Growing to eat

5 Many vegetables, fruit and herbs look great as well as being productive, so can be grown anywhere, given a reasonable amount of sun. Add edible flowers such as nasturtiums, violas and calendulas, and your garden really can look as good as it tastes.

Why

Home-grown tastes better and saves your purse. Even in the smallest garden, there are plenty of ways to pack in edible plants. Raised beds, hanging baskets, tubs and windowboxes suit patios, balconies, roofs and courtyards. You can also transform walls or other vertical surfaces with ‘living wall’ planters: innovative designs that vary from hanging trays to troughs on frames.

K How

In the ground, the easiest and most eco-friendly way to grow crops is in small ‘no-dig’ beds. Here, instead of digging, you keep the soil healthy and fertile by applying a thick layer of garden compost or well-rotted manure (also called organic mulch) annually, ideally in autumn. Worms then work this into the ground. The beds should be no wider than1.2m, so they can be accessed from both sides without treading on the soil. Paths between them can be mown grass, chipped bark or hard surfaced.

If you don’t have room for beds, then grow in containers – a windowbox is perfect for herbs.

Do it now

Autumn is the perfect planting season for fruit trees, soft fruit and currant bushes, while winter is ideal for preparing beds for sowing and planting next year.

Long dark evenings are made for

‘armchair’ gardening – browsing seed catalogues and planning what to buy, sow and grow. Find out how to grow veg all year round on p90.

Handy kit

1 Raised beds or containers 2 Organic mulch 3 Planting and sowing tools 4 Seed catalogues