The pleasures of vegetable-growing go beyond podding sun-warmed peas into your mouth and picking dew-washed salad leaves. Vegetable-growing solves problems. Like how to get rid of your partner's embarrassing trousers: the scarecrow needs them. And how to vent your spleen after a testing day at the office: slug and snail slaughter is highly effective. Then there's the digging and sowing, otherwise known as Nature's answer to antidepressants (or placebos).

These remarkable effects can be achieved in a window box if that's your limit. However modest your garden, it will produce vegetables that taste better, and contain more nutrients, than supermarket offerings.

The question is: what to grow?

If you're a first-time vegetable gardener, there isn't much point in going for potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, onions and all the other vegetables that are cheap and readily available in lots of varieties. On the other hand, unusual vegetables, such as asparagus peas, taste disgusting - which is probably why they are unusual. And, unless you have a conservatory or greenhouse, there isn't much point in exotics such as aubergines, which struggle to ripen in this climate.

Instead, go for produce that can cope with British weather, that tastes better when freshly picked, or that is expensive or elusive. For instance, globe artichokes are expensive and rarely available, but they are easy to grow and look beautiful. Another underrated vegetable is rainbow chard, which crops almost all year round. Its ruby red, yellow, orange, pink and white stems are worthy of the flower border, and its curious earthy flavour goes well with a creamy cheese sauce.

These are some of the 14 vegetables I've picked for a vegetable plot. They all grow easily from seed although, if you wish, you can skip sowing altogether (see below).

Sow good seeds

Some seed is best sown directly into soil or compost. Use a long bamboo cane or a marker line to get straight rows. Rows look good and are easier to weed - by hand or hoe - than wobbly lines.

Other seed, such as courgettes and pumpkins, needs to be started indoors. Germinate seeds in a warm area (beside a boiler, for instance). Cover the seed tray or pot with pierced transparent plastic so that air can circulate without the compost drying too quickly. Use fresh compost in clean containers. As soon the seedlings begin to emerge, move them into a light, warm spot, avoiding direct sunlight.

Harden them off by putting the seeds outside during the day for a week or so before planting them out.

Alternatively, you can cheat. Most vegetables listed here can be bought as small plants from local markets, garden centres or by post from seed companies. Some seedsmen, such as Thomson & Morgan, offer collections such as 12 Little Gem lettuce, 30 leeks, 12 Enorma runner beans and ten chard plants for £12.49. Seeds cost even less: gardening has to be the cheapest therapy around.

The times2 garden therapy involves 14 easy and outstanding vegetables. The first seven make up our capsule collection of plants that can grow in containers as well as in open ground.

By “container” I mean almost anything, provided it has drainage holes covered by a layer of polystyrene pieces or bits of broken flowerpot, followed by fresh potting compost mixed with water-retaining crystals. The crystals will help to stop the plants drying out, although you will still have to water them - up to three times a day in extreme heat.

The capsule collection: 7 vegetables for small spaces

Nasturtium is a pretty, entirely edible plant with a hot, peppery flavour. It is ideal for a sunny window box. Push each seed 1cm into the soil or compost, 30cm apart. They thrive in poor soil. Nasturtium flowers range from blood-red to yellow and make an arresting decoration on salad or fish. The almost circular leaves can be added to sandwiches or salads or floated, lilypad-style, on cold spinach or watercress soup. The caper-like fruits can be pickled in vinegar and used as an alternative to capers.

Globe artichokes are beautiful. Their architectural grey/green foliage dotted with artichoke heads looks good in large pots beside a sunny front door or in a flower border. They grow big - up to 2m - and reappear year after year. Buy small plants and add plenty of rotted manure to the bottom half of the container. Nip off buds as they appear in the first year so the plant can build up strength. Harvest in the second year. It's worth the wait. Every winter, when the artichokes die back, cover the tops of the plants with straw or leaves.

Salad Thomson & Morgan has a list of “cut and come again” types, ranging from red Bulls Blood to chicory, rocket and a variegated Land Cress which crops almost all year. This pretty selection looks good in a window box, although salads need to be shaded from direct sunshine in midsummer.

Tomatoes can be grown in hanging baskets. Use varieties such as Tumbler or Pearl from Unwins. If you have space for bigger varieties but don't want the hassle of supporting tomatoes on canes, grow bush types such as the tasty and well-behaved Gardener's Delight. Grow-bags are great for tomatoes but look awful. Decant the compost into a large container. Whatever the container, you will need to water regularly or the tomatoes will split. Use a proprietary feed every week.

Radish is the traditional way to get children interested in gardening because radishes are easy, fast and pretty. Scarlet Globe is a classic spherical, bright-red variety. Sow it straight into the ground. Keep sowing every few weeks to keep the radishes coming - this is called succession sowing and it's worth doing with most salad crops. In midsummer it is possible to sow and harvest in three weeks.

Follow the simple sowing instructions on each salad variety.

Basil flavours vary according to variety. Jekka's Herb Farm grows nearly 40 types. I love the Italian tradition of growing basil in pots on a hot, sunny windowsill where the plant will scent the air and keep flies at bay. Start harvesting when the plants are about 15cm high.

Chard Bright Lights has thick, shiny stalks in red, yellow, pink, orange and white, and crops throughout the year. I once grew red chard as a feature plant in a 50m red border - stunning. Chard also looks good in large pots. Sow 2cm deep with 40 cm between plants.

The best of the rest: 7 vegetables for your plot

The rest of our 14 easy vegetables are too big for containers, so you'll need to prepare part of your garden.

Choose an airy, light and open site. Mark out a bed so that you can reach every part without standing on it. Ideally, the ground should have been prepared in autumn by double-digging with manure. It's too late now, unless you're making a raised bed (the Royal Horticultural Society and Garden Organic have advice on making raised beds), in which case you can start with a layer of compost or rotted manure before adding the topsoil. If you're making a traditional bed, dig over the site and eradicate every weed. Break up the earth and level it with a rake.

Runner beans are easy, fast, generous, attractive plants. The Organic Gardening Catalogue stocks plenty of varieties. Painted Lady's scarlet flowers are pretty; Red Knight tastes good and is stringless.

Dig a trench 50cm deep and add rotted manure. Replace the soil and push each bean 5cm down, 25cm apart. Erect a bamboo frame or wigwams, and tie the young plants in. They will then climb without help. Keep picking and beans will keep coming.

Peas Avola is a tasty variety. Sow it every few weeks and you can have peas all summer. Thomson & Morgan's special pea collection is designed to produce different varieties throughout the season. With 1,200 seeds for £5.49, these can be shared. Cultivation is similar to runner beans (above), though not all peas need support.

Parsnip is so sweet it can be used in ice-cream. But it must be fresh to get the full flavour. It's late to sow parsnip but worth trying unless you have heavy clay or stony soil. Use the Student variety. Make a furrow 1cm deep and sow two seeds every 15cm. Once the seedlings emerge, remove one from every couple. Harvest from November.

Carrot cultivation follows the same rules as parsnip, but the fine seed has to be sown in a line, then thinned to one plant every 7cm. Two warnings: a heavy clay soil will produce obscene root shapes; and carrot fly will destroy the crop unless you cover it with horticultural fleece, or use resistant varieties.

Garlic is traditionally planted in midwinter for midsummer cropping. Stick cloves in the ground 1cm down and 10cm apart. Thermidrome and Printanor are well suited to this climate and can be planted in November. Garlic will grow in containers but is not a looker.

Pumpkins The Atlantic Giant variety is for fun rather than eating, and great for getting children interested in gardening. They need a fertile, sunny spot and about 10sqm. These are huge plants - too big to be sold in supermarkets. Last time I grew one it took three of us to get it in a wheelbarrow. Pump up the size by nipping off all but the most robust three fruits.

Courgettes are also large plants (allow at least 1sqm). One plant will produce kilos.

Some say that pumpkins and courgettes have to be planted in a compost heap, but they'll do fine in a 30cm by 30cm hole (at least four times that for Atlantic Giant) filled with rotted manure. Plant out pumpkins and courgettes only when there is no danger of frost, and keep them well watered (try not to get water on the plant, which may rot). Dose them with tomato fertiliser every fortnight.

What tools do I need?

Keep it simple. A spade; a fork; seed trays (optional); potting compost; watering can; trowel; labels; garden twine; bamboos.

Labels matter. They help to show which rows have been sown before seeds have germinated, and they are a reminder about varieties and sowing times.

Strips of plastic marked with an indelible marker, and painted pebbles will do. Alternatively, Wells and Winter has a good selection of commercial labels.

Safe pest control

Today's garden chemicals are so weak, they are hardly worth the trouble. Conversely, biological controls are so good that you may as well use them.

Here are two examples:

Nematodes invade and kill those most pernicious pests, slugs (Nemasys is a reliable supplier). They come in a powder which has to be diluted and watered on to the soil when it is warm, otherwise the nematodes will die before the slugs.

Naturen is an organic insecticide made from rapeseed oil which kills whitefly (and other problem insects) by blocking the tiny holes that cover their bodies. Larger (beneficial) insects such as ladybirds, lacewings and bees have larger body holes which do not get blocked.

The thing to remember about gardening without chemicals is that soil is the engine that keeps plants healthy and better able to survive or resist pests and disease. Therefore soil has to be packed with organic matter such as rotted manure and garden compost to help water retention, soil structure and fertility levels.

A pond is also important, as it will attract pest-eaters such as frogs and birds. Even the smallest pond will do. I once made a pond from an old washing-up bowl filled with oxygenating weed. Frogspawn appeared every year.

Garden Organic and the RHS have information on controlling pests and disease. Garden Organic's commercial arm, the Organic Gardening Catalogue, has all the supplies you will need.

Best book

The best vegetable grower's book is David Hessayon's brilliant but design-challenged New Vegetable and Herb Expert (Expert, £5.99).

Small is beautiful

Those with minute gardens and big ambitions may find inspiration from a technique called Square Foot Gardening, which is an intensive system on a 112cm x 112cm plot. Its founder, Mel Bartholomew, has written the book All New Square Foot Gardening (Paperback £8.95), which explains how to do it.

CONTACTS

Jekka's Herb Farm 01454 418878/ 0845 2903255 jekkasherbfarm.com

Garden Organic 0247630 3517 gardenorganic.org.uk

Dobies 0844 7017623 dobies.co.uk

Royal Horticultural Society 0845 2605000 rhs.org.uk

Thomson & Morgan 01473 695200 thomson-morgan.com

Marshalls 01480 443390 marshalls-seeds.co.uk

Unwins 01480 443395 unwins.co.uk

Wells and Winter 01626 821044 wellsandwinter.co.uk

Biological controls from:

Organic Gardening Catalogue 0845 1301304

organiccatalog.com/catalog/catalogue.php

Just Green just-green.com

Green Gardener greengardener.co.uk

Nemasys 0800 0853105 nemasysinfo.com

The Natural Gardener thenaturalgardener.co.uk

Agralan agralan.co.uk

Lost Irish peas and killer Siberian carrots

By Kate Muir

As an incompetent, lazy and spasmodic grower of vegetables, I am perfectly equipped to encourage you, reader, to grow your own. I have had an allotment in sunny Cricklewood, by the six-lane A41 in North London, for three years now. Many vegetables have shrivelled and rotted away in my tender care but, on the other hand, lots have made it to the pot.

I rely on my team of gardeners: whichever child is not watching the rugby or football on a Saturday afternoon, and the dog. Last weekend we put in the first batch of the chitted potatoes. I always wondered what chitting meant, too. Turns out a potato has a top that sprouts and a bottom that doesn't. Stick them by the window and they grow shoots. After a few weeks, bung them shoots-up in the earth. That's it.

Once you have been growing veg for a while, you get experimental. Besides traditional varieties of seed potatoes, I've chitted some Shetland Black Vintage - Gothic-looking heirloom spuds from Waitrose with a purple zigzag in the flesh - just to see what happens.

On the allotment, advice is never far away - we don't need Gardeners' World: “Excuse me. How deep are you planting your potatoes again? I've forgotten,” I say to the ancient Irishman in the tweed jacket a few allotments along.

“About six inches,” he says. “And you'll be wanting some parsnips?” He fills an Iceland bag with six truncheon-sized parsnips, as he often does. I still don't know his name. But I'll take him some cherries in summer, so it all evens out.

The Irish put in their potatoes by St Patrick's Day, but the gentleman with a plot by the allotment gates is doubtful about this: “There's a lot of rain to come and they may just rot into mush.” I tell him that I'll plant a second batch (Red Duke of York and Arran) later in the month.

“Here,” he says, looking furtive and beckoning me into his shed. “Got a Siberian lodger this year who's given me seeds.” We guess the packet contents by the pictures: evil-looking cucumbers with prickles come my way, and some carrots. “I'll plant them now,” I say. “Sure to be permafrost-proof.”

The carrot seeds are a livid emerald green instead of brown. They could be organic, dyed with food colouring to be seen when dropped on Siberian soil, I suggest. “Or else you'll plant them and they'll grow up and invade your country!” says a child. It's the Attack of the Killer Siberian Carrots.

So here's the joy of it all - not merely planting things that actually taste of something, and sharing advice and plants across the allotment fence, but finding bizarre vegetables not available on Tesco.com. My main carrot crop will be the “Dig for Victory” Early Nantes 5, the root veg that won us the Second World War, which I found in the Imperial War Museum shop.

But my peas have the most fascinating back story. I got them from a friend, Alex Chisholm, who sells heritage seeds at wildaboutveg.com in Ireland. They're “Peas: Irish Green”, a variety that was wiped out by industrial farming and survived only in the vaults of the Vavilov Institute in Russia, a seed bank of 380,000 varieties set up more than 100 years ago. During the siege of St Petersburg in the Second World War, scientists guarded the seeds from famished townspeople. At least nine botanists starved to death amid rice, wheat - and my peas.

If you don't have an allotment, tiny spaces can yield plenty of salad and vast vegetables. To start, I'd recommend Allotment Gardening: an organic guide for beginners (Paperback, £9.95), by Susan Berger.

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