About Grow, Cook, Devour!

I'm Guy — an energy assessor by trade, food grower by obsession. I've been growing food since childhood, started experimenting with outdoor hydroponics in 2025, and accidentally went viral on Reddit when I posted a photo of my tomato wall. 47,000 views and 804 upvotes later, people kept asking how I did it. This site is the answer.

I am not a frugal gardener. I am not an eco-warrior. I spent £300 on rain gutters to grow tomatoes — there is no universe in which that is the thrifty option. And I am not going to pretend that growing food in your back garden is better for the planet than modern agriculture at scale, because the data does not support it. Factory farming is remarkably efficient. That is just the truth.

So why do I do it?

Because a tomato picked 30 seconds ago is a different ingredient entirely. Because a pink oyster mushroom twisted off the bucket and into a hot wok five minutes later has a flavour and texture that nothing on a supermarket shelf can touch. You could walk into the finest restaurant in London and you still would not get a tomato this good, because it does not exist in the supply chain. It only exists in your garden, five minutes ago.

But honestly? The quality is only part of it. The real reason I do this is the sheer pleasure of it — the anticipation of watching something grow, the satisfaction of building systems that work, and then sitting down to eat something extraordinary with the people I love. That moment when you put a plate of food on the table and say “I grew this” — there is nothing else like it.

I am science-led. I weigh things, I measure nutrient concentrations, I run controlled experiments. But at the end of the day, I am usually too busy salivating over my many ideas for how to cook and eat the harvest to weigh it all properly. The data matters, but the joy matters more.

The growing itself is deeply satisfying — from passive hydroponic walls to mushroom buckets to perennial vegetables that come back year after year. And when you grow more than you need — which, if you are doing it right, you will — you share the surplus. Neighbours, friends, community fridges, food banks. Food made with love, shared with the people around you.

The long-term goal is simple: grow more food than I can eat and give the rest away. Right now that means sharing surplus with neighbours and friends. Eventually, I'd like to scale this up — surplus to community fridges and food banks, and the knowledge to help others do the same. I'll document this as it develops, because like everything else on this site, I'd rather show what's actually happening than claim things that aren't.

This site documents the whole process honestly. What works, what does not, what it actually costs, and why the food is worth every bit of effort. No greenwashing, no frugality cosplay, no pretending this is anything other than what it is: a person who discovered that growing and sharing food is one of the greatest pleasures in life.