How To Grow Vegetables, Even In Isolation

People often think you can't grow vegetables without outdoor space; while it's certainly difficult to be self-sufficient, it's not hard to grow something that you can eat. If you’re thinking of starting, I would begin with microgreens, like rocket, parsley or coriander. You can sew them into compost (which at the moment is quite difficult to get hold of) or a damp paper towel. Once they're a few centimetres high, you can harvest them by cutting them off with a pair of scissors. They’re delicious additions to salads.

If you have a windowsill, you can grow quite a lot of herbs, edible greens and lettuce leaves. These are the types of foods that are likely to go soggy in a bag of salad in your fridge. So growing fresh and harvesting them just before you eat, really makes a huge impact. Easy varieties to start with are basil, coriander, parsley. If you’re growing mint, keep it in a separate pot because it will take over whatever pot it’s planted in. Edible flowers are also fun to grow and they’re more accessible than vegetable seeds at the moment. I’m currently growing three varieties of nasturtiums. They look beautiful in a salad and germinate really quickly, which means that you'll see fast results.

With all of these, especially if you're going from seed, you really need to make sure that you're watering well. That will encourage things to come up. You also need to establish how much light you’ll get before you start growing anything. That’s more important than pretty much anything else when it comes to growing your own. If you’ve got a shady urban balcony, you can grow lots of leafy greens, so spinach, salad leaves, mint and lots of unusual greens which you can’t buy in the shops, like purslane and pea shoots. If you have a lot of light, you can grow largely what you'd like as long as you keep it watered. So, tomatoes aubergines, peppers, chilies. Courgettes are really good as a beginner crop as well.

Aside from light, another important thing is good nutritious soil. I quite often grow my annual crops in bags for life from the supermarket. I put a load of compost in and grow two courgette plants or tomato plants. It’s good because you can pack them down again after the season's ended and they're not cluttering up your space. Fill the bags with peat free multi-purpose compost. (Multi-purpose compost would do but I always like to promote peat free compost because it's better for the environment.) Once they start flowering and putting fruit on, you'll want to feed every two weeks.

When it comes to watering, don’t go overboard. If you do, the vegetables will start to rot. You don't ever want the soil to dry out, but you also don't want it to be sopping wet - you essentially want it to be moist. At this time of year, you can probably get away with watering once a week. As we get into the warmer seasons, you're going to have to tend to them every few days to every day. When it comes to buying seeds, I would try your local nurseries or online supermarkets. There’s been a big rush on seeds lately – I visited a gardening website the other day and waited in an hour long queue; it was as if I was trying to buy Adele tickets.

As a general rule, I'd say grow what you want to eat. It's all fine and well putting a lot of effort into potatoes, but if you usually eat potatoes once a week, you'll probably be putting in more effort than you're going to reap. Although, very established growers I know don't grow everything that they eat. The point is to grow stuff that will bring you the most satisfaction, the most joy and make the biggest impact on your daily life. That’s why I grow a lot of fresh herbs and a lot of fresh salad. Those are the things that always taste a bit rubbish in the supermarkets because they’re often imported. So by growing your own food you’re doing less damage to the planet.

Alice Vincent is the author of Rootbound: Rewilding A Life

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