3:50pm Tuesday 8th January 2008
By Cara Lee
The YouTube site set up by three Streatham housemates charting their mission to go self-sufficient is one of the 10 most popular sites created by Londoners.
A recent poll commissioned by YouTube showed the Giving It A Go site, run by the Ellora Road housemates, has received over 12,500 hits.
Colin Munro, 29 and brothers Simeon, 25, and Jon Lumgair, 27, started "vlogging", or video blogging, last May when they vowed to grow as much of their own food as possible in their small garden. They kept three chickens, which were named by viewers, and grew runner beans, tomatoes, strawberries and herbs.
"I had the idea to start doing this after watching programmes like River Cottage with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall which encourage people to grow their own vegetables," said Colin, who runs a video production company with Jon and Simeon.
"But they always have massive gardens in the country. I thought lots of people would think their gardens were too small to grow anything so I thought I would give it a try and see what I could do.
"It's been an education because we're not experts and have thrown ourselves in the deep end."
Just a couple of weeks after the housemates posted their first video a hundred people had already watched it. Interested viewers made several comments, offering the friends tips on how to grow things and pointing out their mistakes.
One family from America even decided to keep their own chickens after seeing the videos.
"We ate as much as we could from the food we grew," said Colin. "It's very satisfying eating stuff you have grown yourself. The eggs tasted much better from our organic chickens than they do from shops.
"I'm pleased with the response we've had. I never had a massive ambition for it because it was always meant to be fun.
"There's a lot of rubbish on YouTube but there are people who have talent which comes across in their videos. The best thing about it is that it's a two way thing people can respond to."
Visit youtube.com/givingitago to see the site.
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