle them around your plants or dilute them with water for a liquid fertilizer. Coffee Grounds are also great for natural pest management and can deter lots of unwanted pests from your delicate seedlings. I have even read that coffee grounds can deter cats, so if you are having a problem with cats in your garden, this is worth a try as it only benefits the soil and the plants.
To make the liquid fertilizer from Coffee Grounds, add a cup of used coffee grounds to a bucket of water and let it sit for a day or so. Then you have a liquid fertilizer to feed your plants. If you don’t have any coffee grounds, try visiting your local barista or cafe as they often just throw away the grounds and would be happy for you to take them off their hands! A win for them, your garden, and the planet!
8. Fish Tank Water
If you have freshwater fish tanks, ponds, or aquaponic systems, the water is a great liquid fertilizer to feed your plants. The fish poop and plant matter will be great for your garden. Don’t use saltwater tank water as this will probably kill your plants, which we don’t want.
If you have freshwater fish tanks, ponds, or aquaponic systems, the water is a great liquid fertilizer to feed your plants. The fish poop and plant matter will be great for your garden. Don’t use saltwater tank water as this will probably kill your plants, which we don’t want.
9. Wood Ash
The leftover ash from your wood fire is great to feed your garden. Use the light grey coloured ash at the bottom of your fireplace not the black chunks of coal. This one can be a little more technical for beginner gardeners so it might be best to try the other fertilizer options first. Wood ash is high in Potassium and raises the pH of your soil. So do not use it on acidic-loving plants such as Blueberries.
It’s best to add wood ash in small quantities and mix it through your gardens or compost so as to not raise the pH of your soil too much (unless this is something you are trying to achieve). Also, it is very important to note: only use wood ash from chemical-free, untreated wood. Burnt wood that is treated with chemicals will still have traces left over and that is not okay for edible plants.
10. Compost Tea
Compost tea is great if you have potted plants and don’t have room to add extra soil to top up the nutrients. To make this easy organic fertilizer, place a few handfuls of compost in a bucket of water and stir. Allow it to sit for 2- 24 hours to mix and infuse into the water. With all fertilizers, use rainwater when possible, as tap water is often treated with chemicals that can actually kill off all the good bacteria that we are trying to feed. If you only have access to tap water, you can let it sit in a bucket for a day, and a lot of the chlorine will evaporate off. Next time it’s raining, chuck a bucket out and capture some of that amazing natural water to use. It really does make a big difference!
11. Liquid Seaweed
You can buy organic seaweed concentrates to mix with water and make liquid fertilizers. This is something that I always have on hand and is the only fertilizer that I buy. But, if you live near the ocean, you can make your own! Be aware of your local rules and regulations as it is illegal to remove seaweed in some locations. Even if it has washed up on the beach. If you can source seaweed, ferment it in a bucket of water for a week or more, and brew up your own organic fertilizer. Once the water is a dark colour, it will definitely have a strong, smelly pong to it! Strain off the liquid and dilute it with more water. Add the leftover seaweed to the compost or the garden to fully break down asa slow-release fertilizer.
12. Comfrey Tea
Comfrey is great to grow in your garden, purely to help you build good soil. The Comfrey plant contains high levels of NPK, which as we now know are essential for plant health. It also contains many other beneficial nutrients and minerals. Comfrey also provides a great cover for your soil and a habitat for beneficial insects. It also has beautiful flowers for pollinators. Because of all these great relationships, Comfrey is a top permaculture plant. If you plan on growing your own food, you may as well grow your own organic fertilizer!
Comfrey has deep roots that go deep down and draw up all the good nutrients. It produces lots of big, lush leaves, which can add great plant matter, nutrients and fibre to your soils. Sandy or clay-rich soils need lots of fibre added to either help retain moisture (sandy soils) or break up the soil and allow better drainage (clay-rich soils). Here in Perth, my soils are super sandy. I often chop and drop layers of mulch to add more fibre and help reduce the concentration of sand. Sandy soils let all the moisture and nutrients drain away and we don’t want that!
Just like the banana peels, there are multiple ways to extract the nutrients from the Comfrey plant. One way is to just “chop and drop”. That is a term I use quite a lot as it’s one of my favourite methods because so easy! It is important to have some easy methods when gardening so that you are more likely to do them regularly. To do the “chop and drop” method, simply chop the leaves off and spread them around your plants as a mulch.
The other way you can use Comfrey leaves is to bury them in the garden. This is great when you are creating new beds or replanting at the end of a season. Add a layer of Comfrey leaves under your compost or topsoil and they will break down and feed your plants.
Another way to extract the nutrients from the Comfrey plant is to chop the leaves off and chuck them in a bucket of water to ferment. Make sure you place some sort of breathable fabric on top, otherwise, you may also breed some mosquitoes! Once they start rotting down over 1-2 weeks (yes, heads up… this will smell), give them a stir to help release the nutrients into the water. Then you can strain off the leaves – chuck them in the compost or garden and dilute your tea down to feed your plants. I use an easy Spray gun that automatically dilutes the mix.
13. Worm Tea/ Wee
Worm farms are a great way to use up excess food scraps at home and they also produce liquid fertilizer for free! It is full of amazing nutrients that your plants will LOVE! Worms are absolute powerhouses for edible gardens and an incredible asset to any home garden. Plus, you can farm your own organic fertilizers with very little effort!
14. Poo Tea / Composted Animal Manure Fertilizer
Composted animal manure is great for feeding the garden. Don’t use fresh, raw manure as it is high in urea and will burn the roots of your small plants. Composted or aged manure is best to use in your home gardens. Ensure that it is organic manure so it doesn’t have residual pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or antibiotics from the animals. It is also important that it is composted so that any grass seeds consumed by the animal are destroyed. Otherwise, you may have lots of grasses and weeds popping up in your garden.
The composted or aged manure can be mixed into your garden beds or mixed with water to make a liquid fertilizer to spray on your gardens. To make easy organic fertilizers from manure, add a handful of aged manure into a bucket of water and allow it to mix and infuse for a day or so. Giving it a good stir every now and then. This water will then be ready to feed your plants.
15. Weed Tea Fertilizer
Weed tea is made just like comfrey tea. It is a great way to turn pesky weeds into something that actually benefits your garden! Weeds thrive and are full of good nutrients that can be turned into easy organic fertilizers. I have a video on how to make weed tea so I will link that here. The main thing to consider when making weed tea is to kill off and destroy any of the seeds. The rotting process will damage the seeds and stop grasses from being spread around your garden.
Click to WATCH or Read below – 15 Easy Organic Fertilizers to Make at Home
There are so many ways to make easy Organic Fertilizers at home to feed your plants, reduce waste and grow lots more nutritious food! Let me know what you use? Do you use any of these methods or do you have other natural fertilizers?
EXTRA TIP: When using fertilizers in the garden, pull back the mulch to apply the fertilizer. Otherwise, the bark or mulch may absorb all the nutrients and they won’t make it to the plant’s root systems. Pull back the mulch, apply the fertilizer and wait for it to absorb into the soil before recovering with the mulch.
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Easy steps on how to overwinter your chilli and capsicum plants to have mature plants and bigger harvests for next season. If you have grown chillies, peppers or capsicums over the summer months, you may be able to overwinter them to keep for the next season. Around this time of year, in Autumn, you will notice your chilli and capsicum plants start to die off, lose their leaves or stop producing full-sized fruit. Chilli or peppers are warm-loving plants and do not like the cooler days of autumn and winter. It is around this time that aphids and other bugs will arrive and attack your plants when they are in a vulnerable state. Rather than ripping them out and starting again next season, you can prepare to overwinter your plants.
What does “Overwintering” Mean?
“Overwintering” is a term used when you prepare your plants to keep them alive/ semi-dormant through winter, and then they will be able to be planted out during the warmer spring months. Some plants are classed as annuals because they die off in cool weather, and then you need to replant them in Spring and Summer. But if you overwinter them and keep them somewhere warm, you will be able to convert them into perennials and grow more food without spending any extra money next season.
Why do you Overwinter Chilli Plants?
There are some great benefits to overwintering your plants. They already have an established root system, and this means the plant will be able to start back up again when the conditions are right and will produce quicker and in more abundance than a new young plant. This means your second-year chilli or capsicum harvests will often be earlier and much more fruitful! Which is definitely something we want!
How to Overwinter Chilli Pepper plants?
There are a few ways to overwinter your chilli and capsicum, and most of it comes down to how cold your climate is. Here in Perth, we get very little frost so I leave my plants where they are over winter. If you live in a colder climate where you get dramatic drops in temperature and frosts, then you will want to pot up your chilli and bring them into a warm spot in your patio, greenhouse or inside. I grow mine in my pallet planters, which, in winter, I move so they receive sun nearly all day. They are also in a sheltered spot close to the house and fence, so they seem to do well overwintering in situ.
The two chilli plants I have in this planter have been here for 2 or 3 seasons and produced so many chillies this summer!
To prepare them for winter:
1. Prune Your Plants
I cut the plants back to around 50% or about 20 cm high. This can seem brutal, but it means the plant has fewer branches to feed and can concentrate its energy on staying alive. Make your cuts at “major intersections”. This is where multiple stems shoot out from one node.
2. Keep Them Frost Free
If you live in a colder climate that gets frosts, then carefully dig your plants out of the garden and plant them in a pot. Keep your potted chilli plant somewhere warm and sunny until the last frost has passed in Spring before planting them back out.
How to Prepare Overwintered Chilli Plants for Spring?
Once spring arrives and there are no more frosty days, plant the potted Chilli plants back into a warm, full sun location. Give the plants a good feed of organic seaweed fertiliser and they will shoot off lots of new growth. It won’t take long until they will have new growth and will start producing flowers and fruit.
If you have any questions on how to overwinter chilli pepper plants, leave me a comment below 🙂
Links included in this post might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting my blog so that I can continue to provide you with free content.
On a journey to grow your own food and live more sustainably, it is important to grow a selection of staple base crops to set yourself up for success. Base crops are ones that produce a large amount of food and will provide a great platform to build complete dishes. Just like we have staples in the pantry to create meals, it is important to have staples in the garden to carry us through each season. Base crops are easy to grow, harvest and store and will provide a good level of calorie-dense nutrition and carbohydrates. They also include things that can be grown in bulk and used throughout the year. Below are some of my favourite annual base crops.
Autumn / WinterCrops
Cabbage
Cabbage is a hearty winter vegetable to grow that provides a lot of food for one plant. A single cabbage can go a long way when creating meals for your family. Cabbage can be preserved to use throughout the year by fermenting it and making sauerkraut. This is a great way to use up lots of your cabbage and is also great for your gut health. Cabbage is a great way to bulk up salads, stirfries, or sauteed as a side dish of its own. Cabbage can also be used for bunless burgers and steaks. I can’t wait to showcase as many cabbage recipes as I can.
Cauliflower
Cauliflower is another hearty winter crop that can be the base of many different meals. You can also use the leaves of the cauliflower as another form of leafy greens for vitamins and nutrients. Cauliflower can be pickled or frozen to use throughout the year. Cauliflower has so many uses and can be used to replace rice and flour in many dishes. Cauliflower can be blitzed to make pizza bases, bread, rice, pasta, or a substitute for mashed potato. Cauliflower can be roasted whole or the florets used in stirfries, curry, and soups. You can also slice it into steaks and oven-roast it. There are just so many ways to create wholesome dishes with the humble cauliflower. Cauliflower sushi is one of my favourites! Cauliflower also comes in many varieties and colours including purples and green!
Onions
Onions are the base of many dishes and are a staple flavour-enhancing vegetable. The great thing about onions is that they store well and can be dried and kept for many months after harvesting. Onions can also be dehydrated, pickled or frozen to use throughout the year. They are also easy vegetables to grow and grow well in many different conditions. Onions prefer the cooler weather of Autumn here in Western Australia and in colder climates, they can be sown in Spring. The onion family come in many shapes and sizes from spring onions, red onions, bunching onion, pickling onions, white onions and many more. They are a great staple vegetable to add flavour to many dishes.
Garlic
Just like the onions, Garlic is another staple flavour enhancer. You can grow a large crop of garlic and use it throughout the year. Garlic is not only great for enhancing the flavour of your food but is also medicinal with antibacterial and anti-fungal properties. It is a great allrounder for your health, home and kitchen needs.
Rainbow Chard
Rainbow chard or Swiss Chard are powerhouse greens for your edible garden. They are easy to grow and produce an abundance of nutrient-dense food. You can pickle or freeze your extra produce to eat throughout the year. I choose to grow the rainbow chard because I love the pop of colour in my winter garden and in the meals I produce with it. You can use chard in so many dishes from stirfries, curry, soup, omelette, pesto, salads and as a stand-alone side dish. Chard can also be used as an alternative to wraps.
Spring / SummerCrops
Pumpkins
Pumpkins are a fantastic vegetable to grow as they produce a lot of food and can be easily stored to use throughout the year. Pumpkins are easy to grow and prefer warm dry weather. It is important to water pumpkins in the morning or under the leaves as they can be prone to mildew if their leaves remain moist for too long. Pumpkins can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes and a single pumpkin can go a long way to help provide garden-to-plate meals. Watch how to preserve pumpkins for storage in this linked video.
Sweet Potato
Growing Sweet Potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) in your home garden is a great step towards self-sufficiency. Sweet Potatoes are my favourite permaculture plant and are an easy crop to grow for beginner gardeners. It is important to grow plants that support and encourage other plants and beneficial insects in your garden. Creating a cohesive ecosystem that promotes the growth and success of your garden’s health and supports abundant harvests. The leaves of the sweet potato are also edible which provides a great source of greens whilst your crop is growing. Sweet potato are very versatile in the kitchen and can be used for both sweet and savoury dishes.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a plant that grows in abundance during summer and can easily be preserved to use throughout the year. You can grow a huge amount of tomatoes on just a few plants which makes them a great staple for self-sufficiency. You can preserve your tomatoes by canning, bottling, making sauce, chutney, relish, soup, dehydrating or simply freezing them whole. Whole frozen tomatoes can be used to make sauces or relish at a later date or added to soups and dishes throughout the year.
Beans
Beans are another vegetable that produces a huge abundance in a small time frame. You can grow a lot of beans in a small space by creating a vertical trellis to grow them up. Beans can be frozen, fermented, or bottled/canned to preserve for use throughout the year. Beans are an easy vegetable to throw into many meals such as stir-fries, curries, soups, salads, and as a side dish on their own.
Fruit Trees
Apple
Apple trees are a great staple fruit tree for a home garden because they can be used in so many ways. Apples are an extremely versatile fruit. You can preserve apples by freezing slices or puree, dehydrating or canning in juice or syrup. Apples can be used to form the base of many homemade sauce recipes, relish, chutney and jams. Apple sauce can even be added to baking in replace of eggs to retain moisture as well as to bulk up a fruit pie.
Lemon
Lemon is another great staple tree to start with on your journey to self-sufficiency. Lemons can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes and are a great flavour enhancer. Lemons can also be used to aid health and wellness or in-home cleaning products. They are a staple all-round fruit. You can preserve lemons by dehydrating, juicing, freezing, preserving in salt, or making into lemon butter.
Choosing what vegetables to grow at home can be so hard! But this selection of staples will help you form a good base to work from. Having vegetables preserved will help you during the slower months or when your garden is transitioning between seasons.
Autumn is often a slow time in my urban permaculture garden. Summer annuals are ending and the Winter seeds and seedlings are not yet up and running. There is a calmness to autumn which I love. I have filmed a new garden tour of my Urban Permaculture Gardens that you can watch below. For more garden tours and videos head over and subscribe to my YouTube Channel. That way you will get a notification each time I upload a new video (hopefully weekly!).
Here come the Feijoas!
Growing Feijoas here in Perth is a little piece of home that I cherish. They are the first fruit trees we planted here at our house and I have been lovingly caring for them for the past 5 years. Every year I get so excited and hope for fruit. They started producing in their 3rd year with just a couple of small fruit. The next year there was around 10 and this year there will be over 30. Hopefully now, each year there will be hundreds! Gardening definitely requires some patience, but it is so worth it in the end. I am celebrating this win!
What are Feijoas and Why Grow Them?
I definitely need to do a whole video on the Feijoa as they are one of my favourite fruit trees for any home garden. Feijoa or Pineapple Guava – Acca sellowiana is an evergreen fruit tree. They produce fragrant green fruit that are sweet and taste like a mix of pineapple /guava. Feijoa foliage is lush, thick, and grows quickly, which makes them a great option for a hedge or fence screening. Plus, an edible hedge is the best kind of hedge! They are also known to have fire retardant qualities so it can be a good idea to plant along with your fire-prone boundaries.
Most feijoa plants are self-pollinating, however, having multiple trees will increase your pollination rate and produce better yields. I highly recommend choosing named varieties rather than generic seedlings as they produce much quicker and better quality fruit. You can find these at your local fruit tree nursery.
Autumn Urban Permaculture Garden
My summer annuals have just about all finished with just some basil and capsicums holding on. All my winter seeds and seedling are in and are starting to take off with a little bit of recent rain. This can be a slow time in the garden but I do have some cross-overs with my fruit trees and perennials to keep my food production up. The Feijoa and Hawaiian Guava are starting to ripen and the Lemons are coming through thick and fast. I also have plenty of sweet potatoes which not only provide large tubers for eating but also bucket loads of edible leaves which can be a great substitute for spinach. The banana capsicums are still producing and I have lots of herbs such as basil, parsley, rosemary, and sage. So there are still plenty of meals to be made using my homegrown ingredients.
Edible Front Garden
My front garden has transformed from a pumpkin patch into a cabbage patch with lots of red cabbage and brassicas. I have also interplanted with rainbow chard and flowers. It is a great space for all my larger vegetables as they take up too much real estate in the pallet planters. The front fruit trees are flourishing and I have one blood orange fruit, 3 lemonades, and a million baby limes coming through.
Pallet Planter Boxes
The pallet planters are where I grow most of my annuals and quick-picking greens and herbs. These are great because I can move them about to get the best sunlight during the winter months. In summer I am busy doing the opposite and giving them shade from the burning heat! My pallet planters are all mixed in with lots of brassicas, rainbow chard, edible flowers, lettuce, onion, and Asian greens. I also plant radish in between all my crops because they are ready to harvest from seed in just 28 days, so they will be ready before the main crops are overcrowded. This is a great way to maximize space in a small urban garden. Plus it’s a great way to get some quick food during a slower transition phase in the garden.
It is important to take down notes at the end of a season and that way you can make improvements for the next one. I have created these seasonal gardening review sheets which have helped me establish when things fruit and where the gaps are in my food production.
Let me know if you would like to see more regular garden tours maybe Monthly?
Happy Gardening
Holly 🌱
MY GARDENING ESSENTIALS // Fertiliser spray gun: https://bit.ly/366nL1t Retractable Hose: https://bit.ly/2TSC0Bo More gardening tools: https://bit.ly/32IQmbD
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