 Hey everybody, Rob Greenfield here and today I'm going to share with you some of the most easy and abundant foods to grow For those of you that are in a colder climate So this applies to people across much of the northern United States, northern Europe and around many climates around the world So if that fits you and you want to grow a lot of food in your garden and have a lot of food on your table Then this is definitely the video for you. A lot of you know me for my year of growing and foraging 100% of my food where literally everything that I ate for a year was either from my garden or foraged But I did that in Florida in a very hot climate where I could grow food Year around a lot of people saw what I did and they thought oh you can only do this because you're in a warm climate But the truth is warm climate cold climate as long as you work within your region You can grow an incredible amount of food and a lot of the most self-sufficient people that I've ever met Live in cold climate places like Wisconsin or Ohio or New York So there's so many foods that you can grow. It's just about growing what grows well and abundantly in your area So when I'm talking about easiest and most abundant Easiest means they grow really well. It's hard to kill them even if you have What you consider a black thumb there's a good chance you'll be able to grow these and walk away feeling like you have a green thumb and Then abundant means that they produce a lot of food But there's a second part to that and that is that they produce a Substantial amount of food on your plate and that they'll actually be able to fill yourself up and fill your pantry up to get through The winter because that's the key in the colder climates if you want to grow a large portion of your food It's that you produce as much as you can during those growing months during the growing season and then you store it in jars in Freezers Dehydrating it and such in order to be able to make it through the winter with the food from your garden So these foods are going to help you drastically reduce the number of times that you need to go to the grocery store and drastically increase the Nutrition and the abundance that you're getting straight at home or on your farm Right where you are. I have to start with the potato One thing that a lot of people have the hardest time with is calories Now I wanted to show you this potato in particular it might look crazy to a lot of you But this is a potato that has been stored in the pantry for about six or seven months now I'm in southern france And it's mid-may and this was put into the pantry in around october or november So these store for a very long time. So as far as your calories go Potatoes are going to be one of the most calorie dense Producing a large bulk of your food and they store really well So this knocks out two really important things and the potatoes that are left over that you don't eat This one right here could be planted to produce more So that is the wonderful potato the second one I want to share with you is pumpkins and I am in love with pumpkins Not just the ones you see that you make jack-o-lanterns out of there's many different shapes Colors and sizes of pumpkins. This is just a beautiful one at the farm that I'm staying at Pumpkins are amazing because they store a really long time again. It's may and this is from the last season and it's Just as good as can be and you can also eat the seeds You can eat the skin and as a matter of fact, I will take the entire thing except the stem and blend it up into a soup So pumpkin and different winter squashes They provide a lot of sustenance Nutrients and a lot of them are very easy to grow grow the ones that are adapted to your climate Now next I want to share Summer squashes. So zucchini This actually is more of a winter squash, but it looks kind of like a summer squash. So I'm using it now Zucchinis are truly amazing I've traveled through Washington through wisconsin through new york All across the northern united states and people tell me that they have so many Zucchinis that they have to try to give them away But they can't because everybody has so many of them they get huge you can eat them when they're giant Or you can eat them when they're small if you want them to be more tender. So zucchinis are a A must for a huge amount of sustenance and being extremely easy to grow The next one I want to talk about is beans and beans are truly incredible You can either eat them fresh right off of the vine or the bush. There's there's pole beans and there's bush beans You can eat them fresh You can wait for them to dry on the vine to have Dried beans like you would buy at the store like your pinto beans or your black beans or your lentils Or you can can them. These are canned ones for example And another way to store them is freezing them. So the freezer is a really great way to store food It generally costs only a few dollars a month to run a deep chest freezer And you can store a few hundred pounds of food So again, one of the most important things in the colder climates is storing the abundance Canning is one way to do that freezing is another and then there's also drying as well And then jams i'll show those as well There's also the pantry for things like potatoes and carrots that can store in the pantry So there's a lot of different ways to store your food and that's the key Beans are very easy very abundant and I also want to mention peas Which are kind of my runner up to beans But very easy to grow for a lot of people some people have problems with them Um, and they're not nearly as filling as beans, but peas are another really great crop as well All right. The next one is carrots. This is definitely a favorite for me Although to be honest, I just love all foods that grow really abundantly and easily. I mean So this is a great video for me to be filming because this is my passion But carrots now these carrots have been stored in boxes of sand in a cold pantry Again, these have been stored for about six months. So they're not your fresh super crisp ones, but Let me give this a bite That's still pretty crunchy and these are about six months stored Wow It's actually uh, wow, they're even sweet still nice Not as flavorful as some carrots that I've had But sweet so these can be stored They can be canned as well. I love to make carrot juice. I mean, that's one of my favorite things So carrots that's an important one and I want to mention with carrots beets now for a lot of people Beets are super easy. Some people beets have been a challenge So I don't necessarily consider them the most easy, but I have to mention them because they can be very abundant for some people They're very easy But if you grow beets, you have to eat the greens if you're wasting the greens You're wasting some of the best nutrients and taste. They're one of the most incredible greens If you ask me, they're they're absolutely my favorite or one of my top favorite greens. So carrots and beets To continue on I want to mention a few more root vegetables and that would be radishes and turnips So radishes are one of the easiest foods to grow and you can actually harvest radishes in about 30 days The small radishes. They're one of the fastest growing crops that there are And you can grow daikon radishes which get really huge and I grew a lot of daikon radish in florida And then turnips turnips can be pretty easy to grow as well They are a nice root. They go really well with Potatoes and beets and carrots bake together. I love baked turnip living off of your garden doesn't mean living without flavor In fact, it can mean a really delicious garden full of flavor This food can be grown right here and you can harvest it within Moments before you're putting it on your plate. So you can get some of the most Delicious foods that you'll ever eat But I really like in order to have that for me. There's some key ingredients onions are one of them herbs are as well Which I'll get into pretty soon now onions can be extremely easy I want to say that you might have a hard time getting those big Giant onions that you would get at the store That's not something that every gardener or beginner gardener will be able to get It's more likely that you'll be able to be successful with small bulbs And the other thing that's really one of the easiest is bunching onions and you can eat the greens Now you can eat the greens of all onions as well And actually if you eat just the right amount you get a crop of Green onions and then a crop of the bulbs as well So the smaller ones are generally easier for beginner gardeners Another one that I want to mention Is garlic now Garlic is super important to me. It's a wonderful medicine. It adds an incredible amount of flavor For some people they found garlic to be super easy It's a little bit more of a challenging one because you plant it in the fall and then harvest it in the late spring It sits under the snow for the winter. So that makes it not quite the easiest It's a little more challenging especially for beginners But it can be pretty easy with garlic. This is a clove Pop that in the ground Starts to sprout and then you've got garlic now if you're not successful with the bulbs You can grow it just for its greens And you can get really really productive abundant greens out of garlic and they're very strong That was quite strong just like garlic. So onions and garlic Those are also extremely important for preserving food when you're canning Um and adding to soups those really fill out the meal and add a whole lot of flavor I want to talk to you about greens now and greens are where you get a lot of your nutrients They're one of the things that makes the most sense to grow locally rather than having them be shipped they take up a huge amount of space and They really are just one thing that does not make sense to be shipping long distance So this is kale right here and some of the beginner greens that are really easy would include kale arugula lettuce mustard greens Swiss chard spinach and amaranth those are seven of the easier ones to grow Amaranth what's really special about that is it's often self-seeding and once you get it going You'll have amaranth coming back time and time again So greens are one of the most nutrient dense foods out there and if you can eat greens at every meal You are you have the ability to change your life if you're not eating healthy and they make a huge difference Now greens are Generally what you're going to be eating during the the months during the the growing season A lot of people don't preserve their greens so much You can and one of the greens That's easiest to preserve is sauerkraut. So this here isn't exactly sauerkraut This is more like preserved cabbage Sauerkraut though comes from cabbage and you can store away jars and jars and jars of sauerkraut It's just salt Cabbage and not even water and then you can add in other things if you want like herbs But literally just salt and cabbage stores easily for through the winter And it's delicious add so much value to your meal The fermentation of it through wild fermentation actually increases the nutrient value of it So cabbage is one that grows pretty well stores and makes a really value added food to add to each of your meals Can't say enough About sauerkraut and if you're interested in wild fermentation Check out sand or cats book called wild fermentation. It is a must read If you're going to get into the storing and fermenting of foods. All right next I want to talk to you about herbs these add incredible amount of flavor to your meals You can make teas with them And they are often one of the absolute easiest things to grow So some of the herbs that i'm going to mention are basil Dill cilantro oregano rosemary time and mint Here is basil. This is being grown in a greenhouse to get it started I want to mention one thing about basil and that's that it likes heat So this is more of the peak of the summer if you try to grow this while it's cold In the beginning of the year you're going to have a really hard time And that's an important thing growing the right things at the right time of the year Now another herb that I want to mention this one is Just I mean for a lot of people it's a problem because it's so successful And it reproduces so well that it takes over a garden So when I'm talking about easy and abundant Mint is the picture plant for that It reproduces through these roots and they just spread Through the soil So all you have to do is take some roots from a friend's garden Put those down and those will produce mint So mint is definitely one of my top recommendations And it can end up being a problem So if you do plant it I mean for me when I was a beginner gardener I said any plant that becomes a problem is a friend of mine And I still generally feel that way One thing I want to mention about herbs And that is some herbs grow really well from seed Like for example coriander cilantro These are really great to plant from seed Now on the other hand Mint is a difficult one to start from seed So for the ones that are difficult to start from seed I would recommend buying those As already started plants from your local nursery Or another gardener or a plant sale Or something of that sort So herbs galore There are so many I just named seven But there are a lot of other easy herbs to grow as well Now I want to talk to you about fruit trees Which are totally different from a lot of these crops Most of these are annual crops That you have to plant again and again each year If you can invest in fruit trees You're investing in your future You can plant fruit trees And now the thing is you are investing in the future To start getting a lot of apples Might take a few years before you get your first apples And five years before you start to get a lot But you'll have apples for decades to come So fruit trees that I recommend Apples, pears, plums, mulberries and cherries Those are some of the easiest ones to grow In those more northern climates Apples can store just like this through the winter You can freeze them You can make jams There's so much that you can do with your fresh fruits And you can also just enjoy incredible amounts of them During the season So fruit trees are definitely a must You can plant those around the edges of the property And make use of that vertical space with fruit trees It's starting to rain here in the garden So I gotta cruise through these But we're getting towards the end Keeping along the lines with fruits I want to mention some berries Raspberries and blackberries generally are the easiest And those can go crazy And become a problem for a lot of people Blueberries, on the other hand, need acidic soil So for a lot of people, they are not a beginner Strawberries also can be pretty easy However, generally, raspberries and blackberries Are more abundant than strawberries So raspberries and blackberries Are my two biggest recommendations for berries But I just want to say there's a lot of other ones out there Gotta mention Juneberries Also called Saskatoon or Service Berries Are a really great one as well Right here, I am holding Blackberry Chutney And jams are an incredible thing To make out of your raspberries and your blackberries You can store lots and lots of jams So that is a really, really great thing about those berries Okay, next thing I want to mention is tomatoes Tomatoes grow super abundantly for so many people And with tomatoes, you can make huge amounts of sauce I've just realized how many times I've said huge and abundance Over the last 20 minutes or so But that's what we're talking about Plants that produce a huge amount I just said it again So tomatoes One that I absolutely recommend in abundance At my friend's house this weekend We just planted over 100 tomato plants for a family of four It's a lot of tomatoes But tomatoes are, I mean, most people love them Hot pepper is another one This is something that can often grow in huge abundance And be very easy I took one seed from my friend's Serrano pepper plant And that produced over a thousand Serrano peppers Just from that one seed Another thing that I want to mention Sometimes this is a little bit harder But cucumbers for making pickles All right, I've got two last ones for you And these are perennials And with that I want to mention that I really recommend perennials These are plants that grow for year after year after year Rather than things that you have to plant each year like carrots So rhubarb is one of the most incredible perennials You plant rhubarb and it'll produce for about 25 years Really recommend rhubarb And then lastly we're going to finish it off with Jerusalem artichoke Also called sun chokes And these are another one where if you don't contain them They can spread through your garden And they can become wild as well They produce a huge amount I just said huge again They produce an incredible amount of food And they're very tasty And I cook them basically like a potato So there you have it That is about 40 of my top recommendation For the easiest and most abundant foods to grow in your garden I just want to say there's a lot more out there I picked a lot of the common foods that people Have a lot of experience with and recognize Because it's easier to get started with that Rather than plants that you might never heard of Like gooseberries which grow well in northern climates Or like moringa, kale, or moringa, katuk, and chaya Which are more southern climate So I just want to say that I did kind of pick things that are more known But there's a lot of unknown foods that grow extremely well I want to say try your best to get your seeds locally Locally adapted seeds will grow much better in your area Because they are adapted to that area And then buying your plants from local nurseries That are using varieties that have been grown in the area for decades Helps a lot Also for support Join a community garden if you feel like you have a black thumb It would be incredibly helpful to be around other people And then also volunteer at farms and gardens That way you can be learning And you can be helping at the same time And the amount of knowledge that you gain By volunteering at gardens and farms is pretty priceless I hope that this video has really inspired you to grow a lot of food this year And the years to come Start small Don't feel like you have to grow all 40 of these crops this year And add on each year as you start to get better and better I'm excited for you to get out there and start growing some of your own food If you enjoyed this Make sure that you subscribe to the channel Lots more to come Comment below And also like this to help this get out into the youtube world And inspire more people to start growing their own food I love you all very much and see you again soon