There are very few plants you can't grow in a pot. Of course, growing them in a garden is better —plants in the garden don't dry out as fast as pots, and their roots don't get as hot or as cold — but a potted garden can come with you when you move house. It can also be grown on a balcony or anywhere else where you don't have lots of soil. Plants in pots can be moved inside in winter in very cold climates, too, which is great if you want to grow mandarins or avocados when all the trees outside have icicles dripping from their branches.

In these economic times, though, one of the greatest advantages of growing your own plants is that there are so many you can actually eat. Save on your greengrocer bill by giving your green thumb a work-out – producing your own vegies and herbs from seedlings in pots to the dinner table is not only very satisfying and a healthy lifestyle option, but it’s a great family activity too. Get the kids involved in seeing how food actually grows – they can create labels for each pot using Microsoft Office templates.

A few pot tips:
*The bigger the pot, the better.
*Group your pots together — it'll be easier to water them, but they'll also help keep each other cool or warm.
*Mulch! Use coconut fibre (from the garden centre) or even pebbles to keep moisture in and stop the soil turning to concrete but ...
*When the soil DOES turn to concrete, replace the soil. Plants can't grow in concrete! And the water will slip down the sides, too, instead of wetting the soil so the roots can use it.
*Use slow release plant foods, or even better, home-made compost.

Some potted delights:
Artichokes: These lovely silver-leafed plants are great for pots in hot sunny spots. They grow from seeds sown in spring to mid-summer or suckers of last year's plants. Pick the young flower heads —the artichokes — in spring. Enjoy the silver grey leaves the rest of the time, and if you leave a couple of the last buds to flower, you'll be rewarded with some vivid electric blue/purple thistle-like flowers and some beautiful, architectural, dried fawn-coloured heads for winter flower arrangements.

Garlic chives: These are TOUGH, and unlike common chives, don't die down in winter or shrivel in heat and drought. They're flatter and coarser than common chives, but great in stir fries, sandwiches and salads where you want an onion/garlic flavour. They grow well in pots around roses, fruit trees or other shrubs.

Spring or bunching onions (Allium fistulosum): I rarely bother growing ordinary onions. If we want an onion flavour, I pick a bunch of these and chop them fresh into salads or saute them until they're soft for other dishes. The clumps grow larger year by year and tolerate sun or semi-shade. You can plant them any warm time of year. They grow well in pots around roses, fruit trees or other shrubs.

Sorrel NOTE: Make sure it's the real McCoy — not the mingy little weed, but the French vegetable with the big useable leaves and much more delicious flavour. Sorrel loves acid soils and spots where nothing much else grows. It will grow in full sun or semi-shade. The leaves are sour, rather than bitter, but a very little gives a tang to salads and I was served a stunning sorrel soup a few years ago that I've made a few times since — just half a dozen leaves pureed in two cups of chicken stock, with a dash of cream, served hot or cold. You can sow it any warm time of year. It grows well in pots around roses, fruit trees or other shrubs.

Rhubarb: Grow Wandin Winter or any other rhubarb that doesn't die down in winter and has attractive red stems. Pick it often and feed it often too — the more you pick, the more you'll need to feed the plant.

Strawberries: These are great planted around the base of any shrub or tree. They'll spill out over the edges of the pot too.

Climbers: Passionfruit, grapes, chokos and hops all grow excellently in pots if you give them somewhere to climb. A pot by a patio railing is perfect — the vine can clamber along the railing.

Fruit trees in tubs: Trees in tubs are convenient things. You tend to bump into them on terraces and patios, so remember to feed and water them more than their neglected relatives down the backyard. And they are small — so you can have a heck of a lot of them.

There are many trees that fit neatly and happily into tubs. Well, to be frank, almost any tree will survive in a tub — a sort of bonsaiing on a very large scale. You can plant trees in a tub at any time of year, as long as they are potted, not bare-rooted. Try to disturb them as little as possible, teasing out the roots only if they are pot bound.

Fill barrels with very good potting mix — not cheap sand and lumps of clay. Add water retaining crystals and a few slow release fertiliser pellets. And make sure there are holes in the bottom of the barrel or you'll end up with a foetid swamp. It is very hard to add holes after you've planted.

Stick the barrels on the patio, by the front door, on the terrace — just make sure they get at least four hours of sun a day. Fill the spaces between trunk and edge with white alyssum seedlings or blue lobelia — something gentle, rather than gaudy. And water them often, not just the soil, but the leaves as well to keep them healthy.

Citrus: The Meyer lemon is the smallest, but most citrus trees will dwarf well in pots. They'll survive even harsh frosts next to a warm brick, stone or pise house, but won't survive long periods of cold. It's the long-term stress that kills them, rather than the frost. Bung them on wheels, and take them inside at night — it's a bit like putting the dog to bed.

Kumquats: They look good in pots — you'll get flowers or fruit all year round. The modern varieties (make sure you don't get a calamondin) are large and sweet enough to be eaten like small oranges, or at least sliced into fruit salad or punches. Consider a mandarin too, or a chinotto — if you like the sort of musty coca-cola drink that goes by that name — it's the same flavour. They grow and look like ornamental mandarins, with pointy leaves, worth growing if you enjoy the taste. I hate them. There are also other dwarf citrus around now too—most nurseries will have them, along with a batch of excellent native citrus that have been crossed with 'true' citrus.

Apples: Ballerina apples are the most popular tub apples — they're tall and straight and bear fruit in the first or second year of planting. They are also expensive and ugly unless you have a passion for dead looking sticks in winter. I prefer the true dwarfs. You can buy dwarf apples at nurseries now, but the varieties are usually limited to Jonathon, Delicious and Granny Smith. There are also dozens of other incredible dwarf apples you can get from specialist growers. Peaches and nectarines These dwarfs are small, so choose a big pot rather than a barrel to plant them in. They bear a surprising amount of reasonable fruit and usually in their first year.

Avocado: These are surprisingly successful for such a big tree. You often need two varieties to pollinate, like apples. Plant two in the same hole, keep them well mulched, fed and watered, and you should get at least some fruit, if not the hundreds or thousands that a good backyard tree will give you.

Greens in a box: There's something infinitely sustaining about being able to pick greens all year round—you're defying a sort of ancestral memory of mid-winter scurvy and the like.

One punnet (or two or three) of parsley popped into a pot or two in the warm weather and you're set for winter.

You can buy packets of mixed salad greens now too, loosely called 'mesclun mix'. I've even seen punnets of them. They contain all sorts of good stuff, from interesting lettuce to a few Asian greens. There are also mixes based on Italian greens (containing radicchio and rocket as well as cos and oak leaf lettuces) and ones that are Asian (mizuma, bok choi, Chinese mustard greens, etc.) which are worth hunting out for greater variety.

A large pot, small bed, or even a Styrofoam box outside the back door filled with mixed greens is a lovely thing to have: grab a handful and you've got an accompaniment to dinner. Mix them with an Iceberg lettuce (all crunch and no flavour) and you've got something really good. Mixed greens tend to be a bit on the limp side, especially after a hot day, and sometimes a bit on the over-flavourful (or even bitter) side too, but mixed half and half with Iceberg you get the best of both worlds.

Windowsill herbs: Most herbs need fresh air as well as sunlight, so stick them near a window that you open often. With luck you can grow basil all year round — a luxury in cold winters. Try coriander, oregano or marjoram, chives, or chamomile. Pick the fresh flowers for a relaxing tea, even if you don't like dried chamomile teabags, you may love the taste of the fresh flowers. Sage, thyme, rosemary (keep it well pruned by picking it regularly) or dwarf lavender (not above the sink though, it'll get mildew). Mints are great by a well-lit bathroom window, the whole room smells of mint, but don't try it if you have frosted windows as they may not get enough light.

Most herbs need lots of heat and thrive by hot windowsills, but they won't take humidity, so keep them well watered but well aired, away from other pot plants with lots of moist foliage that might increase the humidity around them. With luck a very big pot of basil, tansy, feverfew or wormwood will help stop the flies from coming in.

Parsley is the perfect potted standby, even if it stops growing in winter outdoors, it may still keep unfurling new greenery on a hot windowsill. I like to have parsley where I can grab it easily, otherwise I forget to use it, which is a pity because even kids who don't like their greens will eat chopped parsley in other dishes. A cheery pot with a decorative chilli plant in it will brighten up the gloomiest winter kitchen window sill with the promise of warming curries and chile con carne among all those bright enamelled-looking chillies in scarlet and green. As a general rule grow each herb in its own pot — some herbs can overwhelm others.

Herbs that naturally die down in winter become unthrifty if kept unnaturally alive indoors. Take plants that require dormancy like tarragon, turmeric, and ginseng outdoors for a month or two so they can get back into a natural seasonal rhythm. Also, the more you pick your herbs, the healthier they'll be — new growth is more disease resistant. This is yet another reason to use your herbs lavishly. After all, a garden is there to use, as well as to delight you, whether it's in the ground or in a pot or hanging basket.