Delicious rich pickings for all the family

This is the summer for growing your own. If you want to save a little on your weekly shop and eat delicious, healthy food, why not have a go at growing your own? It couldn’t be simpler and is incredibly rewarding.

You don’t need a huge garden or an allotment to cultivate your favourite fruit and vegetables. A small corner of your garden, a couple of containers, even a window ledge is all you need. Here are some easy options to get you started:

Edible hanging baskets

If you fancy strawberries and cream on tap every day, why not grow your own in a hanging basket? You can actually buy ready-made strawberry baskets, or make your own and hang it low enough for the little ones to help themselves when the fruit is ready to eat.

Growing bags

It can take as little as 30 minutes to prepare and plant a growing bag. There are plenty of delicious vegetables you can grow this way, including tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and cucumber. They are best placed in a sunny position, perhaps on a patio or balcony.

Growing bags should come with instructions, but don’t forget to pierce the base of your bag for drainage and make sure the top of each plant root ball is just below the top of the bag. Label each growing bag, just in case you forget what you’ve planted!

Containers

There are plenty of herbs, salad, vegetables and fruit that do well in containers. Reasonably hardy herbs like basil, mint and sage do well from seed and children love watching the first green shoots appearing. If the instructions suggest you start growing the seeds in a greenhouse, a sunny window ledge should do just as well. Buy the special peat pots and place in trays – and remember to label each batch of herbs or vegetables.

Once the plants have started to grow transfer to containers on a sunny patio and water well. Mix herbs with other flowering plants for a pretty, edible display.

Flowerbeds

Vegetable plots used to be relegated to some hidden part of the garden. Now veg-growing is back in fashion it’s far more acceptable to mix them in with your other border plants. Vegetable and fruit plants can add colour and bring your garden to life, so if you have a flowerbed which is looking a bit empty, add some drama with beans or peas, trained on tee-pees or bamboo canes. If you want salad leaves available all summer long, sow seeds at regular intervals or every two to three weeks.