As part of our ‘From the Plot’ series over on Instagram, we’ve been talking to special growers who share their gardening knowledge with others. We recently spoke to organic, no-dig gardener Alex Smith, aka @alex.grows.food, whose awesome gardening videos bagged him Gardening Video of the Year at the 2023 & 2024 Garden Media Guild Awards!
Here’s the full interview…
Why I always choose organic fruit and veg
Images courtesy of @alex.grows.food
I’d wanted to grow food for a long time but only got my first very tiny garden the week before lockdown. And it wasn’t until my second year living there, having developed a seemingly-undiagnosable illness, that I went all in and grew as much chemical-free food as possible in one of many attempts to find my own cure. But it became very clear, very very quickly, that growing your own is the only economically viable way of going 100% organic.
Still being unwell, I moved to a much larger garden and relied on low-impact, low-workload approaches to convert the unruly lawn into a manageable and bountiful growing area.
I grow everything from seed
Images courtesy of @alex.grows.food
I’m a very laissez-faire veg gardener — but some might (more accurately) call me a ‘lazy gardener’. I rely on no-dig to limit any weeds, I try to do as little pruning as possible, and I mostly let nature decide which plants get eaten and what’s left for me to eat. I grow everything from seed but, once it’s all in the ground, the plants do the work and I just need to keep the grass in check, stop the bindweed from spreading and maybe pull some suckers from the tomato plants.
I focus on veg that’s expensive to buy
Images courtesy of @alex.grows.food
Cherry tomatoes were my gateway food into both cooking and gardening, so I always give them a dedicated patch and grow varieties like ‘Sungold’. But I also go in hard on the rest of the nightshades -– aubergines, peppers, chillies -– they all taste great, are really expensive to buy and in some shops it’s impossible to buy organic, so growing your own is a no-brainer.
I can’t eat carbohydrate-heavy foods like rice, pasta or bread, but the quantity of courgettes, climbing beans and rainbow chard I grow makes up for that.
My top achievements
Images courtesy of @alex.grows.food
I won Gardening Video of the Year at the Garden Media Guild Awards in 2023 and 2024 – two years back-to-back with little-to-no prior experience, which still feels astounding. I was working in software and had been working from home since 2020 and could see I needed to rescue my public speaking skills from prolonged isolation. But I also wanted to document the expansion of my garden and making fun & educational videos about growing food ended up being the ultimate two-birds one-stone scenario.
I don’t get the biggest number of immediate views on my content but that is almost always the wrong measure of success. What matters is the watch hours over months and years as well as the impact you have on people which can only be measured by how you feel reading the comments.
Growing with data: where science meets soil
Images courtesy of @alex.grows.food
This year I’m trying to bring my wider experience into making the most substantial content possible. I have a physics PhD so I’ve been running garden experiments – I’m just editing the video for one I’ve been collecting measurements for since December. I used to write freelance for magazines so I’ve started blogging on alexgrowsfood.com and am looking to publish gardening content elsewhere. But I really have a sense of nostalgia for that first patio garden, so I’m looking to transform a small concrete area into something small, magical and productive.
The internet is a fantastic growing resource
Images courtesy of @alex.grows.food
I think the main thing I’ve learned is that gardening is for anyone (including certified nerds like me) and even more so now that we can learn on-demand online. But the real joy of the internet and social media is that we can all publish whatever we want – no editor gets to veto your story or creative vision.
So if you want to share your gardening journey, teach any hobby or create content in a completely unique style, go and do it because someone somewhere will probably enjoy your special perspective and learn something that they can’t get elsewhere. I love Monty Don and his shows and his books still generate a ton of enthusiasm in me, but the amount that I’ve learned from hundreds of other gardeners online is immeasurable.
Grow like Alex
Enjoy high yields of irresistibly sweet and juicy golden-orange tomatoes
Image: Tomato ‘Sungold’ F1 Hybrid from Suttons (©Thompson & Morgan)
You can follow Alex on Instagram at @alex.grows.food, or on YouTube at @alexgrowsfood. And if you want to read about other inspirational growers, check out all the people featured in our ‘From the Plot’ series for a wealth of practical advice.
