Substitute These 6 POPULAR Veggies with EASIER to Grow Varieties

g'day I'm Mark from self-sufficient me and in this video I'm going to give you substitutes for six popular crops that people like to eat that can be tricky to grow for other varieties that are easier to grow at home but taste just as good let's get into it [Music] thank you [Music] number one is potatoes I know he doesn't love potatoes hot chips a bit of vinegar and salt sprinkled over them at the show but unfortunately they're not the easiest vegetable to grow a lot of people have trouble growing potatoes because of the diseases they can get because their climate isn't quite right I know here in our subtropical climate we can find it pretty difficult to grow potatoes all year round so we do grow them through winter but even then you can run into trouble if you have a really cold winter for example they can suffer again simply because it's getting a bit too cold for them whereas behind me this tarot well it grows all year round here let me just dig up one of these fellas just cut that off and that bulb there is what you can use similar to a potato you can make chips you can put them in stews you can mash them up and I tell you what they taste really good practically everything you can do with a potato you can do with Taro in the winter time Taro does die back a little bit and It suffers but it does not die off completely and in a warmer climate like this you can keep tarot on the go constantly by just harvesting and then replanting some of the smaller bulbs or some of the offshoots that come up near the bigger ones you can even just plant the stems straight into the ground after you've cut that off and they will reshoot another good substitute for potatoes is sweet potato I've got this whole big long raised garden bed full of sweet potato that just grows constantly for us all year round you can eat the leaves in salads like spinach or it's probably better cooked but nevertheless you can eat the leaves which is another bonus where you can't do that with potatoes and let's see if we can just dig up one or so there's a small one this is a purple variety extremely similar to real potato but yeah like the name suggests a little bit sweeter but you can cook them up as healthy and nutritious sweet potato chips the good thing about this is It's a Vine and it'll just keep growing keep working its way around the garden and the garden bed and where the vine touches the soil it'll root down and start growing more you can even grow them in containers and very successfully too this one here has been growing for a good 12 months in this container we've had to cut it back several times because it just spreads like wildfire number two are large tomatoes now I don't even have an example to show you because I haven't grown large tomatoes for quite some time I have got a few in here and also medium-sized Tomatoes but the problem with them is that larger variety Tomatoes take longer to grow and to mature so they're more susceptible to disease and also pest attack this here is a tigereller it's looking sad as in fact it's gone root development root development terrible rotting because of winter see it rotting at the stem there awful it was never going to produce it's an heirloom variety very good tasting tomato everyone loves big tomatoes and medium-sized Tomatoes I mean you can't beat a big beef steak tomato I know that but most of the time they don't grow that well so that's why as insurance I always plant cherry tomatoes and I've got several scattered around here the whole way along this bed because I know they're going to perform in contrast look at this cherry tomato here growing beautifully up the trellis it's got a little bit of Leaf Disease down the bottom but that's just typical at the end of the day cherry tomatoes are closer to the rootstock Tomato unless you graft larger tomato varieties onto a rootstock tomato variety especially with the heirloom varieties you're always going to have issues of disease and poor growth and hence poor cropping and harvesting so if you're having trouble growing larger tomatoes grow cherry tomatoes number three is spinach now I love spinach it gives me good big muscles it's good for you and until recently I didn't grow a lot of proper English spinach simply because it was a more difficult crop to grow in our warmer climate yeah if you get the timing right like I have here and you get the nutrition balance right in the soil right you can grow some pretty nice looking spinach and who doesn't love spinach pie or a quiche the only problem is if you get the timing wrong or you have a bad season just because of weather conditions you don't get a good spinach crop at all so what can you substitute this type of spinach for well thankfully there's several things here is red spinach and now it's not an exact copy you can see that they're slightly different they're similar but different especially when the leaves are smaller they're quite similar but red spinach and green spinach typical spinach are both from the amaranth family the only thing is that red spinach it's a little bit close up to the proper amaranth plant then baby spinach or English spinach or typical spinach ears I didn't know this until recently but spinach is pretty high in oxalates and oxalates apparently can be bad for some people if they eat too much of it for example people who are susceptible to kidney stones they might have to be a little careful about how much they eat I'm not a doctor but this is what I've read so I guess some people have to be careful with whatever they eat if it messes with medication or they have an ailment that can be exasperated by the food that they're consuming in this case red spinach however it's easier to grow than the this green spinach you can see it's they were both planted at the same time the red spinach is growing a lot larger and faster and it does grow easier in a warmer climate The Taste is very similar thankfully the green spinach is just a little bit sweeter but they both are beautiful in stir fries or in salads the other thing talking about oxalates and kidney stones is apparently red spinach has less than the green spinach and it also has more antioxidants and better nutrition but there are a couple of other crops that I want to mention and one's right in front of you that are a good substitute for spinach and that's this here Egyptian spinach now it's gone to seed you can't see the leaves anymore but it produces a million trillion billion seeds and they don't all come up which is good because otherwise it'll be very weedy so there's a little round brassica-like seeds almighty's just act up his mother over there so you might hear a bit of an extra buzz in the background but Egyptian spinach it grows best through summer in fact it flourishes in the Heat and then it dies back in the winter time so here when we can't grow normal spinach which is most of the year we actually have an excellent substitute through Egyptian spinach and the other spinach I wanted to talk about just quickly is climbing spinach or Malabar spinach that is also another good substitute and it grows like the clappers but unfortunately for me it's just the leaves are a little bit too plump and slimy in the mouth and eating is as much as taste as texture as flavor as smell and seeing and for me this the sliminess of the climbing spinach in the mouth for me is a bit of a put off so I prefer Egyptian spinach or amaranth family red spinach to normal spinach when I can't grow it number four is iceberg lettuce and besides being really expensive at the moment in the supermarket iceberg lettuce is a variety that's probably the hardest one to grow because it has a big heart it has many layers like a cabbage I'm sure you know that yes it's a great eating lettuce and it's good for many other applications as well gives a good crunch to a sandwich or a burger unfortunately again a bit like tomatoes because of the hearting variety and because it's so tight knit and takes longer to grow it's more susceptible to pests like slugs and snails and also in a warmer climate you've got a small window opportunity to grow it because it'll only grow through the winter time in the exact right conditions with good soil and plenty of liquid fertilizer to get those big hearts that you want otherwise once it heats up if the pests don't get the iceberg lettuce well then the heat will and it'll just rot in place whereas there are a multitude of different options for iceberg lettuce that taste just as good but are much easier to grow for example I've got a whole lot of different types of lettuces growing here in this raised bed none of them are Iceberg but some of them have smaller hearts and still have a similar taste think about COs cos lettuce just because no because it's better and you can grow that and chop it up just like a normal Iceberg it has a smaller heart it grows faster and you get the same bang for buck especially if you grow several of them there are more upright growth so you can fit more in and then you've got the softer Harding varieties like the butter crunch for example and you can get several different varieties of butter crunch as well and then you've got your loose lettuce varieties and there's a multitude of them and tree lettuce that I grew last year where you can even eat the stems so if you want some crunch get into tree lettuce get into the COS and try all those different types of lettuces if you're having trouble growing the iceberg number five are large onions or even these smaller medium-sized onions they aren't the easiest to grow even though I've done a video on how to grow a ton of onions in one small raised round garden bed you have to again plant them at exactly the right time and you've got to get the variety correct there are short day varieties long day varieties different varieties that don't grow very well in certain climates and other varieties that grow better so it can get a little complicated whereas you can substitute for this crop behind me spring onions check them out this crop would be coming on two years and I can guarantee you these are not the same onions that I seeded these ones here have self-seeded well not these These Are The Offspring from the ones that I just left grow and self-seed and they drop their seed and then just kept on coming up that's why this bed just grows all year round through our hot summer and whenever we need an onion we just cut it on I cut this one yesterday pretty sure I'll pull it out because we've got plenty of them look how that's shooting back up already big thick it's almost like a leak just let them grow it's a smelly so it's like a I don't know Chinese Takeaway there are lots of different varieties of spring onions to grow but there's also other things that you can grow that are much easier than large or medium sized onions and that is Raco or the small Japanese onions I've grown them and I've fallen in love with that beautiful vegetable they're so lovely to pickle they've got a great flavor and guess what they grow all year round here and it's still a little onion so you can still use them as you water regular onions number six is garlic I'm always having a crack at growing garlic because I just love eating it and who doesn't a bit of garlic bread it's one of the most popular spices or herbs or vegetables that is used culinary around the world and also for other things you know keeping away vampires for example but the problem is it's not the easiest thing to grow in some specific places around the world they can grow garlic like weeds I'm not talking about you guys I'm talking about us normal people who find it quite difficult especially in warmer climates to grow garlic but we still want to have that garlic taste so what do you do well you can try garlic types that are better for warmer climates which I've had a little bit of success with and I'm still trialing and trying my best to come up with other ways of growing it in other types of mediums Etc raised beds different types of fertilizers to try to get better bang for my buck but when I can't grow garlic or with my garlic crop fails which happens to me quite a bit one of my favorite substitutes is this here and you can see how many haircuts it's had it's constantly being used and that is oh garlic chives look at that chop up a big handful of that and throw it into a pasta or into a stew any dish really and you've got that wonderful garlic flavor that can be grown all year round you can grow it in containers it's very hearty and on the same lines I've just recently started growing society garlic where even the flowers are really garlicky and they make it excellent pretty garnish with that lovely garlic taste yeah at the end of the day if you find one of your Staples or veggies that you want to eat regularly difficult to grow well then try substituting it for something else I'm interested to know in the comment section below what are some of the regular vegetables that you like to eat but find difficult to grow and you substitute for something else if you're welcome in the comments section below that'll help me out and it also helps everyone else out to read through that comment section and get some really good tips and hints from the growing Community here on YouTube anyway if you like this video make sure that you substitute the old middle finger instead with a good thumbs up share it around and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already thanks a lot for watching bye for now cheers

Channel: Self Sufficient Me

Views: 202,734

Keywords: substitute hard to grow vegetables, substitute tips, substitute for potatoes, substitute for spinach, substitute for onions, substitute for large tomatoes, substitute for garlic, substitute for iceberg lettuce, grow your own food, grow your own ve, grow your own vegetables at home, grow your own vegetables, grow your own veg, easy to grow veggies, vegetable gardening, best vegetables to grow, easiest vegetables to grow, easiest vegetables to grow at home

Id: nFKFdUS4IQw

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2023