actually make an impact on your food bill.”
Huw recently moved to Aberystwyth, where he has a seven-acre site on which he grows produce and runs a small nursery specialising in edible perennials.
He has more than 200 apple trees, from which he makes cider that he calls ‘Steve’s Scrumpy’, and he shares the site with his chickens, which he describes as his ‘chief composters’, taking green waste, pecking over it and mixing it with their manure to rot down.
“I built them a fantastically elaborate, fox-proof enclosure,” he says. “It’s called ‘Fort Clucks’.”
When all is said and done, Huw is the modern embodiment of the 1970s series The Good Life, although he says he’s only ever seen a couple of clips of Tom and Barbara Good’s pursuit of a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle.
“I don’t watch TV,” he says. “In the garden it’s real life.”
For more on the RHS Malvern Spring Festival, and tickets, visit:
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“One of my videos is about different ways of planning your vegetable garden,” he explains. “Rather than having one bed of potatoes and one of carrots, I plan what I’m growing in portions.
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“For example, if you plant out 30 clumps of beetroot, that’s two portions of beetroot I can enjoy for 15 weeks.
“Some people say they don’t have the time to look after a vegetable bed, but my approach is to take time to plan what I want. This means that during the growing season I can devote four to six hours a week – maybe a Saturday morning and a couple of short evenings - to growing just under 6,000 portions of vegetables.”
Huw says he’s careful to avoid jumping on bandwagons or the latest trends.
“Permaculture is the foundation for me: it’s nature-inspired design. I find it helpful to look at how nature works in terms of patterns and systems.
“Everything is connected. Take broad beans, for example, with their flowers for early pollinators, edible tops and their pods of delicious beans.
“Sometimes I shock people, such as when I tell them not to bother with seed compost: I use multipurpose, and I don’t use organic feed.”
For Huw, a prime motivator for growing his own fruit and vegetables is ‘flavour’.
“It’s unbeatable,” he says. “There are unlimited varieties to choose from, each with their own characteristics and flavours.
“Even the best markets in London don’t carry the range we can grow in our gardens.”
Growing food really taps into people’s creativity, especially if they love food, and with the cost of food rising, just knowing the basics for growing your own is becoming more and more valid and will
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
How to Grow Food: Your Crop-by-Crop Guide to Growing, Cooking, & Preserving by Huw Richards and Sam Cooper out 12 March (DK, £18.99) Photography by Sam Cooper
INTERVIEW HUW RICHARDS
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