Design Your Own Kitchen Garden

A kitchen garden is and esthetically pleasing combination of flowers and vegetables all growing together. A kitchen garden is a great way to save space and get the variety you would expect from a larger one. You won't get the same volume, but you will get a little bit of everything. Another feature of a kitchen garden is the fact that it is near the house, right by the kitchen door.

Forget the concept of row upon row of vegetables, waiting for them to mature, getting one harvest that is all. With a kitchen garden, you are planting and harvesting continually and it is planted in such a way that it becomes part of the landscape. With a kitchen garden, plants are rotated. When one variety is done, have seedlings for another ready to go in its place. For this reason, it is important to plan ahead. Know when the first crop is going to be done and plan to have one ready that will fit in the same amount of space.

Using flowers as companion plants has multiple benefits. First it gives the garden a pleasing appearance and helps it blend in with the rest of the landscape. Second, bugs do not like fragrant flowers, but bees and butterflies do and they will help pollinate the vegetables.

There is no one set way to plant a kitchen garden. There are too many variables such as the amount of land available, the length of your growing season and the types of vegetables you prefer. You need to make your own diagram and know the features of what you want to plant. Think of the kitchen garden as a square or rectangle with little square planting beds inside. If you want to plant radishes for instance, how many will fit in one of the beds? What will you plant after the radishes are done . How many will fit in the same size plot?

There are two ways to design a kitchen garden, one you walk though and one where you do not. Kitchen gardens you need to walk through are between 3 and 4 feet at the short side,. The advantages are there is enough room to use a tiller, you have more flexibility in how to arrange the individual planting plots. Of course, there are disadvantages including the fact that you will get less yield per sq ft because you have the paths.

Kitchen gardens you do not walk through cannot be more that 3 to 4 feet across. If you have the room, you can make several small kitchen gardens with just two or three planting beds in each and you will get more yield per sq. ft.

Flowers can be used as a border around the entire kitchen garden or around the individual plots. Just be sure to have your plan on paper before you start and let your imagination take over.

Sources: About Small Kitchen Gardens

Kitchen Garden Creation