Theme Gardening: The Purpose-Driven Garden

Spring will be here before you know it and although planting is out of the question in most climates until March it is not too early to start planning your garden.

A hot trend in gardening this year is theme gardens; companion planting with a specific purpose in mind. Some popular themes to work with include:

The Salsa Garden- Contains tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro.
They all grow well together and have similar maturity dates. You can go straight from harvest to table by chopping produce from each plant to feed your family or guests fresh food with a minimum of fuss.

The Comfort garden- Contains corn, potatoes, green beans and pumpkins.
All the foods grandma used to make. The best part about this garden is that you can plant the beans and corn together to make use of the corn stalk as a bean trellis, saving space and soil. Harvesting is in stages, first beans, then corn ,then pumpkins and then potatoes all from one plot of land.

The Salad garden- Contains lettuce, green onions, carrots and radishes.
Easiest to grow, this garden takes very little maintenance as lettuce acts as a ground cover to stop weeds from growing and since harvesting is done in 60 days you can grow three gardens in one season and have fresh salad all Summer and into the Autumn.

The Garden of Plenty- Contains zucchini, cucumbers, squash and melons.
If you have always wanted a garden that you could share with family and friends this is it. Zucchini is very prolific, luckily it can be used in so many dishes from casseroles to breads. This garden takes a bit of space but oh what it gives in return.

A well planned garden, regardless of the theme will reward you with hours of peace, a feeling of accomplishment and fresh food! Good Luck and Great Harvest.