Begin at the kitchen door

The most productive kitchen garden is rarely the biggest one. It is the one you pass twenty times a day. A narrow strip of paving beside the back door, a couple of pots on a sunny step, or a single raised bed within arm's reach of the tap will be cropped far harder than a tidy plot at the end of the garden that you only visit at weekends. Proximity changes behaviour: you nip out for a handful of parsley while the pasta boils, you spot the compost looking dry, you catch the slugs before they settle in.

So start by standing at your door and looking outwards. Where does the sun fall between mid-morning and early evening? Most herbs, salad leaves and compact vegetables want at least four to six hours of direct sun, though leafy crops will tolerate a little shade and actually appreciate it in the height of summer. A south or west-facing wall is ideal, radiating warmth back onto pots. Keep the space within reach of a tap, a water butt or a long watering can, because the closer the water, the more reliably it arrives.

Make every centimetre work

Small spaces reward clever use of height and depth rather than width. Aim to layer your growing space so that a metre of ground yields three or four times the harvest.

• Raised beds around 30–40cm deep give you proper rooting depth and let you control the compost. A bed just 60cm wide and 2m long, sited against a wall, will feed a household through the salad season.
• Large pots beat small ones every time. A 30cm-diameter pot suits basil, chives or parsley; tomatoes, chillies and dwarf beans want 40cm or more. Terracotta dries out faster than glazed or plastic, so choose accordingly.
• Wall-mounted pockets and trellis turn blank fences into productive vertical ground. Strawberries, trailing herbs and climbing peas all do well here.
• Grow bags and troughs slot onto paving, gravel or a balcony where there is no soil at all.

Whatever you choose, fill it with a good peat-free multipurpose compost and add a handful of slow-release feed. Container growing is intensive growing, and hungry compost runs out of steam quickly.

Crops that earn their space

In a small kitchen garden, every plant has to justify its square footage. Forget maincrop potatoes, sweetcorn and big winter brassicas — they take months and occupy ground that could have produced three or four successional sowings. Instead, concentrate on crops you harvest little and often, ideally cut-and-come-again.

• Herbs: chives, parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage and coriander. Keep mint in its own pot, or it will romp through everything else.
• Salad leaves: loose-leaf lettuce, rocket, mizuna, spinach and land cress. Sow thickly, cut young, and they will regrow two or three times.
• Compact vegetables: radishes, spring onions, beetroot such as 'Boltardy', dwarf French beans, rainbow chard, mangetout peas and cherry tomatoes like 'Tumbling Tom'. Chillies and dwarf aubergines thrive in pots against a warm wall.

Aim for a mix of fast, quick-return crops and a few slower ones that keep giving, so there is always something worth picking.

Sow little and often

The single biggest mistake in a tiny plot is sowing a whole packet at once and facing a glut followed by a famine. A 40cm trough of salad leaves is plenty for two people for a fortnight; sow another every two to three weeks from March through to August and you will have a continuous supply. Use modules or small pots for anything you intend to transplant, and pop quick crops such as radishes or lettuce into gaps left by harvested beetroot or finished peas. Nature abhors bare compost, and so should you.

Watering and feeding without fuss

Containers and shallow raised beds dry out alarmingly fast, which is why grouping your kitchen garden near the door pays off. Water in the morning where you can, directing the can at the base of the plants rather than over the leaves, and stand pots on saucers or trays to hold a reserve. A 2cm mulch of garden compost or bark will slow evaporation considerably.

Consistency matters more than quantity with fruiting crops. Tomatoes and peppers that dry out and then flood are prone to blossom end rot. Once the first truss of tomatoes has set, switch to a high-potash liquid feed weekly. Leafy herbs and salads need far less — rosemary, thyme and sage actually prefer leaner conditions and resent rich feeding. Little and often, in both water and nutrients, is the rhythm to aim for.

Keep it going through the year

A kitchen garden should not fold up in September. Sow lamb's lettuce, winter purslane, mizuna and winter-hardy kale in late summer for cutting through the colder months, and protect them with a cloche or a simple cold frame made from a wooden box and an old window. Hardy herbs such as thyme, sage and parsley will keep going outdoors in all but the hardest frosts. Come January, top up compost, scrub your pots, and sketch out next year's plan — a small, well-tended plot near the door will quietly out-produce a large neglected one, and you will enjoy every trip out to pick dinner.