Food prices are getting ridiculous, so in this video I’m showing 5 expensive crops I’m growing easily at home and, once established, basically for free! From ginger and turmeric to citrus, passionfruit, and African horned cucumber/kiwano, these high-value crops are well worth growing yourself.
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28 Comments
G'day Everyone, thanks for your ongoing support and I hope you are getting into it! Cheers 👍
This video just sent me straight to my bookshelf. I keep handing The Peasant's Prescription by Grace Wild to everyone who will take it. My sister called me crying last week saying she wishes she had it during her worst years. That's all I need to hear.
Can we talk about how much money we've all wasted?? I added it up after reading The Peasant's Prescription by Grace Wild and nearly fell off my chair. Thousands. Thousands of dollars on things I didn't need.
I'm 57 and I've been down every rabbit hole you can imagine. Keto. Juice cleanses. Expensive probiotics. The Peasant's Prescription by Grace Wild was the first thing that actually made me stop and think wait… I've been overcomplicating this my whole life.
Unfortunately, none of this advice works when you get snow half the year.
One thing though about the tumric capsules is that its concentrated so in order to have a medicinal amount of it for inflammation you would need to eat 3 table spoons at least in 1 sitting. And thats way to much lol
Great content. I'm from Florida Pinellas park and I'm definitely gonna make a list from your video to put some of these in my yard. But first cane sugar 😂😍
We planted a Panama Gold passionfruit the first year we moved to QLD. It has been prolific producer (although, it doesn’t much like it when our yard gets super soggy, the passionfruit get brown spots when that happens). Our neighbours planted the large round purple one, and the birds spread the seeds in our yard. We have two purple passionfruit vines, and they are delicious!!! #blessed
Going to try to get seeds for the Kiwano however what was the name of the fruit tree that your passion fruit growing in, I have not heard of it before and it sounds good.
Cheers Iain
Those horn melons were popping up by the thousands at our place. We were concerned and worked hard to eradicate them.
Hello Mark so enjoyed your video. While I can not grow some of these interesting items in zone 6, I certainly will try a few of them. Ginger grows well and I will try Turmeric next year .
I grew ginger in a styrene box under an aircon drip! It was brilliant…
Of the things listed here, I could probably grow ginger, tumeric, and the horned cucumber here in Zone 7b in Oklahoma. I would have to dig up and store the tumeric and ginger indoors during our one week of arctic winter though.
I like to sprinkle tumeric on my scrambled eggs.
They say it needs fat to become bioavailable. And they usually suggest mixing it with milk or something and yeah, I just sprinkle it on my eggs. They’re already yellow taste great eggs are out the backyard too because I have Polish chickens the ones with Afros and beards yeah there are some funny looking things 😂
Good points Mark. I am going to look for those horned cucumbers! Meanwhile I want to remind you that herbs are very expensive in supermarkets but are nutritious, add a lot of flavour and are soooooo easy to grow. Thyme, parsley, basil, mint, rosemary and safe are just so valuable in cooking
My Dad (84) calls them prickly cucumbers. Grows so prolifically in Mackay, at times in cane fields, it can lay the cane down so much the harvesters slow.
Growing ginger has added a whole dimension to my dining table, once I had it available in quantity and fresh, I started experimenting. The best result is shaved fresh ginger in my various salads. I mean paper-thin! Btw, I “discovered” heaps of salad dressings in using such things as “salmon, tomatoes and onion” in those little cans, likewise “sardines and tomatoes”, even “smoked oysters”, a can into the blender with some good oil, herbs, ginger and voila! Play around, it’s amazing.
I dunno if it counts as an expensive crop, but to our family it can be pricey in the store: Water Chestnuts. I've only ever seen them offered in cans and one can never seems to be quite enough in a meal for our family of four. So this Spring, we planted three corms bought online and now we have multiplied those at least tenfold. I recently transplanted into a larger pot and am making plans to re-purpose an unused 70-gallon aquarium tank to grow them year-round indoors (with a "sunlight" aquarium bulb if needed). I haven't rooted turmeric yet, but I've sprouted some ginger, so this video comes at a great time to remind me to plant it. Thanks!
Unfortunately I’m short on room for too many rambunctious vines, but a single cherry tomato will drown me in delicious fruit with next to no effort. Don’t forget asparagus, and almost ALL herbs are crazy expensive for a scant handful of leaves.
Food prices are getting no more ridiculous than the price of most other things, IMO.
But food one can grow him/herself. There are many things one can grow/forage/make.
If one wants to live on a low budget, collect tools and skills.
I wish I could do even a fraction of this in my crappy sunless apartment
This is absolutely unfair on Coles and Woolworths.
Where did you get your Horned Melon seeds?
I dropped some tumeric on my pavers……it is growing…literally on top😂😂
We ended up with a number of passionfruit vines by surprise. I would see a stray odd passionfruit sitting on the ground and wonder where it came from, then I found the vine climbing up over another shrubby tree. Any tree about the height of a one level house it seems happy with.
Expensive doesn't mean nice 😅
Here's a tip, make sure you include black pepper with any turmeric you cook, the pepper will help your body absorb the beneficial compounds in the turmeric which it can't do easily without it!
I'd like to add rhubarb, but only for people in cooler climates. If you don't have a winter that goes below freezing, rhubarb won't be happy. If you do have a decent winter, though, rhubarb is dead easy to grow (I've seen people chuck a chunk of rhubarb root into the forest trying to get rid of it and it rooted there), but if you find it in the grocery store at all, it's often stupid expensive, at least where I live.