Waste not, want not

Piers Warren can't remember the last time he bought an onion – or any other fruit and vegetable, for that matter. Piers, who lives in Norfolk, is an expert in self-sufficiency and how to store home-grown produce. He has just written a revised and enlarged guide, How to Store Your Garden Produce, published by Green Books, which gives practical advice on storage techniques, the best varieties to grow and even tasty recipes.

If there's one thing that angers Piers it's waste, a factor that played an important part in writing this book. 'It still infuriates me when in the autumn I walk past people's gardens and I see their lawns covered with apples that are just rotting on the ground,' he says. 'Those same people are probably walking past these apples to go and buy more from the supermarket, rather than just picking up their own. With less than an acre of garden, you can grow enough to feed a family of four for a year, but because much of the produce will ripen simultaneously in the summer, without proper stores most of it will go to waste and you'll be off to the supermarket again.'

'Onions are used in almost every savoury meal, so they are incredibly useful items to store,' he says. 'Onions are generally pretty easy to grow. You can easily be self-sufficient in them throughout the year. It's been years since I bought an onion – they are so simple to store dry. It's just a case that once you have lifted them, make sure they are dried in the sun properly for a day or two and then either string them up and hang them in an outbuilding or lay them out on a shelf as you would with apples. They will keep for months without you having to do anything more to them. It takes less time than going to buy it from a shop – as do many of the techniques.'

Extended second edition

'We had a fairly good-sized family garden and I was given a little patch at an early age and started growing radishes and lettuces, as many youngsters do. I never stopped. Gradually, I also became interested in the idea of self-sufficiency. It just seemed to make such sense to me.

Later on, when Piers had a lot of produce all ready at the same time, which most people do in the summer and autumn, he wanted to find ways of storing it, so that he didn't end up throwing some away, only to buy more in the shops later.

'But I realised that to find out the techniques, I would have to plough through many gardening and recipe books,' he says. 'It all became very confusing. I wanted a book where I could just look up, say, tomatoes and see a whole list of different ways of storing it, so I could choose which ones were suitable. As there wasn't any such book, I ended up writing it!'

'I think you should go for the foods that you like, use often and that can be stored easily, like potatoes, he says. 'You don't necessarily need a lot of storage space. An outbuilding of some sort, whether it is a garage or shed, is pretty useful for the items you need to keep cooler.'

The cost can also be kept low. 'Many of these things can be reused year after year and can be bought second-hand,' Piers adds. 'You can find them at places like car boot sales, so it is not a huge cost. Some of the other items will have multiple uses.

Preserving pan

For example, if you buy a large preserving pan, you can use that for making jams, chutneys and huge vats of soup and even use it as a general large pan. I like winter soups, so I make huge vats of it in the summer and autumn when the produce is ripening and freeze it in tubs as a way of storing it to last throughout the year.' A practice Piers recommends is keeping anything in the kitchen that could be used for storage. 'Glass jars are an obvious example; these can be stored in boxes for later use,' he says.

Piers has ambitions to move house and cultivate a bigger plot of land, which will also enable him to have larger greenhouses and polytunnels, which, in turn, will help him to extend the growing season. 'I would like to have a huge greenhouse full of all kinds of things, including space for me to sit and keep warm,' he adds.