What vegetables should I grow in my garden?

When starting to plant a new vegetable plot a question asked by many gardeners is what should I grow? This is particularly so for the novice gardener, faced with the huge range of seeds and plants available. Over the last eight or so years, I have had three vegetable plots of varying sizes, plus lived in a flat with a balcony, which I crammed with as many plants as possible. Over this time I have tried growing a fair few varieties of veg, with differing results, and have built up a list of favourites.

The walled kitchen garden - an introduction

As regular readers and friends will know, earlier this year we moved to Hove. When we looked round the flat, one of the things that we really liked about it was the garden. The borders were pretty over-grown, but the garden was a good size and looked like it would get a lot of sun. It was quite a contrast to the garden we had in our London terrace, which was narrow, ran up a hill and was overshadowed by trees in the neighbouring gardens. The Hove garden clearly had a lot of potential, but it was also going to be something of a project.

The garden when we moved in