Garden Tour in early April | Homestead Garden | Growing for Self Sufficiency
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About Us.
Byther Farm is a small organic homestead, being designed and managed using permaculture practices. We aim for self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables for increased self reliance and better resilience to the modern world. I recognise that we are unlikely to be truly self sufficient, but do the best we can. I share our home with my loving husband, Mr J and our cat, Monty.
We are a fifty-something couple who live on a smallholding in Carmarthenshire, Wales. We are going green and creating a gentler, cleaner and more healthy life for our family.
Having had a highly successful smallholding in Monmouthshire, we hope to recreate the abundance at our new home. There will be a large organic kitchen garden with no dig gardening raised beds and young food forest in which to grown our fruit and vegetables.
We keep a few sheep and Aylesbury ducks.
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35 Comments
Are there areas in your garden that you are particularly happy with? Please share your gardening positivity!
looking good. it's not chickweed it's what we call veldkers or landcress I suppose, it's edible though, taste of radish but over here it's already going to seed and they can reseed 4times each season, I liked them in salades in winter , but can't eat it fast enough
My overwintering onion sets got absolutely demolished by the cold this winter. I grew them last year and they did great over winter. I was completely devastated by losing them this year and it took me a bit to bring myself to go back into the garden.
Then the neighbour cut down their beautiful big cherry tree (which was growing great) and my annoyance at that actually drove me back into the garden to get things sorted. Funny what gets you going. I don’t know if they knew what they did at the time but maybe the bunch of dwarf fruit trees I bought and put into prominent places in massive pots might have given it away. 😄
Oh, and it was Hairy bittercress and it’s literally everywhere in my garden.
All these gardeners designing trays etc should put their heads together and develop a proper label system and something that lasts for the season, at least. I’ve used those ‘won’t fade in the sun’ pens and all I can say is… not so true.
Your growing space looks awesome and I admire how you manage it ❤ excellent job
Great tour thanks 👍. Why do they periodically change the botanical names? Just as a gentle reminder……"So, wherever you are and……." (I miss that 👍😂👍)
We planted an Amelanchiar this year, especially for the edible berries. I’ve not tasted one (they’re supposed to taste a bit like blueberries?), but even if I hate the taste, the tree is beautiful too.
Oh Liz, I feel for you that a vole ate your beetroots – a little wood mouse ate my sweetcorn mini pop seedings the night before last. I only transferred them from the house to the greenhouse in the day time and they were gone by the next morning. Little mouse caught in a humane trap and freed in thr fiels opposite.Just reson today- let's hope when i put them out that no little mouse is residong in my greenhouse and Imy seedlings grow on in time to plant out!
Hello Liz and thank you for the April garden tour. I would like to ask the name of the plant that you mentioned after you talked about the purple kale plant…it is a spikey plant that grows tall with pink flowers…Aramira…or something like that? ..I would love to know the correct name please. Thank you.
lovely tour liz
Very reassuring video, I was worrying about being behind with my allotment jobs.
At around 12:00 the plant is hairy bittercress. Nice mustard flavour 😀 I chop it up in salad sometimes but my chickens go mad for it too.
Hi liz great update your new place has come along great now
Great video. It was inspiring to see your garden has weeds and not everything survives. It makes me feel less of a failure when I look at my garden. Often we see gardens on YouTube that look lush and magnificent which isn't always the reality. I struggle with timing my seed sowing, planting out etc. Last winter I had cabbages and broccoli just sitting and not growing, then as soon as spring was hinted at, they bolted. I didn't know at the time that the flowers could be eaten so I pulled them out. This year I have tried to plant them earlier but the seedlings are not growing very fast. So I suspect it will be another disappointing crop.
Lovely tour Liz. Great to see so much shooting back, weeds & all, after being covered in snow. 😊
I received a signed copy of your book The Seasoned Gardener which I pre-ordered and have nearly finished reading it. It is really relatable to the issues in my own garden and it inspires me to get out there. There is lots of new information and great pictures. Thanks.
I Find pencils are good instead of pens for labels
I love the hoops on your beds. Could you tell me where you got them.
Great video Liz. Enjoy the last of your Sprouts. Loving the variety in your new beds. Had you thought about naming / coding the aisle / columns (e.g. A, B, C & D) and then you could have numbered rows.
Any tips on Blackberries? This will be my 3rd year with 3 plants from Ideal World and they have never given any fruit of note. 2 of them look awful and barely alive for Spring. Can I revive or should I throw in the towel and get a new plant with more guarantee to produce berries? Thanks Ben
My garden positivity is don't worry what the other person's garden looks like. Wait for nature on one's own plot.
Early spring is always a time of cleaning.
My garden still has a layer of snow. I might be able to do my spring reveal this week.
Love the whole garden.. can wait to buy your book again
looks very windy there LOL I love it when all the flowers are out in the summer, the more flowers the happier I am. In the winter and the summer i like my chickens!
Ah, thank you Liz, for this beautiful inspirational video. You had me at the intro, as I'm absolutely feeling the "late sow"-anxieties. Spring in Norway is encredibly slow, we haven't even gotten our narcissuses or tussilagos even. Frost just let go last week. 🙁
Thank you for showing a 'real' garden weeds and all with plant labels worn off! Realistically that's what most of us are dealing with right now. My climate (Central Scotland) is similar to yours so nothing gets planted out until May at the earliest!
Thank you for keeping it real. It’s so much more encouraging than the perfection!
Lovely tour, thank you
I'm in London, which is a warmer microclimate, so I have begun to sow some seeds and I'm hardening off some plants. A few I just began indoors. I also have a small raised bed area so it's a bit earlier to deal with. I do have hoops up to protect and keep a bit warmer once I plant out my tomato and pumpkin plants.
Thanks for sharing a real look at what's growing, weedy, labels missing, looking good and looking bad! 4th growing season on the allotment for me and I'm doing flowers for the first time. Your garden was an inspiration for that! Love your polycultures too so trying to do something similar when I plant the flowers out. I'm in Yorkshire on a very open site. Gets loads of sun but also very windy and exposed!
After you mentioned you may have green bits on your teeth for the rest of the video, a kfc add popped up and said I don't care I love it, the timing was perfect, this was way too good not too share.
I'm really happy to have a few purple sprouting broccoli plants left. The cold spell in early December turned most of them into mush! What was left was getting eaten by the Pigeons as well as getting blown over by the wind. So…I covered what was left with an odd bit of veggie mesh and I have 4 plants that are giving me the gift of purple sprouting. Most of the perennial flower plants have survived, the garlic is looking good and the chervil is relentless. Thinking that I planted the leeks and cavalo nero a bit late, they weren't a great success. We win some, we lose some! The positivity comes with giving it a go and appreciating the learning process, the reward of eating delicious freshly picked food, and the way that the whole experience is healing and nurturing my mental health. I love this video Liz,"warts and all". I hope that you are feeling better after being affected by covid. Wishing you a happy, healthy and productive season ahead!
Great realistic tour! ❤
Your videos always have the same effect on me… „get out in the garden and do something“ – just bought yr new book! Looking forward to reading it. Kind rgds Claudia
Hi Liz, great to see a real garden tour. The weed you mentioned in the video was not chickweed but bittercress. Both are edible. The bittercress tastes a little bit mustardy and chickweed is a yummy lettuce-type flavour. Thanks for your inspiring videos!
Loving the honest real update, I have pots all year growing that need transplanting
Thanks for the "lay out" graphic so we can track where you are on your garden!