Seasons: Winter

Grown from sets or seedlings; needs depth, sun and patience.

Companion-planting workhorse: keeps nematodes down and feeds bees all season.

The Spanish jasmine of the perfume trade, grown widely in the north and west.

Jowar — drought-hardy grain and fodder in one, on almost no inputs.

Bush beans for winter troughs; pole kinds for a balcony net.

The winter sem of the plains, purple-flowered and heavy-cropping on a fence.

A winter pulse that also gives the sour green leaf of the north.

The winter weed worth sowing — mineral-rich leaves through the cold months.

A deep trough and forty days is all it asks. Thin ruthlessly for straight roots.

Needs depth more than width — a 30 cm trough of loose soil beats a wide bed.