We are Dan & Laurie and our land is called Freedom Forest – Its 3 acres in the South of England where we are creating an edible oasis and trying to provide as much for ourselves, from our land as possible and we are completely off grid.
Our food growing journey began together in 2017 when we created our first No dig lasagne bed. Every year we grow more and more and now we are currently around 50-60% self sufficient in our food needs.
Our style and methods are inspired by permaculture and we try to be thoughtful about how and what we do, to be as gentle on the planet as possible.
In our videos you can follow our journey as we share our experiences and what we get up to at Freedom Forest. This video is a tour of our outdoor Vegetable Beds in June and how things are growing without rainfall, following our first long dry spell of the season.
We are MASSIVELY grateful that you choose to watch our Videos and support us in this way, however, If you appreciate and get value from what we share and would like to help us a little more, you can become a Freedom Forest Patreon (link below).
It takes us about a day to film each video and another few evenings to edit it, Patreon provides a way you can support what we do with any size donation you wish, it could simply be the value of a packet of seeds! We have many projects coming up, as well as wanting to improve our videos with better camera equipment… maybe even a drone one day to make our videos even more detailed and better quality for you to enjoy! You can help make it viable for us to keep putting the time into making these videos by becoming a Patreon. In return your name will appear in the end credits of our videos and we’ll message you a password for the ‘members area’ of our website where we share more of our favourite recipes exclusively for our Patreon’s 💚
https://www.patreon.com/freedomforestlife
Enjoy & Thanks for Watching
✌️🌿 Peace and Plants
#gardentour #gardeningtips #permaculture
11 Comments
stunning, so much, loved the video
Hey guys, love the channel!
Dont the different varieties of potato cross-breed in such close proximity? I wanted to grow two different kinds of potatoe but was afraid they wouldn't remain 'pure bred'
The rain dance we did for this video worked 💃🕺
WE HAD RAIN 🌧🙏💚
Its sunny again now, but it rained reasonably for about half an hour and has given our plants and crops a much needed drink – would have been good to collect a little more – very thankful for what we had though.
We will keep up the rain dances for now in hope of a little more 💚✌🌿
Hey, I just joined your raindance 🌧🕺🌧 So good that it has been answered and you got some rain🍀 My garden in Switzerland would be happy for some 🌧 as well 😅 Yes, let's dance some more 🌨💦🌈🙌🤩✌🌿
Was waiting for the update video, so thanks! Would love to see an update on your Yacon beds to see how they’re doing compared to mine.
BR
Wow, our situation is totally reversed this year. The dry conditions you are dealing with are what we experience most springs, this one is a real rarity for us – it's been super rainy, the garden is like a jungle..! You just have to take the rough with the smooth and look at ways to store water longer term, both in the soil and in any tanks you have. If I could I would have a tank with capacity for 50 cubic metres and it probably still wouldn't be enough for those dry years… Also, just growing a big variety of stuff because you never know what might fail in a given year.
Please come and do the rain dance for me, I also live in the south-east of England and the last rain we had was April 25th! We're due some today but the clouds don't look like rain clouds to me, I hope I'm wrong.
My Greek Gigantes are leading the charge of the bean brigade as well. The Cherokee trail of tears are struggling once again though. They were really weak growers last year so last chance for them this season.
The garlic is looking superb and the scapes are currently being harvested and devoured. Absolutely zero rust, so looking like a bumper crop will be had in a few weeks. For some reason though the elephant garlic has grown really poorly, which i can't understand.
Also looking forward to your yacon update. My overwintered outside plant still hasn't sprouted so i'm thinking that succumbed to the Dec/Jan frosts, but all the ones i potted up and brought inside are growing strongly and all about a foot tall now.
Had a small burst of rain here at lunchtime today, so a tiny reprieve there, but a lot more needed. Whilst the watering is a real chore, the dryness does seem to have reduced the snail and slug damage for me, so that's one good consolation.
Hello! Thank you for the tour 😁 I have a question, how do you do the weekly watering? You have so many beds, I can’t imagine how long it takes! Do you use a hose or watering can and do you water a whole bed or just around the plants? We live in France and also are having a dry hot spell, and I can’t seem to keep up with watering! Most things are alive but not thriving.
Loved watching this tour, your garden is so productive despite the dry weather. It's been so dry in Shropshire too, following hard on the heels of a very chilly spring with persistent cold nights until about a week ago when it's suddenly much warmer. We had a short burst of rain on Saturday but it barely penetrated half an inch into our baked clay soil. But then yesterday evening we had a massive thunderstorm and it rained really hard for nearly an hour 🎉😄🌧️ and this morning it feels misty and moist, so I can't wait to see how much the garden has taken up. The beds we've mulched with woodchip have been faring better than the unmulched ones, and the worst ones of all are the beds that were still waiting to be planted up – they have literally been like concrete!
We've had MASSIVE problems with voles and moles in the last few weeks too, I think the dry weather has driven them into the slightly moister veg beds in search of food. I've literally spent hours replanting young plants that have been disturbed by their burrowing and I've nearly lost some of my Gigantes beans, beetroot and sweetcorn. It's so frustrating! I had to pull up some of the beetroot and pot them on to rescue them, hopefully if I put them out as bigger plants they'll haver more chance of surviving! The little blighters have invaded the polytunnel too, they seem to leave the tomatoes alone but everything else gets undermined and I have to watch like a hawk as they can die so quickly in the heat. I've been trying lots of methods of deterring them with limited success – sharp bamboo canes around precious plants works to a point, and garlic water seems to encourage them to move on… into the next bed usually 😵😂
Nice moves 😊