How to Store Your Garden Produce: The Key to Self-Sufficiency

by Piers Warren, Tessa Pettingell (Illustrator)

Become self-sufficient all year round with this handy guide to storing your garden produce.

There is a huge sense of satisfaction in being so self-reliant that you can grow fresh fruit and vegetables all year. With less than an acre, you can cultivate enough produce to feed a family of four for an entire year – but as most produce is ripe in the summer and autumn, most of it will go to waste without proper storage.

How to Store Your Garden The Key to Self-Sufficiency is a modern guide to storing and preserving your garden produce, enabling you to eat home-grown goodness all year round. The book is beautifully organised with the first part detailing a variety of creative storage methods, including basic storage, clamping, drying and vacuum-packing as well as pickles, chutneys, cheese, jams and jellies.

The book also features an easy-to-use A-Z list of produce, in which each entry includes recommended varieties, suggested methods of storage and a range of delicious and unusual recipes to try out, from apple cider and strawberry wine to mushroom ketchup and pumpkin soup. With this helpful book, you'll know where your food has come from, save money, avoid packaging and eat home-grown food.

Learn simple and enjoyable techniques for storing your produce and embrace the wonderful world of self-sufficiency.

Genres: Gardening, Food, Nonfiction, Food Preservation, Cookbooks, Ebooks, Reference

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2002

About the author

Piers Warren Ⓥ is an author, conservationist, teacher, cook and veganic veg-grower living in Pembrokeshire UK.

Piers is well known throughout the wildlife film-making industry as the Founder of WILDEYE – The International School of Wildlife Film-making, and as the founder of Wildlife Film News and producer of wildlife-film.com, which he created in 1999. With a strong background in biology, education and conservation, he has had a lifelong passion for wildlife films and has a wide knowledge of natural history. He is one of the founders of the international organisation Filmmakers for Conservation and was Vice President for the first three years. Wildeye Publishing have become the leading producers of instructional wildlife film-making books in the world.

Piers is keen to promote organic principles and permaculture techniques, sustainabilty, veganism and green-thinking. His best-selling books are in these fields including the co-production with his daughter, Ella Bee Glendining, The Vegan Cook & Gardener. He has had a passionate interest in self-sufficiency since childhood and still grows his own food. He is a council member of GreenSpirit.

Although Piers has written books and many magazine articles on a wide range of subjects he is also known for writing the highly-acclaimed supernatural thriller Black Shuck: The Devil’s Dog (Shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Awards and Norfolk Magazine’s Book of the Month). He has walked the African plains with Maasai Warriors, tracked tigers in India on elephant-back, explored the Amazon rainforest, swum with sharks, trekked across Tanzanian deserts on a camel, filmed cheetahs hunting in Kenya and mountain gorillas in Uganda.

Reviews

[Yates Buckley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice book about what you can do with food so it won’t spoil. Particularly interesting pickling section to me.

[Rachelle Phipps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book; not exhaustive but enough info to get you started. A little entertaining British humor included, as well.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a very basic beginner. A little bit of good info but would prefer to have a book with lots of great recipes.

[Alaina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not very useful for the Northern gardener and too basic to be very useful in general.

[Sonja Isaacson · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were a lot of things I liked about this book. First, it's not just about storing, he also lists suggested varieties to grow. He then lists a few different methods of storing or preserving that work for the particular crop or will indicate it's something that doesn't store so you should use it right away. The crops are also listed alphabetically, starting with Apples and ending with Turnips. But then he also uses terms that don't pop into my mind. Zucchini are in the book...but under Courgettes. I won't remember that! A lot of the produce we get from our CSA is covered by this book. However I would not use many of the recipes, and I would prefer more how-to pictures on the preserving techniques.

[Jason Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great reference book on how to store garden produce. Excellent for the complete beginner or for those that need a reminder from time to time and as Piers Warren has an amiable style of writing, it is equally a pleasure to read or dip into. I also like the amusing illustrations by Chris Winn. Impressed by the wide range of different storable produce, from the perhaps more obvious onion or potato to the less well known okra and kohlrabi! Recommended and a must addition to anyone who's interested in making the most out of their garden bounty's bookshelf!

[Tish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book covers storage methods for most types of produce, in alphabetical order, giving instructions for canning, freezing, drying and fermenting, it relies heavily on a working root-cellar for produce like potatoes, carrots, onions and apples. Great discovery for those living above sea level. ;)

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

although the author is scottish and references varieties from the UK, this book is very well put together. simple enough for beginners like me, but not too simple where you need to cross reference with another more detailed book. i recommend this to anyone with a garden, growing things to eat!

[Martinxo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Storing (conserving, canning, preserving) is the next logical step from growing one's own food. This book is a superb introdution. Well worth reading.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

good but not a ton of recipes

[Jennifer Miera · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good basic guide to food preservation. Instructions were a bit simplistic and wording was from UK.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Very basic."

[Blaire · Rating 3 out of 5]

there are better books on the subject. not enough pics. i dont recommend.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book to reference on making your produce last all year round. Though you can find the majority of the information online.

[Keeley Fennell]

Not enough pictures for me, quite an old fashioned style.

[Jen Healey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some handy tips, good stuff.

[Michelle Lines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good intro book on how to get started preserving food. The majority of the book is more a reference on how to store different kinds of produce.