Any advice for a newbie to growing your own?

[Alladdsup]

I've followed this board for a while. Always had a spare cupboard of basics due to living rurally and not being able to drive, ramped it up significantly after the referendum and took advice from the many threads on here. I thought I was prepared for Brexit. I was not. I've realised a few things, 1 - the supermarkets ran out of things I wasn't expecting and not of things I had expected, and the ability to order online was impacted (I should've realised that!), 2 - my preps did not account for every household member to be at home all day every day (I need more biscuits in future 😂), 3- I've depleted most of my Brexit cupboard without much chance of filling it back up, altho I'm incredibly grateful it was there in the first place. I'm not moaning, many people are in far worse situations than me, but it has made me realise the importance of not completely relying on convenience shopping. So I'm hoping to be a bit more self sufficient. I don't have masses of space and I'm not a keen gardener, but I'm willing to learn and try. So far I've got some salad leaves growing on my kitchen windowsill, and just waiting for delivery of some growing bags to do potatoes and carrots. I'm not a natural gardener at all, hence needing advice, but I've got 4 kids to feed (1 teenager, 2 middle, 1 baby - am fully stocked on formula) and I'm terrified that Brexit on top of the current situation will make food hard to come by. Please advise.

First of all think about what you like. Or what you'd like to try. And think about your space
An easy crowd pleaser is a couple of scarlet emperor runner bean plants in a container growing up a bamboo wigwam. The flowers are soo pretty. I adore fresh runner beans - I'll eat them raw off the plant because I'm that mad for them. They look gorgeous and it's fun for kids to help tease them around the wigwam. We're hopefully just having the last frosty spell so the can be planted outdoors now.
Tumbler tomatoes are also good in containers- any cheap big pot will do. Or hanging baskets if that's your thing.
I recommend Huw Richards. He started as a kid doing Huws Garden vlogs on YouTube. He's now got two books out - the first one is about Veg in a raised bed grown over a year. But there's loads of info on his YouTube channel so you don't need to splash out on books.
I've always had patchy success with carrots but others are the other way.
Being fully self sufficient is a big lifestyle change but just having that extra that you grew yourself is lovely.
I started out just doing tumbler tomatoes and perpetual spinach. I loved just popping out in the morning and picking some for my sandwiches for work each day. That, to me, was sufficiently self sufficient . A couple of years ago, I grew enough for my family's Christmas dinner veggies - potatoes, sprouts (I love em too) and carrots. I'm sure I bored everyone telling them that the food miles for that lot were a few metres - you could see the veg patch from the window.

Thankyou. I'll check out those vlogs you've suggested. I hadn't thought of sprouts, I love them but assumed they weren't an easy one to grow yourself. I also really like runner beans and 2 of the kids like them too so will look into that, and love the idea of running them round an arch!! Sugar snap peas are something they might eat too, are they something that would be possible to grow at home? The kids have got a strawberry plant in the garden that I'd forgotten about so hopefully that will grow well, although I think it needs to be moved to a sunnier part of the garden. I wish I could grow cucumbers because it's the only salad veg all the kids will eat and we use one a day but am only allowed to buy 2 in the food shop! I definitely don't have garden space for a greenhouse though! I have quite a large patio in a full sun area that I plan on using for the growing bags but we can't live on just potatoes 😂. Even though I was expecting some shortages I was shocked at how quickly the supermarkets emptied! And it hadn't even crossed my mind that deliveries would be unavailable. So grateful for all of the advice threads on this board as I couldn't get a delivery for 5 weeks and even the little local shop had to close as the owner needed to shield!

Weirdly, I had some success with cucumbers a couple of years ago. I shoved them in what thought was late as a kind of experiment. They climbed up a little wigwam I made and did surprisingly well in a container.

Here you go, something Huw Richards put out last month on this very subject

Brilliant! Thankyou. I love learning new things but I hate the beginner stage because there's just so much information on everything that I never know where to start! You've been a great help.

buy less of plants or seeds. Save seeds when you are buying and preparing veggies/fruits to consume and plant them. Save tiny glass jars to store seeds. That way you can have your veg garden that’s suits your favourite taste palette.Start with herbs you use along useful plants like lavender and aloe Vera.

A courgette plant in a grow bag works well. French beans too.

Salad is good - lettuces, spinach.

I recommend a book by Joy Larkcom called I think, Grow Your Own, it has every detail you could possibly need, what to grow and when to plant, etc. Its very accessible and very comprehensive.

My lessons learned from this year:
Courgettes and squash are easy to grown and require pretty much no maintenance, and kept us fed all summer.

Buying dried peas from the supermarket and growing them en masse for pea shoots is a lot quicker than waiting for actual peas to appear on single plants.
Chillies and tomatoes were pretty foolproof.

Carrots were a failure. Potatoes got eaten by slugs and wireworm - I'll grown mine in sacks next year instead.

Garlic was brilliant. I'm planting my next crop in the next few weeks - it has to be properly cold to get the bulbs to split into cloves.

Are you just doing pots, or do you have room in beds too? Berries are usually low maintenance and don't keep long fresh, so a good thing if you can't get out. Blueberries grow well in pots with ericaceous compost. Strawberries tolerate a lot of neglect and produce lots of runners for new plants. You only need to buy them once to be overrun in a couple of years. Raspberries would need a bed, but go mad quickly, so lots of new ones.

My tomatoes always get blight, but most hers I get a crop first. Small thing like spring onions and salads / pak choi are good for pots.

Would appreciate any advice from you lovely people as total newbie too. TIA

Carrots have always worked really well for me. I get a recycling box and fill with a bag of compost and plant the seeds in there.

I really struggled with courgettes this year though! Got lots of flowers (great! I battered them) but not much actual veg. I think I had too many plants too close possibly.

I also have a bag of winter potato plants looking very forlorn and washed out. :-(

I'm a container gardener. We started growing 3 years ago and it is so much fun. Runner beans work well, tomatoes, courgettes and potatoes in bags. Raspberry canes and strawberries do well in containers, just watch out for the vine weevils. We have also done well with broccoli (see vine weevils). Chillis are easy ot grow but need starting indoors quite early or you wont benefit from their full potential. If you get a greenhouse, even the plastic cover kind which we have cucumbers and peppers will do amazingly well. Squash are good too, but start them early indoors. We also grow apple trees and plums in containers. Your younger children will adore watching things grow. Get some herbs growing too!

Sugar snap peas are easy to grow. Rocket is a really quick and easy salad leaf to grow. Radishes are also really quick. I would only grow carrots, potatoes and onions if I had lots of room.

For winter greens, kale and swiss chard are easy, don't need quite as much light as some vegetables and can look pretty in the garden, especially if you get colourful types.

Beans are easy to grow and broad beans can be planted now to overwinter. There are also runner beans and French beans- dwarf and climbing.

A lot of people don't realise that you can grow cucumbers fairly easily outside in the U.K, even in the north. Burpless tasty green (genuine name!) is a nice tasting outdoor variety.