Grow Your Own Kitchen Garden

A kitchen garden is simply a garden where you grow small fruits and vegetables for food. In Europe it was originally known as a potager, where it contrasted with the manicured gardens and lawns of aristocracy. Many potagers are rather elaborate, and quite beautiful by any standard. Most Americans typically refer to a "yard" as the area of land or lawn surrounding their home, and the "garden" is the general term for any area where they grow food. Thus a rooftop garden or patio container garden is as much a garden as a plot of tilled up ground.

Historically an American kitchen garden was a small garden close to the house, especially near the kitchen door. Usually it is planted with foods that are meant to be harvested and used regularly, such as salad greens and herbs. It is often fenced to protect it from malicious nibblers like rabbits and deer. Being able to step outside the kitchen door and spontaneously pick something for dinner is a very satisfying adventure. Foods that are grown as crops to be harvested and processed by freezing or canning are not usually considered part of a kitchen garden. For example, a few tomato plants are usually found in a kitchen garden, but rows of tomatoes for canning would be in another area. To me, Victory Gardens are the epitome of kitchen gardens, and it's great to see their comeback.

With the wide variety of plants and seeds available to gardeners today, a kitchen garden can also be a delightful edible landscape. You can plant a lovely array of colors just by using the many shades of reds and greens available in lettuces alone. A trellis can support any kind of vine plant. Vining beans have colored flowers and interesting pods as well as edible beans; cucumbers grow well with support, and they have sweet yellow flowers and striking dark green foliage. Strawberry plants make charming ground covers or border plants. Perhaps you can espalier fruit trees along a fence row to save space, and it will create a beautiful hedge-like screen that will be easy to care for and will also bear fruit.

When you plan your kitchen garden, begin by listing the foods you Want to Eat. These are the seeds and plants you should grow in your kitchen garden. If your space is limited, be sure you buy appropriate varieties. (Even if you love watermelon, you need to plant more than one vine for pollination, and you can figure on at least 12 square feet each for most types.) It is easy to get carried away in the garden center and purchase things that look nice or sound interesting. Select from your Want to Eat list first, and then go back for some fun plants to fill in the spaces.

If you are new to gardening, start small and keep it simple. A small salad garden is great for beginners. Lettuce, radishes, and carrots are easy to grow. A couple of tomato and pepper plants will give you plenty of learning opportunities and a real taste for what you can do next summer.