Grow Your Own Food

Before setting out on your food-growing journey, there are a few essential bits of kit you'll need to source, from secateurs to seed-sowing modules.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to assess your growing space and create a map of your beds, while factoring in crop rotation and other practicalities.

Take a tour of Claire’s vegetable garden and learn how she got started by removing perennial weeds and protecting her patch from the elements.

Choosing what to grow in your patch is key to your growing success. In this lesson, Claire will help you to understand what you have time for and how to ensure a continuous crop.

The start of any food grower's journey is seed sowing. In this lesson, Claire will show you how to sow a wide variety of seeds in pots and modules, as well as where to place your seedlings and how to water them.

Once your seedlings have developed, some of them will need potting on. In this lesson, you'll learn how to pot on and harden off your young plants.

Knowing when your young plants are ready to go out into the garden is a crucial part of the growing process. Claire explains how to know the right time, and demonstrates how to correctly space and place young lettuces in the veg patch.

Some plants need a little bit of support to thrive. In this lesson, Claire will show you how to support beans and peas with frames and protect brassicas from Cabbage Whites.

Tomato plants are hungry feeders, so in this lesson, Claire will show you how to care for them and how to maximise tomato production by restricting leaf growth.

Some food crops can't cope with the British climate. In this lesson, Claire introduces her greenhouse space and the warmth-loving plants she's growing inside.

While growing your own food is a joyful process, sometimes things can go wrong. In this lesson, you'll learn how to tackle common food-growing problems.

When the time comes to harvest your crops, you’ll need the right tools for the job. Watch Claire as she guides you through the harvesting process.

Perennial fruits are one of the best crops to grow if you want to save money. In this lesson, you'll learn how to prep your bed for raspberry canes.

Every crop has its unique harvesting method. In this lesson, Claire will show you how to harvest tomatoes and cucurbits.

Organic compost is a gardener's best friend. In this lesson, you'll learn what to add to your compost heap and the best place to site it in your garden.

If you have limited outdoor space, growing plants in containers is often the best option. Here you’ll learn about the type of pots you can use, as well as the crops that grow best in containers.

Companion planting is a great organic growing method to protect your crops from pests. In this lesson, you'll learn which plants to grow for pest management.

Humans have been saving seeds for thousands of years. In this lesson, you'll learn why seed saving helps to protect heirloom varieties and how to practise it in your own garden.

A weed is just a plant out of place. In this lesson, Claire will explain why we need to reassess our relationship with so-called weeds and learn to see them for the diverse plants they are.

Claire says goodbye and wishes you well as you set off on your food-growing journey.