Gardens

Grow it, forage it, preserve it

Glut season

Does being prepared for emergencies mean stocking up on dismal tinned food? Not necessarily. We look at growing your own food – for emergencies, for self-sufficiency, or simply for fun.

To great media alarm, the Government recently announced a campaign to prepare the UK for emergencies. This follows a recommendation from some EU governments in March 2024 that countries should hold a 72 hour stockpile of essential goods. Food shortages due to geopolitical and economic uncertainty, as well as climate disruption, are of increasing concern.

The UK has developed a very sensible website to help with emergency preparedness. Some media outlets have condensed this message to “the UK must stock up on canned food”. But this is an oversimplification. What it actually recommends is a helpful laundry list of emergency power, first aid, bottled water, and this:

“Non-perishable food that doesn’t need cooking, such as ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables (and a tin opener). As with water, how much you need will vary based on your own circumstances. Don’t forget food for pets.”

So whether you are planning to stock up, have invested in bottled water, a Kelly kettle, Lifestraws, or simply wish to be a little more self sufficient, we present a local starter kit. Our resident horticulturist Amandine Lepers-Thornton teams up with Cultivate co-founder and sustainability expert Emma Burnett, plus occasional Clarion writer and home canner, forager, and experienced allotmenteer Josie Procter on how to grow, forage, and preserve foods. All in the hope that this brings you excitement around food, rather than ever seriously needing to use the skills.

Growing basics

If you’ve never grown anything before, we'd recommend starting small with microgreens, herbs, salad/leafy veg, or easy-to-grow crops like small squashes (which can be grown up a wall/fence/tree or structure in small gardens). This will help you to build up gradually. Vegetables and herbs can be included in your garden, if you have space, but if you don't, many cultivars can be grown in pots or containers inside or on a patio. For the best chances of success, check sowing/planting times as well as the best position – e.g. tomatoes and squashes in full sun, spinach and chard in part shade – see Amandine's previous guide for the Clarion about growing your own food as a starting point.

It's not a money saver if you have to buy compost, pots, and seeds, so consider sharing seeds with friends and neighbours or saving your own year-on-year, and making your own compost or sourcing compost/manure locally (e.g. from Oxford City Farm or other local farms). Some councils even give away compost for free, and if we hear about it, we'll make sure our readers know.

Foraging basics

Oxfordshire's hedgerows and common spaces are rich in forageable food. There are very useful crops all around – elder trees, apples, sloes, hops, and blackberries are all freely available. You can also find plums and cherries, as well as a variety of edible nuts. There are maps that can help you find local freebies, and an afternoon with a couple of carrier bags and maybe a small stepladder can set you up with kilos of ingredients.

Note your favourite spots for foraging, for they will be there year after year. There's a plum tree on Port Meadow that we found whilst blackberry hunting, nestled near the railway line, which we can only assume seeded itself from a stone thrown from a train window years and years ago. It delivers bags of wonderful plums each year.

A health warning: If you think it might be poisonous, don't touch it and definitely don't eat it. For that reason, we are not giving instructions on foraging mushrooms, which are the easiest to make a mistake on. We'd also suggest a rule of harvesting above 'dog wee height' for obvious reasons. And if you think it might be on someone's land or garden, rather than common land, it's good practice to ask first! You'll often get lucky, particularly if they're not inclined to harvest all their own fruit, and you can make friends by bringing back a jar of jam.

Preserving basics

Rule 1: Only preserve what you and your family will eat. It turns out Josie's family don't eat much chutney so there are jars of it dating back to 2019 in the cupboard. If jam is your jam, go for it. I now realise my family want full easy meals, so I've learnt to pressure can, but I recognise that is fairly niche, so here are some easy intros to preserving your own food, whether you have grown it, foraged it, gleaned it, or found a great deal at a shop.

Rule 2: Use fresh. For best results, preserve fresh produce, rather than freeze slightly manky 'use by' produce. Don't get me wrong, it definitely has its place, but it's better to just eat it quickly, rather than preserving for long term storage.

Rule 3: Label things well, with a clear date. You won't remember what that bottle, tin, or jar is full of in three years time. Trust me. I'm the parent we've all heard about, the one who accidentally made squash for my son using unlabelled sloe gin (which he spat out, wailing, "Mummy, this tastes horrible." No children were harmed in the making of this anecdote).

Cowley Road bounty can be preserved in many ways (photo by Roger Close)

Freezing

The method most people are familiar with. Most foods can be frozen, though some more delicate produce like strawberries and carrots will change state, and either break apart on freezing or go mushy on defrosting. Mushy strawberries are fine for baking or smoothies or jam. If you're freezing vegetables, some need blanching before freezing, which is effectively dipping in to boiling water, then cold water, then getting in the freezer. Beans, broccoli, carrots, sweetcorn all respond well to blanching. Peppers, tomatoes, onions and leeks just need to be chopped and frozen raw.

However, freezer space is usually limited, and requires electricity for ongoing preservation. If the power goes out, a full freezer will keep food safely frozen for up to 48 hours, as long as the door is fully closed. Frustratingly, though, this means the food is not accessible.

Water bathing

For jars storing high-acid foods, you may need to do a hot water bath. You put hot food or liquid in a sterile jar, place the jar in a pan of boiling water, to cover, and water bathe both to set the seal, and ensure heated to a high enough heat for longer term storage. Syrups, sauces, chutneys, and high acid foods like apples, plums and rhubarb can be treated this way. A note on jars – for water bathing, you can use recycled jars, and it is helpful if they have a 'pop down' button lid, so you can see that it is sealed properly.

Dehydrating

The process of drying foods so they can be safely stored at ambient temperatures. You can do this in a home oven on a low temperature, or even, according to some, an air fryer. But if you have bulk produce to preserve frequently, a dehydrator is what you'll want to do bulk batches. Good things to dehydrate include apple slices, fruit leather, tomatoes, and chilli peppers. You can read more on dehydrating here.

Pressure canning

Pressure canning is a food preservation method that uses a specialised, locked pot with pressurised steam to heat jarred food to (115°C) or higher. The video below gives an overview to canning, and the best recipe book I've found is the Canning Diva's Complete Guide to Pressure Canning. We now prepare full meals like soups and stews with garden produce – in the winter we're never more than four minutes in-the-microwave from a healthy and convenient meal. The investment of time in the summer makes for an easy winter.

You can pressure can almost anything. There's a thriving corner of the internet that makes their own canned dog food, and homesteaders in Alaska have made their own canner to preserve salmon. (Admittedly, there is also a growing section of the internet canning for 'the apocalypse', but we will gloss over that part.) Pressure canning is growing in popularity in the UK.

However, a disclaimer: canning is a skill and requires specialist kit with a significant initial outlay. That said, once set up with canner and jars, they are re-useable over and over again, simply replacing the lids. And it does mean you can take advantage of bulk buys on anything. Chicken in bulk from Aldens? Easy sandwich filling. Seen some sausages you love, or on special offer? Add to tomatoes and veg for a stew that heats up in minutes.

There are two things to consider before canning: will you and/or your family eat it? and, is the cost of the food more than the cost of the lid, which cannot be re-used?

Seasonality

The rhythm of what you can store and grow changes through the year. With changing climate patterns and complications in international trade, we may need to get used to eating more seasonal produce, along with pre-stored food. This guide gives you a sense of the changing patterns of food creation and preservation throughout the year.

Autumn

Grow it

Autumn is undeniably the best time for planting overwintering crops. The soil is still warm and moisture returns with more frequent rainfall. This gives plants like garlic, onions and shallots, Christmas potatoes, peas, and broad beans a chance to germinate before the frost hits. Late autumn is also the time to plant fruit trees and bushes along with raspberry canes. £ for £ raspberries (and soft fruit generally) are the best investment you can make in a garden or allotment. They need relatively little maintenance, last for years, and the price of soft fruit in the supermarkets is high.

If you planted tomatoes and peppers at the start of summer (either under cover or in a sheltered spot), you may still be harvesting them until the first frosts. Herbs will continue producing if picked regularly and not allowed to go to seed. If you’ve grown winter squashes and pumpkins, you can revel in seasonal smugness – you’ll have something delicious to keep you fed throughout the winter months. Make sure you keep your squash in a cool dark place and check them regularly for signs of rot. ‘Crown Prince’, spaghetti, and Hokkaido squashes are excellent for storage and can be kept until the spring in the right conditions (be careful not to have the heating on too high or the seeds inside might start sprouting!).

Forage it

This is prime time to forage. The hedgerows are full of free food. Oxfordshire's waterways are a top hunting spot. Blackberries, sloes, hops, and elderberry grow intertwined, ripening at the same time. Apples and plums ripen from summer through autumn and roadside trees gone wild can provide a bounty. You'll be spoilt for choice!

Hops, elderberries and sloes often grow close together.

Preserve it

Apples, the most versatile of fruit. Dehydrate the rings, or turn sauce into fruit leather. Applesauce can be water bathed or pressure canned in jars, and whatever you do to apples can also be done for pears, and plums. Of course, you can just juice your apples; the Oxford Farmhouse and Pasture Farm Juice will take your apples, juice, pasteurise, and bottle them for you.

Beetroot can be easily pickled in recycled jars

Beetroot can be pickled and waterbathed, or pressure canned, for salad beet whenever you need it.

Blackberries can be frozen, canned, turned into jam, or made into syrup. Or mix their pulp with applesauce, strain and dehydrate for fruit leather.

Elderberries can be made into a vitamin C-rich syrup which can be used as a natural cough remedy.

Hops can be dried in an airing cupboard, or at a low heat in an oven or a dehydrator. They can then be used to brew a tannic, but relaxing tea, or sewn into a pillow with lavender as a herbal remedy to aid sleep. Or, of course, used to make beer – but brewing would be a whole different article.

Pumpkins or squashes can be harvested or bought in autumn, and will keep for months in a cool place, like a porch or cool kitchen shelf. If you're buying, look for squash with a long-ish stalk.

Sloes are good for flavouring gin. I've not many other uses for them that don't involve gin at some point in the process. But if we do 'have an emergency' then probably a gin stockpile wouldn't be the worst thing?