Growing your own food has never been more popular as people focus on healthier diets and shopping less frequently but if you don't have outdoor space or any experience, cultivating a vegetable garden is not easy. Thankfully, there are now some amazing hydroponics systems for producing fruit, vegetables and herbs in small urban spaces. With soil-free cultivation and smart technology, these should make growing enough food to feed the family as simple as flicking a switch...

For the horticulturally challenged, it doesn’t get much simpler than the Modulo indoor garden. Simply fill the planters with water, insert one of the company’s plant pods (these include seeds plus nutrients and soil to help your produce grow) and then plug in the unit. Water only needs to be added every two to three weeks, while the LED light turns on and off automatically. After a month, your first harvest will be ready.

You can grow everything from tomatoes, lettuce and chillis to mint and basil in these ingenious planters. Then, at the end of the growth period, you can simply pop the biodegradable pod into your compost and slide in a new one. One of the big bonuses of this stylish system is its flexibility. The modules can be easily customised to create a standalone unit for your kitchen counter, a space-saving wall-mounted design or a double-sided vertical garden.

Created to fit snugly on a window sill, the compact, miniature Giardino planter was made with tiny living in mind. It may feature less bells and whistles than some of the models in our round-up, but its clever design helps to minimise the margin of error for rookie gardeners. The integrated waterfall and drainage system prevents overwatering, with a perforated canopy that stops water from pooling.

If you’re prone to letting your herbs wither away, the Click & Grow Smart Garden does (most of) the work for you. A great place for horticultural hobbyists to begin, it’s available in three models: 3 (pictured), 9 and 21. The Estonian company’s smart gardens take care of your plant for you through LED grow lights and NASA-inspired Smart Soil, providing the perfect combination of water, oxygen and nutrients.

Winner of the Estonian Innovation Award, it’s conceptualised around a criminally simple notion: plug in the biodegradable plant pods (available in over 40 varieties including lettuce, pak choi and wild strawberry), fill the water tank and plug in the power. Not only is it bountiful, but it comes in a sleek, minimalist design: a perfect adornment befitting of even the trendiest kitchen.

Another marvellous invention from Click & Grow, the Smart Garden 27 is the perfect vertical vegetable patch for those who lack outdoor space. The smart system provides everything your seeds need to thrive, offering just the right amount of light, water and nutrients. The design includes three of the company’s smart gardens, which feature 1.2-litre water tanks and energy-efficient LED lighting.

For those who want to keep the budget low but quality high, Swedish retail giant IKEA – who always have an answer to everything – have released their home-growing offering: the Krydda/Växer grow kit. This handy apparatus comes fully prepped with a unit and a built-in LED light, a nursery and sprout box with lid, an insert set, soil and plugs for growing, and a fertilising spray. Seeds cost an extra £1.50 ($1.89) per pack.

 Various herbs sprout before your eyes as the Krydda/Växer growing kit has been designed to enable easy water absorption, airflow around the roots and the trapping of heat and moisture. Unlike some kits that are almost 'plug and play', a little more work is required with IKEA’s setup. On the plus side, it's much more affordable than most models on the market and getting your hands dirty does make for a more rewarding experience.

The other half of the Krydda/Växer series, this is the more basic setup offered from IKEA in their indoor garden range. Affordable and accessible, even to total gardening novices, the system was designed to make hydroponic cultivation as simple as possible and it is designed to fit in even the tightest of small spaces. 

The grow kit comes with eight pots and a light fixture plus the grow media and liquid plant food you need to set up. Start by sprouting seeds in the small circular nursery then move them to the bigger pots. The low wattage bulb is eco and budget-friendly. Plants take about seven weeks to reach maturity.

With space for nine plants, the Bounty Basic (part of a larger range called Bounty that has different colour options and some other models) can grow herbs, tomatoes, salad and flowers in any small space. It claims to be the largest countertop cultivator on the market and the 30W LED grow light raises up to 24 inches to allow plants to get to a good size before you need to harvest them.

The Bounty Basic uses hydroponics to deliver liquid nutrients to your fledgeling produce and promises they’ll grow five times faster than in regular soil. It is simple to set up and there’s also a 'vacation mode' setting to keep your indoor garden fed and watered while you’re away.

If you’d prefer to give one type of plant your tender loving care and attention at a time, the Botanium smart plant pot is a simple yet chic way to nurture hydroponics. Not only does it look fabulous, but this system is also incredibly easy to use: the only thing you need to do is fill the reservoir which sits at the base. Plus, the sleek pot won't take up much room on the countertop, so it's a great way to utilise space in a small kitchen.

The minimalist Scandi design creates a seamless, soil-free environment with plenty of water and oxygen, which is optimal for plant growth. As Botanium is a Swedish company, they’ve designed their smart plant pot to survive throughout dark Scandinavian winters too: all it needs is a spotlight. Even the most hopeless urban gardeners will find delight (and chilli peppers) in this nifty little contraption.

Designed for small outdoor spaces and balconies, the Tower Garden aims to bring healthy living into the home by giving families the opportunity to grow a fridge-full of fruits and vegetables with easy to follow monthly packs. The Tower Garden benefits from a vertical design to aid aeroponic gardening, creating produce that is cleaner, less costly and has a lower carbon footprint than the groceries you might find in your local supermarket.

With Tower Garden, budding botanists can grow many kinds of fruit, vegetables and herbs at once – making it a more advanced option than many other home hydroponic kits. Plus, over 150 veggies can be grown, from aubergine to squash and various types of tomatoes. Each month you will receive seeds, Mineral Blend plant food, and dedicated customer support to help troubleshoot any problems along the way. 

Niwa’s range of smart gardens pride themselves on being easy, fun and interactive. Powered by a clever app they connect your Niwa product to Wi-Fi and tell the smartphone app what you want to grow: peppers, salad leaves, and more!

Through climate control, watering and lighting settings, the app will create a grow programme ready for your seeds to germinate – and it'll tell you when they should be ready for harvesting. This is the perfect hydroponics kit for the digital age but it's only currently available in North America, with European distribution coming soon.

The EzGro Deck Garden is the best option for those who want to cultivate their own edible goods on a large scale with minimal effort. The stacked system measures just 3ft x 7ft, and they claim this allows you to grow up to eight times as much produce as traditional methods in the same amount of space. 

The seasoned gardener will love this product. With a built-in timer, nutrient reservoir and circulation pump, this growing system makes home horticulture simple. Because the plants grow vertically, the Deck Garden allows users to grow up to a whopping 300 plants! That’s a whole lot of ingredients for your salads this summer…

Seed Pantry’s grow pod 2 is the updated, second-generation version of the company’s popular grow pod. The LED light adjusts to the height of your growing greens and is smart automated, so it adapts to the needs of its environment. Because of this, you can put the grow pod in your darkest room and it will still flower, as long as the plants are watered and the kit is plugged in.

What sets Seed Pantry’s products apart is their seed subscription service. From a monthly payment starting at £12.99 ($16), boxes of bulbs, seeds and plants are delivered straight to your door for use in your grow pod and beyond. Their selections have been specially chosen to fit the season, so expect to have tasty treats all year round.

Featuring an automatic light that mimics the cycle of natural daylight, the super-smart Veritable garden is the result of two years of painstaking research. The LED light includes a specially designed colour spectrum that helps accelerate plant growth and enhances the flavour of produce. Ideal for homes where space is at a premium, you can simply leave the unit in a dark corner and watch everything from herbs and edible flowers to veggies spring to life.

The system uses what the company calls Lingots to ensure healthy growth. These are combined seed, soil and nutrient blocks that are inserted into the unit. Fitted with its own built-in irrigation system, the garden’s water tank can hold three weeks of water, so even if you go on holiday, your plants won’t shrivel and brown. Finally, a way to take the graft out of growing!