- Good day, I'm Mark
from "Self Sufficient Me" and in this video, I'm gonna
give you five vegetables that grow faster than grass. Let's get into it. (gentle ambient music)
(birds chirping) Okay, you've got me. The grass at this time of year doesn't grow as fast as usual. But that's not the point. The point of this video is to show you five really quick, smart super duper fast growing greens that you can grow in a hurry, but only that, give you several tips on how you can harvest these greens early so that you can get
some food in the kitchen and on the plate quicker than you can say,
"These greens grow like weeds." Number one is lettuce. I rarely ever have to buy lettuce seed from the store or online because it just comes up in our lawn. And there are reasons why that happens. It's not by accident, but it sort of is. It's by accident because
I make it an accident by letting our lettuce plants go to seed. Just in this one patch
of grass around here, there are several varieties
of lettuce growing. You've got this yellow leaf lettuce, a red coral type lettuce, a mini coleus, which is just crunchy as and so prolific and fast growing. And you can even group some endive, the curly leafed, bitter endive that is lovely in an Italian salad, growing also, popping up everywhere. They are now starting
to interrupt other crops that I actually sowed for real. For instance, you might
find many weeds at all in this bed. But you will see a plethora of salad crops coming up here. It's just crazy. And I've been picking them like crazy because I have planted spring onions, a red bulb spring onions along here and larger red oblong
onion on the outsides. And they're starting to grow well except these lettuce
seedlings are coming up and they're starting to
smother the onion seedlings and I don't want that. But at the same time, it's a conundrum. We've been picking them like crazy to eat and transplant in other places. But I think you'll agree, this is a really nice problem to have. Two crops out of the one bed. As these onions are slowly maturing, they're gonna take a
while, several months, probably only be ready in around summer. The spring onions, they will
be ready sooner of course so we can harvest them a little earlier. But as they are developing,
we can harvest these lettuce as they pop up. Some of them are still just popping up as small seedlings. Others are more developed. I'll just harvest the ones
that are encroaching more on the onions first,
and as they get bigger, get rid of them so that
finally when the onions are ready for maturity,
and needing that extra sun and growth room, the
lettuces will be harvested. It's a win/win. Every one of these lettuce plants here have either been
transplanted from the lawn or the adjoining bed here. And look at how healthy they are growing. Didn't take long at all to reestablish. Out of this head here,
you'll get thousands of lettuce seeds. And with those seeds, I
tend to sometimes save them but most of the time I just
let the wind scatter them or I crunch them up, throw
them around in the garden, in garden beds, knowing
that they will come up one time at the right time as well. And that is another
interesting fact about most types of self-seeding plants like this. Number two is mustard. Isn't that cute? Very tasty too, especially
the young leaves. But this can turn into a really big plant. That is starting to get there, but Japanese Mustard can get humongous. That looks beautiful in the garden, you can even pickle the stems. Again, just like lettuce,
it just seeds like crazy. And of course we know it seeds like crazy because people use those seeds, have done for thousands of years to make wonderful condiments. Typically here, we grow the Japanese and the Ruby Streaks,
both grow extremely fast. They can get a little strong to eat as they get large, but if
you eat the leaves young they are just delicious, especially if you make it in
with another type of salad. Because this plant is gonna get huge, I'll have to harvest this very soon. Otherwise, I won't have any
onions in this immediate area because it will just be smothered out. Number three is sorrel. And sorry that this
looks a little bit like a shallow grave. I assure you, there's nothing
buried underneath here. I'm just refurbishing some old garden beds and making news ones and that's why this pile of soil is here. But it brings me to a fantastic point. In this garden bed was some sorrel, and look how it's popping up through. Can you see any weeds? No weeds. This sorrel is outgrowing
any weeds, all grasses on this bare soil. And that is remarkable. It's so strong, the taproot in sorrel goes down so far so quickly that it can outgrow just about anything. It is growing in my lawn over there too. It grows anywhere, and
I'll show you another spot. In our raised tunnel trellis here, it's come out of nowhere in a little bare patch of ground that I've prepared for some cucumbers that didn't make it. But it has just taken the opportunity to sow itself right here. And it couldn't be in a more
perfect spot to be honest. I'm gonna leave it there. It's filling a gap in the garden bed, between two tomato plants, and that's all that I wanted was this space to be used with a food crop and not wasted. This is a red vein sorrel and I reckon it's underrated. It is beautiful, young
especially in salads. And you can even chop it up really fine and make it into a quite spicy nice sauce. It's a bit of a cross
between mustard, rocket, and lettuce in my opinion. And it is extremely
hardy and fast growing. One of my all time favorites. And speaking of all time
favorite plants to grow, number four is the good old bok choy. Let's pick up a little small one here. Of course it's growing in the lawn. And I'll transplant him in. You see this vegetable all the time, especially in Asian food stores. But in Asian food, and in
lots of European food as well because it just grows so easily. The whole plant is edible, it's a juicy, lovely mild type of green that is easy to eat, not bitter. The pace at which this thing
can grow is incredible. Let one of these plants go to seed and it will produce
literally thousands of seeds. You can then spread them
around the garden if you want or you can collect them
and then sow them at will. But my favorite way to eat
them isn't to let them mature which is very nice, to have
a nice mature bok choy, a large plant you see in the grasses. I reckon the best way is to
eat them when they're small. And it's so easy to do,
and it's not a waste to over sow in a garden bed and then just pluck them out small because you're getting
the seed for free anyway. And the other thing that
I love about bok choy is how little fertilizer it needs to grow. It will grow practically
in any type of poor soil. Now I don't mean that you
should grow it in poor soil and not look after it. But I'm just saying that if you don't have a very fertile plot, or you don't have some good potting soil in a container, well this is one of the
plants that you can grow to save a lot of money and to grow fast. Yeah, that bok choy should
do really well there and fill up that little gap
between those onions nicely. Number five, I'm gonna go quite broad and call it as most baby greens. And I've got a good reason for it. Because I'm an over sower, I'll admit it. I've got a problem. I over sow. And I love over sowing
because that's how I get all those baby greens on a plate and harvesting food for the kitchen and on the plate, quicker
than I would otherwise. Because I over sow. And I've got heaps of
those little examples for you here. Let's start just here. Kale, pick off a little bit, and when they're small like this, I know some people don't like kale. I love it, the whole family loves it. And it pickles really nice too, especially if you mix
it up with some cabbage like in a sauerkraut. Carrots, I'll bring you in closer. Some people might think,
oh Mark it's a waste. You've sowed a whole
packet of carrot seed here and they're not gonna all grow very well because they're so close together. That's the thing, as you thin them out, you're eating them early. So let's get an example here. I'll just pull out this one here. Now these have only been growing for a few weeks. And already, they've got a little bulb, a little root there. You know how much you
pay in a fancy restaurant for this type of stuff? Those five start Michelin restaurants will put a baby green
on the plate like this, big white plate, and they'll call it art, and they'll make it gourmet food and you'll pay 50 bucks for it, you know? Maybe, a bit of an exaggeration but you get the gist don't you? You can have this replicated
at home in your own kitchen. In the dining room, eating a
small baby carrot like this and have it all gourmet-like. But that's not the only thing, you can also eat the leaves. Chop them up real fine. Mmm. But imagine this, you don't
have to eat it like that. You can chop it up really fine and like, have a tabbouleh, tabbouleh, am I saying that right? In the comment section below. Where you can make a roll out of it or have it on a kabob and with a sauce and some meats. It would be beautiful
cut up nice and fine, well it is beautiful
nice and fine like that. So, there's plenty of options. Feeding yourself early, you're
also allowing enough room for those remaining plants to develop a nice big carrot, or bulb, or whatever type of edible
baby green you're growing. On the inside of these carrots, I'm growing celeriac, and you can see that
again, I've over sowed it. But I have pulled out some
and spread them apart here because it's a large root growing crop. But you can also eat the tops, and you can also eat them
baby, just like celery. Have a look at this long
row of beetroot and peas. Look at this, 15 meters
of beetroot and peas. And in the middle here, I've transplanted some of
that celeriac here as well. Given it some good spacing, gonna get a ton of celeriac but also a ton of beetroot and peas. And all of these crops can be eaten young. So as these beetroot develop, you're picking the leaves. It looks a little bit
like sorrel actually, but it tastes completely different. It's a lot more tender and
mild, the beetroot leaves and it doesn't hurt picking the leaves as the beetroot are growing. Or picking a baby beetroot. But here, look at these. A lot of people don't realize that you can pick off pea leaves, 'cause you're waiting for
the pea pods to develop. They can take a while, it
can take a couple of months before you're getting
peas, or even snow peas that you eat whole. But you can also pick the leaves and have them in salads, they're dainty. They're sweet. People love them. Scatter them on a plate. People say, "What are they? I've never seen them
before, that's different." I say, well that's pea leaves. "I've never tried pea leaves." Give it a crack, they're here. "Tastes like a pea." Yeah. Great. Great. The same rule applies, over sow and reap the rewards early. If you've got any other
examples, there's plenty of them and there's lots that I don't know. If you do have examples
of other types of edibles that you can eat early, whilst waiting for the rest of it to mature, that grow as fast as grass, especially at this time of year, let me know in the comment section below because I'd love to learn
from you guys, I always do. Well I hope you enjoyed
this video, if you did make sure you get that
baby thumb up real fast. There's my baby thumb. And give this video a thumbs up, also share it around and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks a lot for watching, bye for now.
