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As food prices go up and life gets tougher, it's great to know that you have food available in your back garden. Even in the smallest space you can have a satisfying harvest.

There's nothing to beat a meal of vegetables that were picked less than an hour before they were cooked, both for taste and for nutrition. Choose vegetables that are suitable for your region, which you particularly like or that suffer from being transported. Give them good soil, hoe regularly to keep the topsoil in a crumbly state, supply enough water to keep the soil moist but not drenched, and you'll have more success than you'd have thought.

If you're short of space, remember you can grow vertically: put fruit such as raspberries or other berries against a sunny wall. They take up little room in the soil, and it's a delight to pick your breakfast fruit on a sunny morning. Herbs do well in herb towers - like chimney pots with holes in the sides for your parsley, sage rosemary and thyme. Climbing beans thrive in the sheltered conditions of a small garden, and so do cucumbers. The cucumber plants will need firm support as they begin to fruit, but are happy growing upwards rather than outwards.

If you have room, a compost heap for your vegetable waste and plant clippings will help you to keep the soil fertile and save on garbage space as well. Layers of green leaves and plants, alternated with soil or ash, rot down very quickly and cleanly especially if you regularly turn or tumble the pile.

Plants like tomatoes can take their place in among your flowerbeds - choose the bush variety, those that don't need the side buds picked off (the packet instructions will tell you which they are). Dwarf French beans flower quite prettily, and the beans are so much tastier picked fresh from the garden. If you have room, a spectacular globe artichoke plant looks great, produces artichokes for you to eat, and gives you stunning bright blue flowers from the ones you leave unpicked.

If you decide to have a dedicated little vegetable bed, then you have the choice of vegetables such as leeks (a great standby for soups), all kinds of salad leaves, spring onions and radishes, garlic and garlic chives. Even potato lovers can grow a few pounds in potato bags in the right latitudes although a bigger crop probably takes up too much room. In a backyard with space constraints its best to avoid the bigger vegetables such as sweet corn or cauliflower. Your aim is to get the most nutrition and the best crop per area of soil. You'll also get much satisfaction!

Learn more about this author, Joanna Howard.
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