Grow your own fruit and vegetables

Cut the cost of your weekly shop with a crop of home-grown fruit and veg. It’s easy and cheap to get started. Here’s how…

Why grow your own?

Save money on your weekly shop

A small plot of 1.2m x 1.2m (4ft x 4ft) should supply vegetables all year round, according to Garden Organic. Growing your own organic veg, such as onions, potatoes, carrots and parsnips (all easy-maintenance crops), could save up to £900 a year.

Cut environmental damage

Growing your own veg means you save on transportation costs and pollution. Organic gardening cuts pesticides and GM foods from your diet and protects local wildlife.

Great rewards

Gardening is good (free) physical exercise and a great way of engaging kids in understanding where their food comes from.

Getting started

Plan what to grow

Grow fruit and vegetables that you regularly buy, particularly expensive ones such as soft fruit, tomatoes and salad leaves. Plant early and late cropping varieties for a long-lasting supply.

Prepare the plot

Divide your plot into four and group types together, such as salad in one and root vegetables in another. Dig over the soil, removing any stones and raking the surface so it’s level. Dig in well-rotted compost or manure to help your plants grow.

Get the right equipment

Equip yourself with a basic kit of spade, fork, hoe, rake, trowel and watering can. Professional trowel and hand forks cost from £1.99 at Dobbies. Reuse cardboard egg boxes as seed trays. 

What to do in spring

Warm the soil before planting seeds

Spread fleece or plastic sheeting on your plot or plant your veg in raised beds, which warm up faster than the ground.

Sow seeds

Allow a two-finger space between each seed. Cover with soil, pat down and water well. Water regularly as your seedlings begin to grow. Broad beans, early carrots, parsnips, spinach and turnips can all be sown outside now. Start growing baby beetroot, tomatoes, lettuces and courgettes indoors on a sunny windowsill.

What to do in summer

Plant out fruit and veg

Runner beans (a dozen plants will produce a generous crop for one or two people), cucumbers, tomatoes, marrows, courgettes, squashes and strawberries should be planted now.

Start harvesting

Pick crops of salad leaves and herbs, beetroot, onions, garlic, peas, courgettes and early potatoes.

Sow seeds for autumn

Sow turnips, beetroot, carrots and French beans for an autumn crop.

Maintain your plot

Keep plants well watered and fed, and look out for insects.

What to do in autumn

Lift and store root crops

Carrots, potatoes, swede, beetroot and turnips as well as onions and shallots should be stored for replanting next year.

Prune fruit plants

Cut back trees to maximise next year's harvest. Turn gluts of autumn fruit into jams, chutneys, pickles and jellies.

Plant for next year

Sow fast-growing autumn crops including cabbage, spinach, parsley, turnips, oriental vegetables and onions for early harvests next season.

What to do in winter

Make a plan

Review your plot. Look at what’s grown well and plan which vegetables to grow next year.