Grow your own food - it's easy!

Where to grow

Even the tiniest scrap of land can easily be turned into a space filled with homegrown fruit and veg. Starting your home allotment is easier than you think. But, if the going gets tough, remember that fresh is best!

Small plots There's room for fruit and vegetables in the smallest of gardens. Do what cottage gardeners have been doing for centuries and mix them in with your flowering plants.

Bigger gardens If you have the space, take a sunny area of your garden and split it into vegetable beds as long or short as you like, divided by paths, so that there is never any need to walk on the cultivated soil. The beds should be roughly 1m to 1.25m wide so you can easily reach out to tend and then harvest your veg.

Raised beds (where sleepers or pressure-treated tanalised timber raises the level of your bed above ground level to create deeper beds) make veg growing even easier - especially useful if you have a clay soil.
Try this:
✓ Grow lettuce or frothy foliaged carrots as edging along the front of borders.
✓ Create a temporary ‘hedge' of runner beans.
✓ Put a few willow teepees in a bed and grow beans, gourds or cucumbers over them  -  they're perfect for children to tend.
✓ Grow French and runner beans up trellises or obelisks - their flowers will be just as spectacular as more traditional climbers. 

EASY-TO-GROW VEG

Who needs the local supermarket when you can grow all the food you need in your back yard...  

Beans, such as French, broad and runner, prefer well-drained soil and need support. Dwarf French and broad beans require a few twigs to support the plants, while runners need a framework of bamboo poles or similar. The more you pick, the more you get. Recommended varieties include French beans ‘Purple Queen' and ‘Canadian Wonder', broad beans ‘Aquadulce Claudia' and ‘The Sutton', and runner beans ‘Painted Lady' and ‘Kelvedon Marvel'.

Early potatoes are easy to grow, and their cultivation will help open up compacted ground - just remember to water them during dry spells. Recommended varieties include ‘Kestrel', ‘Accent' and ‘Red Duke of York'.

Salad leaves are great to grow as starter vegetables, and there's an array of leaves, roots, fruits and shoots that can be grown and eaten raw at every mealtime, providing brilliant fast food. Cut-and-come-again salads, where young leaves are regularly harvested, causing new fresh growth to grow, can be harvested over a couple of months. Choose lettuce varieties such as ‘Salad Bowl' or ‘Bijou' or ready-mixed seeds of salad leaves in mixes such as ‘Oriental' and ‘Italian'. And there are a host of other salad leaves that can be treated in this way, including chicory, endive, claytonia, sorrel, perpetual spinach and rocket. Perfect for containers and windowboxes, plant one batch a fortnight through the summer to ensure endless lots of delicious salad on your doorstep.

Pumpkins and squash have large seeds and are easy to sow direct into the ground in June. Keep them well watered. Recommended varieties include ‘Cobnut' (squash) and ‘Rouge Vif d'Etamps' (pumpkin).
Sweetcorn is supremely delicious when cooked immediately after it's been picked. Sow in pots or trays indoors and transplant when all danger of frost has passed, planting them in blocks so they can cross-pollinate. Sweetcorn is a hungry and thirsty plant, so enrich soil with lots of well-rotted manure before planting.  

EASY-TO-GROW FRUIT

If possible, choose a site that has some sun during the day to produce more abundant crops, and help fruit ripen with rich, moist soil.  

Blackberries are easy to grow in almost any soil, the fruit is seldom, if ever, stolen by wild birds and is so good to eat raw, cooked alone or mixed with apple. Recommended varieties include the prickly ‘Himalayan Giant' and thornless ‘Oregon Cutleaf'.

Autumn raspberries fruit on stems sent up in the current season and can be harvested well into the autumn, depending when the frost comes. Recommended varieties include ‘Golden Everest' and ‘Autumn Bliss'.

Blackcurrants are rich in vitamin C. Plant bushes this autumn in rich, fertile soil, then prune every stem down to a couple of buds from soil level to promote strong new shoots the following year, and fruit in their second summer. Recommended varieties include ‘Ben Sarek' and
‘Ben Lomond'.

Strawberries are a shorter-term crop than other soft fruits; they should be replaced after three years. Recommended varieties include ‘Elvira' and ‘Florence'.

Blueberry bushes prefer acidic soil and slight shade or sun, so make good candidates for pots. Plant in ericaceous compost. Recommended varieties include ‘Earliblue' and ‘Chandler'.

Loganberries, boysenberries and tayberries require space, but little maintenance. They grow well, providing good summer harvests. A recommended variety is ‘Loganberry Thornless L654'.