There are different leagues of vegetable gardener, from the give-it-a-go crowd to the obsessional anorak. Tom Doorley's not quite sure where he fits in - except to say that he spends more time on his vegetable garden than on almost anything else.
In my personal scheme of things, plants have to justify their place in the garden by being either edible or fragrant. I like scented rhododendrons, I love roses, I adore lavender, but I simply worship vegetable gardens. There's something about a row of lettuces, each lying snugly and plumply on the well-hoed earth, that really does it for me. Or the sheer magic of parting the soil to reveal pristine new potatoes, or the satisfaction of lifting a carrot out of the ground by its ferny green top.
A well-kept kitchen garden, or even a severely practical one such as mine, with its black plastic mulches and amateur's rabbit-proof fence, is more beautiful, for me, than any display of exotics. I could sit among the vegetables for hours, but my conscience would start to trouble me.
There is always hoeing to be done, thinning of seedlings, hand-weeding, digging, feeding, sowing, planting. But it's good to stop every now and then and just drink it all in - including the distinctly smug satisfaction in knowing that you're helping to provide yourself and your family with the freshest and best-tasting food.
There are different leagues of vegetable gardener, ranging from the give-it-a-go crowd (a bit of salad and a few herbs in a window box) to the obsessional anorak (feeding leeks with soot to get giant exhibition specimens), and I'm not sure quite where I weigh in, except to say that I spend more time on the vegetable garden than on anything else except work. But this may just point to a lack of efficiency.
So, what are my essential veg and how do I grow them? I suppose salad is my number one, because of its supreme freshness and the fact that conventionally produced lettuce from the supermarket is laced with chemicals (second only to carrots in this respect). The simplest way to grow lettuce is to use the cut-and-come-again sorts that are sometimes called Salad Bowl. You get a mixture of varieties in the seed packet and all you have to do is clear a square metre of soil, give it a bit of a feed (fish, blood and bone meal, or seaweed powder from the garden centre, will do fine), scatter the seed thinly and cover it very lightly with soil (just a dusting, really). Then sit back and wait for the appearance of succulent little salad leaves, which you cut individually. Sow now and you will have salad until September.
Slugs will try to undo your plans, of course, but take no nonsense: use beer traps (yogurt pots full of the stuff, sunk into the soil), go out at night and kill the beasts, and above all encourage frogs and hedgehogs to do the work for you. Slug pellets are the very last resort.
What else? Potatoes? Fine, if you have the space. Asparagus? Ditto, plus a lot of patience. Tomatoes? Definitely, but you need a greenhouse because outdoor crops are just too risky.
Purple sprouting broccoli will provide you with a sybaritic treat next winter and spring. Ignore what the textbooks say and sow right now, in small pots or modules (inside or out, it doesn't matter). Thin to the strongest seedling and let it grow to seven or eight centimetres high. Then plant your broccoli out in the garden, giving each plant as much as a square metre. Remember to tread down the soil very hard around the plants; all members of the cabbage family like very firm ground.
The more adventurous gardener might like to try Brussels sprouts (especially the new F1 hybrids such as Doric and Trafalgar), which can be treated in exactly the same way. Just remember to cook the sprouts very gently when they appear, from December onwards. Otherwise they might be as horrible as you remember them.
Beetroots are so easy to grow that you may well become sick of them in time. Just draw out a shallow seed drill about a centimetre deep and sow a beetroot seed (which is, in fact, several seeds in one capsule) every three inches, and fill the soil back in. When the little beets are the size of ping-pong balls, pull up every second one and enjoy their youthful tenderness. Leave the rest to bulk up for winter.
Just as easy, but rather more exotic, are courgettes. They need to be kept a metre apart and require some organic matter. So dig a hole for each plant and tip in a bucket of garden compost or rotted manure and put the soil back in. Each hole will now be surmounted by a little mound. In each of these sow two courgette seeds a couple of centimetres deep and top with a mini-cloche made from a sawn-off two-litre plastic bottle. Thin to one seedling. Just remember that courgettes need oceans of water during the summer - and that they need to be picked when absolutely tiny.
Other vegetables to try? Scallions are dead easy and very forgiving. Radishes grow themselves and, more importantly, deliver a spicy, cool crunch when dipped in sea salt or soft butter as you toy with a glass of white wine. You might even try carrots, using a carrot-fly resistant variety in one row and a sacrificial sowing of a normal sort right beside it. Carrot flies are not all that bright.
The important thing is to grow something. Not only will it be delicious and non-toxic, but it may be the start of an obsession. Before you know where you are, you may be growing celeriac, a most worthwhile project but, let me tell you from bitter experience, not one to be taken on lightly. Extreme vegetable gardening is just round the corner.