Container gardening: how to grow your own fruit and berries on a windowsill or in a hanging basket

This is harvest time and the blackberries are ripening from Hampstead Heath to Wimbledon Common.

But Londoners don't have to brave the prickles and forage for fresh berries — they are incredibly easy to grow at home, even in a small space.

High in antioxidants and vitamins, home-grown berries from goji to strawberries, blueberries and blackberries will give you handfuls of sweet fruit picked at peak ripeness, unlike the shop berries that are harvested before they are ready and then flown thousands of miles in a plastic punnet.

You won't make cupboards full of jam from a few window boxes, but you will be grazing all summer on nutrient-rich berries to add to muesli, yogurt or breakfast smoothies.

From now until the end of autumn is the perfect time to order berry bushes and, with modern breeding breakthroughs, growing them in small spaces has never been easier.

Black Cascade blackberries (Thompson & Morgan) will trail their fruit over the sides of a hanging basket.

For tasty sauce in time for Christmas, cranberries make pretty trailing plants for hanging planters, with red berries that ripen in October (Marshalls, three x 9cm Pilgrim cranberry plants, £17.98).

To your hanging fruit garden, add strawberry Just Add Cream (Thompson & Morgan, five plug plants for £3.99), with a woodland strawberry taste. Or try Double Pleasures Hanging Pink Wonder (Lubera, £3.60 per plant).

Both have beautiful pink flowers that will festoon your balcony railings. Strawberries can even climb these days. Mount Everest produces metre-long runners with fruit on the ends that you can train up a trellis or wigwam (Thompson & Morgan, five bare root plants for £6.99).

Even raspberries, usually associated with large gardens, can now be grown in pots. Yellow raspberry Goodasgold and Baby Dwarf (Lubera) are very prolific.

Super-dwarf Yummy (Thompson & Morgan) would look great on a windowsill and claims to produce 1.5kg of fruit per bush.

Blueberries are a must, but you need more than one bush for pollination. Buy three varieties that ripen in consecutive months, such as Julia, Augusta and Septa.

Or try Lubera's Moreberry Pinkberry, which grafts pink and blue-berried varieties on to one plant for the max harvest in one pot.

Blueberries need ericaceous compost and rainwater, not tap, or they become chlorotic and pale. This can be a hassle but the rewards are worth it: firm, sweet berries with none of that shop-bought woolliness.

Or why not give gojis a go? High in iron, calcium and beta carotene, they thrive in containers and don't mind a bit of neglect or the exposure of a windy roof terrace.

Grow red gojis or try the golden-yellow version Sweet Amber (Lubera, £14.90).

And do give cape gooseberries a try. With a taste somewhere between a passion fruit and a cherry tomato, these golden berries make perfect sweet-sour snacks and, in London's mild climate, will last through the winter with little trouble (£2.25 per plant at Victoriana Nursery Gardens).

For plentiful home-grown berries regular watering is a must as is good multipurpose peat-free compost and plenty of sun. Fit an automatic watering system if growing in containers.

If you have some garden soil to grow in, order bare root raspberry canes now for planting later in the autumn. Even in one bed you can grow enough for a family, especially if you buy both summer and autumn kinds (Raspberry Full Season Collection, Thompson & Morgan, £19.99 for nine canes).

And even small spaces have walls. With a few horizontal wires to support them, blackberry Oregon Thornless will make beautiful looping arcs across a wall.

Japanese wineberries are sticky, beautiful and delicious, like a raspberry that's had a fight with a lemon sherbet.

Any city wall or fence will look the better for one of these, especially in winter when the bare pink stems glow.