Growing your own means saving money, and fresh, home-grown vegetables are always best.

Even in the smallest home garden just a few more square metres can be rewarding.

One essential is that your vegetable plots must get plenty of sun. They won’t grow in the shade.

Look around your garden carefully and see what waste areas could be used.

Containers can be used on patios and concrete areas to grow herbs, strawberries and potatoes.

Lettuces can be grown in window boxes, or even in large flower pots, but they must be fed and watered regularly.

Preparing the soil well is another essential. Remove all weeds, dig it deep, and add compost or manure while you’re digging.

A sprinkling of dolomite will benefit your vegetable plots too, unless the soil is already alkaline.

Vegetables like a soil that is neutral to slightly alkaline, although this doesn’t apply to potatoes.

They like it slightly acid.

This is one reason they do well in new soil before a lawn is sown.

Blood and bone is one of the best all-round fertilisers you can use in the vegetable garden.

The secret of success with all vegetables is to keep them growing rapidly with regular feeding and consistent moisture.

I noticed recently lots if lovely little pieris plants in full bloom.

This attractive shrub has chains of bell-shaped flowers, followed by colourful new tips on the foliage in spring.

The pieris is also known as andromeda, Japanese pearl flower and lily of the valley shrub.

It’s an evergreen shrub from the same family as rhododendrons and azaleas, and likes similar conditions – a cool position, an acid soil rich in organic matter and regular watering during summer.

Dappled shade from larger trees nearby is best for them. They can be effectively blended in with fernery plants.

Just as the flowers are fully opened the young growth tips sprout. 

These can be bronze, salmon pink or a fiery red similar to photinias.

The coloured leaf tips can last up to three months.

All the pieris are well-shaped, with dark green leaves all the year round.

They are an ideal tub or container plant for a cool position.

Little or no pruning is needed.

Kennedias might not be the most spectacular of Australian native plants but they are certainly among the most attractive.

One of them, kennedia prostrata, or running postman, can be found in the bush in most parts of Tasmania.

For most of the year it is an unassuming ground cover, almost unnoticeable, but from late winter to early summer it has bright red, pea-like flowers.

It is ideal to grow in a rock garden, trailing around and between other plants. It can be from a metre to 2.5 metres across.

Another prostrate groundcover is kennedia glabrata, which will climb upward if it can get support.

It is very fast-growing. In late spring to early summer it is a mass of brick-red to purplish-red pea-like flowers.

This one has a lifespan of only two to four years but is ideal for new gardens because it will grow quickly while other shrubs and trees are becoming established.and then quietly disappear.

Kennedia coccinea also has a short lifespan but is spectacular when in flower. In spring it is covered with a combination of scarlet to salmon or mauve and bright yellow flowers. 

Also known as the coral vine, it can be a climber or a trailing ground cover. It too is a fast grower.