Given all the recent food scandals – fipronil present in chicken eggs, pesticides present in school children’s foods – wouldn’t it be tempting to learn how to grow your own food?

If you shiver at the thought of the additives that keep vegetables and fruit artificially fresh for so long, think how much healthier you will be if you eat the most local of food that you’ve grown yourself.

Sally Nex’s Growing Self-Sufficiency will inspire you to make the change and shrug off the type of salad crisis we had last winter when shop shelves were bare.

Sally’s unique three pot method will guarantee you a supply of tasty, inexpensive home-grown food throughout the year. Not just helping to save the planet, it will help to save money too – Sally has plenty of tips on how you can feed your family at only a fraction of the cost. You’ll be amazed to see how much your food spending adds up and how much you will save by:

• starting a vegetable plot on your balcony
• creating a herb garden on your windowsill
• growing a mini orchard in pots

Even if you only spend a fiver a week on salads and greens, this makes it trebly satisfying:

• enjoying the delicious taste of home-grown food
• knowing exactly where it comes from
• shaving pounds off your food bill.

Sally discovered how to keep her family well provided for from her garden some years ago and has been an evangelist for the grow-your-own movement ever since. Once started, and realising how easy it was, she wants everyone to know about it and, in between growing, she now writes and lectures on self-sufficent growing all over Europe. Here’s how you can make a start:

• Plant a chili pepper indoors and you’ll have chilis all year, fresh in summer and dried in winter.
• Grow a mix of salad leaves in containers. They’re healthier, tastier, cheaper- and you can choose which leaves you’d like to include.
• Get your dose of greens in winter by growing the superfoods, kale and chard
• Easy to grow herbs such as rosemary and mint can be harvested all winter and fit nicely on a windowsill.
• Honey bees don’t need much space, a balcony in the middle of the city will do.

Taking control of your own food is one of the easiest ways to tread lighter on the earth: as easy, in fact, as planting a seed.

Find out more about Sally Nex’s Growing Self-Sufficiency