8 best books for growing your own fruit and vegetables: Helpful guides for every type of space

Featuring environmentally-friendly methods for growing more than 75 fruit and vegetables, this is a must-have for gardening novices and pros alike. The 416-page book covers basics such as tending to fruit and vegetables in small spaces, creating raised beds, making container gardens, protecting tender plants and improving soil. It also catalogues how to grow a whole host of produce, with advice on where, when and how to cultivate each ingredient. Information is laid out in a practical and digestible way, and text is broken up with helpful imagery. One for the coffee table; it’s as aspirational as it is practical.

Don’t let being short of outdoor space, time or experience put you off growing fruit and vegetables. From ledges and sills to terraces and courtyards and roofs and balconies, this colourful book from writer and gardener Alex Mitchell identifies a whole host of small spaces where you can grow your own. We particularly enjoyed the focus on top indoor crops – think microgreens, herbs, baby salad leaves and even mushrooms under the bed – and the chapter on “Other Awkward Spots” where Alex illustrates how you can design an edible Eden using steps, corners, alleys and walls.

In this informative book, Kew-trained botanist and bestselling writer James Wong applies a scientific approach to gardening, revealing how to grow what he claims to be tomatoes with 50 per cent more vitamin C and chillies with double the heat thanks to a combination of sunlight, watering, enhancing soil and keeping pests at bay. Grow For Flavour is filled with interesting titbits, illustrations and photos as well as 36 fun and inventive recipes to try at home; think one-pot tomato leaf pasta and homemade cherryade – yum!

If you’re hoping to set up your own fruit and veg supply, this book from self-sufficiency pioneer Huw Edwards is wonderfully insightful. From the necessary tools to creating raised beds and sowing, harvesting and storing produce, Grow Food for Free covers all the basics to get you started, but with an added twist – the idea is to borrow, swap, share or make your own resources where possible, without having to spend a penny. Overall, the book is wonderfully resourceful and particularly relevant in the current climate.

In the first instance, growing your own can seem slightly overwhelming, but taking a read of Step-by-Step Veg Patch will assuage any anxieties. From getting started with basics such as tomatoes to migrating to more advanced ingredients, this book covers all the essentials and information is laid out in easy-to-read at-a-glance sections. You’ll also find handy diagrams covering when to sow and harvest, harvest lengths, and how to plant your desired ingredients in the ground and in containers.

Covering more than 60 crops, this book provides a month-by-month breakdown of what to do when. From digging over your plot in January to sowing and planting in February, it can be used as a to-do list to inform your growing and harvesting. On top of an annual overview of things to do, there’s also a “crop planner” chapter which covers how to grow a number of ingredients in a handy at-a-glance fashion.

From its jazzy jacket to trendy minimalist design inside, How to Grow is one for green-fingered millennials. Written by self-taught gardener Hollie Newton in her pint-sized London garden, this book will inspire avid gardeners to grow their own, no matter what space they’re working with. On top of being practical, it’s an enjoyable – and funny – read.

As this guide outlines, when it comes to growing your own, there is no need to be disheartened by a lack of space. Whether you have a small plot of land or simply a balcony, this helpful book lays out how to create a verdant spot which can be harvested for produce month after month. The author's diagrams, which denote what jobs need doing when to maintain your crops, are fantastic visual aids and information is handily divided into sections according to whether you are using raised beds or windowsills to cultivate your crops.