Delia's Kitchen Garden, by Gay Search with recipes by Delia Smith

With this in mind the two women, who have been friends for 35 years, have joined forces to give both cooks and gardeners food for thought in a new book, Delia's Kitchen Garden, a step-by-step guide for beginners who want to grow their own fruit and veg.

This book is not for the advanced gardener - it's more along the lines of Delia's How To Cook series, teaching basic methods for success with any kitchen garden.

But most of the input has come from Gay, with a selection of recipes from her pal. Delia had a walled kitchen garden built at her home in Suffolk and it was then that Gay stepped in.

"Delia lives this mad football life," says Gay of her friend, who is a director of Norwich City Football Club. "It takes her away a lot of the time so we were up there regularly working on the garden."

Gay offers the following advice to people who fancy having a bash at growing their own produce:

Grow what you like to eat. "A lot of people get into vegetable growing and I meet some who don't actually like to eat the produce they grow."

Grow what tastes best fresh. "There's nothing like the taste of new potatoes which have just been pulled out of the ground, or tomatoes just picked from the vine.

Others that reward you for being eaten straight after picking include all the salad leaves, cabbage, radishes and carrots."

Place your kitchen garden as close to your home as possible. "Delia had the luxury of a kitchen garden at the side of her home, but you can easily have a patio vegetable garden or even a square foot garden, where you create a plot in a simple frame and grow crops in succession all year round. It involves growing a crop in a square foot of soil and you can have as many squares as you have room for."

Work out how much time you are going to have. "You need to keep on top of the watering and weeding but there are ways around that" These may involve installing automatic watering systems down the rows of crops or attached to your containers.

Ideally, the kitchen garden needs plenty of light and some sun. Gay says: "In summer, when you are doing most of your growing, you will generally have a small spot in your garden that gets half a day's sun, and this is probably where you need to put your kitchen garden, although some crops such as spinach do quite well in shade."

Easy-to-grow crops include potatoes, beans and courgettes. "You can start courgettes and beans off on the windowsill and they are very satisfying because you get a lot of plant and they have pretty flowers. Three courgette plants

will fill up three square metres.

"Tomatoes aren't difficult. I like varieties like Garden Pearl or Tumbler. Germinate them indoors and only plant them outside when the danger of frost has passed.

"In the early part of the year sow half a row of salad crops each week to get a succession of crops coming through."

Beginners should avoid difficult, fussy crops such as cauliflower.

Delia's Kitchen Garden, by Gay Search with recipes by Delia Smith, is published by BBC Books, price £20.