Self-Sufficient in Suburbia - September 2011

This is the latest edition of the programme I make for the Horticultural Channel. It was filmed mainly in September though there were odd bits fromt he end of August and early October.

How to salt runner beans

We use salting as an alternative to freezing runner beans. This video shows you how to salt them. This is a simple and traditional way of preserving garden produce and is worth a try.

How to store onions

There's nothing worse than getting in a good harvest and then finding it's rotted away a few weeks after going into storage. A bit of care avoids this problem. In this video I show you how I store onions, one of our staple crops.

How to make plum chutney

Our plum crop was rather poor this year so we used what was available to make into a chutney. After we made it, we suddenly found we had a glut of plums to deal with as a friend gave us a bag full of them, which we used to make plum and apple jam. Anyway, in this video I show you how to make plum chutney.

Freezing the peas

The pea crop on Dad's allotment was picked recently (we still have to harvest the smaller pea crop from our own allotment). We were very pleased with it as all our previous attempts at growing peas had ended in failure.

Nothing went to waste. The peas were frozen after being blanched for one minute in boiling water. The pea pods were used to make stock and the stalks and leaves were fed to the chickens. Wastenot, want not!

Hazel picking

Some of you may be aware that I am a local councillor, a role I carry out in addition to my horticultural activities. This afternoon I had a tour of my ward with the leader of Gateshead Council and various officers, as well as my two ward colleagues John and Marilynn. We met them in the car park of the Rose pub, in Streetgate, the next village along from where I live in Sunniside. We were there early and I discovered a hazel tree overhanging the car park. This was too good to miss so John found a carrier bag in his car and whilst he shook the tree, Marilynn and I scurried around like a couple of squirrels collecting the hazel nuts from the ground. We got a good quantity.

After the tour was over, I got out of my suit and into my gardening clothes and headed down the road to Watergate Park where a large number of hazel trees were planted some years ago. A very productive exercise - I gathered a large quantity of hazel. And for good measure, I picked a sack of crab apples in the old Fugar Bar orchard.

If you are into wild food foraging or self-sufficiency, don't leave it any longer to collect the hazel. They are a staple crop for us - high in protein and essential oils. A bit of a super food.

Hens - the movie!

This is the video of our first month keeping chickens.