Get a taste of the good life Help

Keeping chickens and bees will mean you’ll have your own eggs and floral honey on tap. Lay a Little Egg tea towel, £9; mini jug, £13; egg cup, £8; mug, £12, all Sophie Allport

Get the kids involved and teach them all about the benefits of being more self-sufficient at home. Children’s gardening gift set with apron, seed paper, wildflower mix and mini pots, £32, Denys & Fielding

Garden Trading’s 3.5L compost bucket in Clay finish, £20, is a practical and stylish buy for the kitchen worktop

A couple of hens or more will provide fresh eggs daily. Hobby hen house (for up to six medium-sized laying hens), £365, Flyte So Fancy

GET A TASTE OF THE GOOD LIFE

Bring elements of self-sufficiency into your home and garden to help conserve resources while saving money at the same time

n an age where we know how important it is to live more sustainably, taking care to choose and buy products for the home that help to conserve energy and water,

Ithere are always further steps that can be taken. For most of us it’ s not practical to go the whole way with a smallholding, but there are different elements that can be introduced in order to help you become more self-reliant. If you can produce some of your own food, electricity and even water, you will not only be helping the planet by conserving its valuable resources but you can also save money, too.

INSTALL SOLAR PANELS

Generate your own electricity by installing solar panels on the roof.

With prices starting at around £4,800, the most popular are panel systems but you can also find solar tiles, which cost twice as much. You shouldn’t need planning permission to install either, but check with your local council before you go ahead, just in case.

A roof area of 10-20 sq m can provide up to 45 per cent of a property ’s electricity needs. It should be south-facing, unshaded and at a pitch angle of 30º or 40º according to the Energy Saving Trust.

Solar panels generate power even on cloudy days, and you ’ll need to use their energy during the day, so get things like your washing done during this time. In the evening, you ’ll be back to using energy from your supplier so you ’ll still need to pay bills, but they should be a lot lower.

Get a good selection of garden tools to tackle the veg patch. Digging fork, border fork and spade, £34.99 each; rake, £29.99, all Dobbies

Turn kitchen waste including meat, fish and dairy products into nutrient-rich fertiliser or compost with Hozelock’s Bokashi composter, £54.99

Reduce house bills with solar energy that creates your own electricity – the more energy you produce from the solar panels the less you’ll need from your supplier, increasing self-sufficiency

Even the smallest of gardens can be used for growing your own vegetables and salad leaves ‘Making your own natural solutions is a great way to garden in an Ourexp er t s a y s . .. environmentally friendly way. It will not only help your garden to flourish allyear-round but making your own fertiliser or compost can also reduce your household food waste. The Bokashi Composter from Hozelock allows you to turn all kitchen waste into a nutrient-rich fertiliser or a base for first-grade compost with just one piece of equipment. ’ Sarah Dixon, Marketing Manager at Hozelock

GROW YOUR OWN VEGGIES

By creating your own veg patch you can harvest all sorts of goodness. You don’t need a lot of space or skill; things like herbs and tomato plants can even be grown in pots on the window sill. Use this fresh produce alongside shop-bought food, and turn it into pickles and chutneys to make your produce last longer.

Spring and autumn are the best seasons to start. Choose a sunny spot, give it a good digging over to break up the soil and get rid of weeds and stones. Add compost or soil conditioner then plant away. Space out evenly and add poles for climbers like beans. Some seedlings should be started off indoors, so check before planting. You can section off the patch with reclaimed railway sleepers or planks of timber, or create a raised bed for root vegetables.

MAKE YOUR OWN COMPOST

Creating your own compost gets rid of kitchen scraps and provides you with natural, organic fertiliser that can be used on your vegetable patch in about two to three weeks. By popping things like banana peel, coffee grounds, plastic-free teabags, apple cores, potato peelings and eggshells into a composter on the work surface or under the sink, you can reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill.

It’s easy to make your own compost bin using a basic plastic container but you can buy ready-made airtight designs in stainless steel or bamboo too, which will look more attractive if it’s going to be on show. Once you ’ ve got the hang of it, you can also think bigger and start a compost heap outdoors, incorporating your garden waste and lawn cuttings, too.

RAISE ANIMALS

Chickens, bees or goats will supply you with eggs, honey, milk and cheese and you might not need as much space as you think. Hens will need a coop to sleep safely at night and lay their eggs. They ’ll also need a fenced-off area or a run in a spot that drains well.

For bees you ’ll need a beehive, which you can install in a residential area –though the more space the better so they have access to a range of flowers.

Goats are sociable, so you ’ll need at least two, and they will need a quarter of an acre of fenced-off land. You ’ll also want somewhere dry and ventilated for them to shelter in.

Before you bring your livestock home, check there are no restrictions on your deeds or lease, ask the council if it’s ok and let close neighbours know.

Use solar lights in the garden to conserve energy and reduce electricity bills at the same time. Flower solar pendant light in White, Grey, Taupe or Black, £49, Ella James

You don’t need to spend a fortune on tools for the garden, as you can pick up things like trowels, spades, gloves and twine at Poundland

Protect home-grown seedlings, plants and vegetables from pests with Garden Trading’s wirework garden cloche, £26

CREATE A COLD STORE

Ideal when you are growing your own fruit and vegetables, a cold store or root cellar is basically a pantry or larder, usually walk-in, that keeps food cool and easily accessible.

If you have a basement then it’s a great way to enhance your self-sufficiency but you can also create a cold store in a porch, utility room or cupboard under the stairs. Anywhere cool and dry will keep most vegetables for a couple of months, if it has good air circulation and ventilation.

In the kitchen, turn a walk-in cupboard into a cold store by adding shelving for dried ingredients in glass jars and base units with pull-out wooden slatted or wicker baskets that allow fresh produce to breathe. Install a marble worktop for a cool surface and you have natural refrigeration with plenty of storage.

COLLECT RAINWATER

Try to reuse and recycle it wherever possible. Gardeners should aim to use their mains water as little as possible when watering vegetable patches, plants, flowers and even the lawn in really dry seasons. Using stored rainwater or grey water lowers your carbon emissions, cuts down on your water bills and is better for your plants as it has a lower pH. Use water butts to collect water from downpipes on the roof, the garage, shed or greenhouse.

To store more water, swap the butt for a large volume rainwater tank. There are space-saving vertical designs, horizontal models and various sizes to store everything from 150 to 30,000 litres! These one-piece tanks are easy to install and you can re-purpose the water for the garden as well as cleaning tasks.

USEFUL CONTACTS

•Find out if solar energy is right for your home and find the Solar Energy Calculator at energysavingtrust.org.uk. • Watch video tutorials on how to grow your own with advice on sowing, planting, nurturing and harvesting your crops at rhs.org.uk. • Learn how to become a beekeeper by taking a course with the British Beekeepers Association. For information and your local group, visit bbka.org.uk. • For a starter guide to keeping hens, head to the British Hen Welfare Trust at bhwt.org.uk. • Get more information on water tanks at ecosure.co.uk.

Living made ‘ a us more heal sustai thier nabl and ’ e life has haier

Liz Zorab lives an almost self-sufficient life in Monmouthshire

Liz says she now enjoys a much more varied diet and feels healthier and happier as a result

Liz started her vegetable garden by planting basic salad ingredients in raised beds, leaving pathways between them wide enough to take a wheelchair should she ever need one

Liz’s smallholding provides most of the food she and her husband need, providing them with a diet of healthy home-grown produce for tasty home-cooked meals

Becoming a full-time gardener and homesteader meant a huge lifestyle change for Liz Zorab when she gave up her job to move to rural Wales. Prompted by a health crisis, Liz and her husband, who everyone calls Mr. J, were forced to re-evaluate the way they live.

‘I needed to do something to work around how well I felt, ’ explains Liz. ‘I thought, if I could grow and raise as much of our food as possible, I could contribute to the family income and work at my own pace. ’

The house the couple purchased in 2015 needed little or no work, whereas the 0.8 acre plot was another story. ‘The soil was lifeless, so the first thing I did was build a compost heap, ’ explains Liz, who has always loved gardening so had a head start when it came to cultivating her now established fruit and vegetable patch. Raised beds came next and Liz started growing ‘a few things I knew, in one bed at a time. I was feeling my way so I just grew basic salad stuff and a few potatoes at first, then moved on to carrots and cabbages and lots more. In the first year, I created 10 beds, using as much homemade compost as possible and now we are virtually self-sufficient, with around 85 per cent of our food and drink coming from our own garden. ’

Sustainable living also extends to other areas, such as energy. ‘Our solar panels were already in place, so we have no power bills as all our costs are covered by the feed-in tariff, ’ adds Liz. Recycling is important for the couple, too.

‘We use locally sourced materials wherever possible such as pallets to create fencing and wood chips from a local tree surgeon for pathways and composting. And, of course, a handy bucket in the kitchen ensures all fruit and vegetable scraps are returned to the compost heap. ’

Liz and Mr. J also keep bees and while they originally raised chickens, now rear ducks for both eggs and meat. They also help control the snail and slug population when allowed to roam among the vegetable beds, eliminating the need for slug pellets.

‘It’s certainly a lot of work, ’ reveals Liz,

‘but I’m convinced that the fresh air and exercise and the unadulterated food we eat have all played a part in improving our health and wellbeing. ’

Liz recounts her experience in her book, Grounded – A Gardener ’ s Journey to Abundance and Self-Sufficiency, available from bytherfarm.com/books.