Growing your own veg Six of the best

Many of the fresh fruit and vegetables we eat travel many miles before they reach our plates, and often come with excessive packaging.

The easiest way to have veg that are chemical-free, as fresh as possible and without any packaging is to grow your own. And the only distance they will travel is from your garden to your plate.

Growing your own is much simpler than you might expect. To get started, all you need is a couple of pots or a patch of soil and you can make a contribution to your family’s five-a-day portions of fruit and veg.

We’ve picked six of the easiest and most rewarding veg to start off with. They’ll take up hardly any room in the garden and will give you a rich supply of fresh produce.

Salad leaf

A supermarket favourite that’s easy to grow yourself

Perfect for summer salads

• Buy packs of ready-mixed salad seed in garden centres or buy separate packs and mix your own. Try Little Gem lettuce, red chard, salad rocket and mizuna. You can add other flavours such as coriander or mustard
• Starting in April, scatter seed thinly. Cover with a dusting of compost and water regularly
• When plants are 4-6cm high, cut enough for a meal, about 2cm above the compost. This should be after about six weeks
• We like Stumps should regrow for second or third cuts. Sow plants a fortnight apart to get regular pickings all summer

Some salad leaves can be grown in winter. For more, see our guide to growing your own winter salad.

Carrots

You may find growing these in the ground tricky, but it’s easy in pots

Carrots are easily grown in pots

• Choose an early variety such as Early Nantes, which will produce baby roots in six to eight weeks
• Scatter the seed thinly (aim for roughly 2cm apart) and cover with more compost. Water regularly but not too much
• Baby carrots can be pulled out as soon as they reach about 1cm across. Pull up as many as you need for a meal and then leave the rest to grow on. They’ll push each other apart until they fill the pot
• Worth knowing When you get the hang of this, baby beetroot and radishes can be grown in the same way

Courgettes

You should be able to get up to 30 fruits off a single plant

Give courgettes a weekly soaking in hot weather

• Buy small plants from a garden centre in May. They’re very sensitive to frost, so wait until the end of May in colder parts
• Courgettes make large, lopsided patio plants. They’re easier to manage in the ground but need a square metre to themselves
• Give them a good soaking once a week in hot weather to ensure a constant supply of fruits
• Pick when they reach about 15cm or they’ll turn into marrows and stop producing
• Worth knowing When disease strikes in late summer, leaves die off and then it’s time for the compost heap

Dwarf beans

Supermarket beans are expensive and are often imported

Grow your own and save money

• Buy seeds of a small-podded variety such as Safari – these are sold as Kenyan beans
• Sow short rows monthly from late May through July for a regular supply. They take about eight weeks to mature
• Sow seeds every 10cm directly into a shallow trench made with a hoe or trowel. Plants are bushy and shouldn’t need support. Once little pods start to form, water weekly in hot weather
• Check every other day and pick pods between 10-15cm long
• We think Why bother buying them when they’re easy to grow and taste better fresh?

Tomatoes

An obvious choice for a patio pot but worth growing in the garden, too

Sun ripened for full flavour

• Discover our Best Buy tomatoes for growing outdoors.
• Start to raise from seed in March on a warm, well-lit windowsill. Alternatively, buy plants from a garden centre in May
• Provide a cane or stake and train tall plants by nipping out side shoots at the base of the leaves to leave a single main stem and tie this in
• Leave any shoots with flower buds, which will become trusses of fruit
• Worth knowing Let the fruits ripen fully in the sun to enjoy unrivalled flavour

Potatoes

Easy to grow, even in patio pots

You can even grow potatoes in patio pots

• Pick an early variety. You’ll need one seed potato per 10-litre pot. Seed potatoes are grown to avoid disease and can be bought at a garden centre. Half fill the pot with compost and push the potato just beneath the surface
• As shoots start to grow, fill up the pot with compost. Potato foliage is sensitive to frost so cover it on colder nights
• We like Plant in early April and by late June or July, you’ll have lots of egg-sized new potatoes

Read the for more.

Don’t bother with...

Vegetables in the cabbage family are prey to pests. Pumpkins and marrow take over a garden, given a chance, while even experienced gardeners find celery a challenge.

For more on growing your own vegetables, buy our book Growing Your Own Vegetables Made Easy.

More on this...

• Read about our trial of outdoor tomatoes
• Watch our video on growing veg in pots
• Subscribe to Which? Gardening magazine