Growing fresh healthy crops full of vitamins and minerals does not require a large vegetable plot. Indeed even with a large vegetable plot we still grow things in the kitchen in areas of less than one or two sheets of A4 paper to demonstrate what is possible for apartment dwellers, the infirm and children.

Our automatic starter is often producing a diversity of sprouting seeds – eighteen possibilities are listed in our vegetable book. A cardboard box of spore impregnated compost produces shitake mushrooms over a period of several months each autumn. On the outside or onside windowsill a trough or row of pots can yield a diversity of herbs and miniature vegetables. On a worktop a deep earthenware container grows three or four litres of the healthy Kombucha drink a week (the active ingredient of Kombucha is a floating fungi/lichen type plant).

Instructions for such mini vegetable gardens are given in Part Two of our vegetable book. Why not have a go? Surely less than five minutes a day is a productive investment in one’s own health!

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Clodagh and Richard Handscombe are practical gardeners and authors living healthily from their holistic garden in Spain. Books include Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain and Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain.

© Clodagh and Richard Handscombe www.yourgardeninspain.com October 2008.