Is it possible to sustain yourself over winter with homegrown veg?

From my first few attempts I’d possibly say no. I tried it years ago when I was running a walled veg garden for owners who were only there six weeks of the year. Quite how I managed to convince them they needed a vegetable garden which mainly fed me I’ll never know! Year one was pretty much a disaster. The root crops such as carrots and beets that I left in the ground got munched by all manner of critters while the kale constantly blew over and the chard seemed to stop growing all together. Thankfully, lessons learned, year two was slightly less disastrous.

I stored beets and carrots in wooden boxes of sand, properly staked my kale and grew the chard in a more sheltered, sunnier spot. But it wasn’t enough to provide me more than a few meals a week, rather than all of them, as I’d hoped. Through this whole process I kept pondering just how we’d forgotten so much of what our ancestors had earned about winter survival. The Tudors, Georgians and Victorians didn’t have freezers or canning machines but somehow found a way. Sure, on large estates they had both the labour and sunken ice houses to do it, but the average person was also able to do it, minus the vast resources. What some reading and pondering led me to was the fact that historically vegetable sustenance during winter was as much about drying and storage as growing. And if you think of our most consumed plant crop, wheat, it has been stored winter-long for hundreds if not thousands of years and continues to this day. I was slightly shocked to recently discover the amount of rodent faeces allowed in flour by law… but that’s an alarming tale for another day.

Winter survival seems to be mainly about either holding edibles in a certain state or changing their state to make them storable. Beans and legumes are a good example. While they can be eaten fresh their protein level drops very little when they are dried ready for rehydration and use during winter. This includes borlotti bean, lentils, chickpeas, peas, soya and broad beans. On the other end of the spectrum most ‘roots’ such a potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnip and swede can be held in stasis in cold, dark, slightly moist conditions – cellars (often referred to as root cellars) were historically used for this before they became snugs and cinema rooms! Then there are the survivors. Those veg that can tough it out in the cold and actually get better in flavour such as turnips, sprouts, kale and cabbage. And finally, we have a number of novelties such as the Spanish storing tomato that can be picked in October and strung up ready to be eaten through till February!

I’ve yet to go through a full winter living wholly on my own veg but having experimented for a while now I do believe it is possible. With a little extra effort, storage space and abandonment of the idea that it's acceptable to eat flown in Peruvian asparagus in January, it can be done.

Get in touch:

What are your biggest success stories on the winter plot? How do you store your crops to keep supplies ticking over in winter? Let us know! Email us at: letters@gardenersworld.com

Read more:

• Grow your own Christmas dinner
• Your winter fruit and veg jobs
• 10 of the best winter crops