You can get fresh veggies from a kitchen garden, and it will also look great! Discover how to design a kitchen garden using a potager garden, which combines fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs, or a classic row garden arrangement.
Organizing a Kitchen Garden
The idea behind a kitchen garden is to be able to pick the freshest produce for your meals just by strolling outside your backdoor. The garden is strategically placed close to a water source and the house for easy harvesting. Find out more about what fruits and vegetables work best in a kitchen garden!
Companion flowers are frequently placed in the same area in order to promote pollination and serve as a natural insect deterrent or trap.
A French kitchen garden known as a potager garden: What Is It?
Some people claim that their yard wouldn’t look right with a vegetable plot. They envision rows that are perfectly straight and ugly muddy spaces where plants have been removed. However, there’s no reason why vegetable gardens can’t rival flower gardens in beauty!
It’s not a novel concept to combine fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. For generations, the French have been cultivating their kitchen gardens, or “potagers,” in this manner. It’s a more relaxed, unstructured method that integrates with the environment and is comparable to a flower garden—but with an emphasis on food!
Natural repellents are the best option because no chemicals are needed, crops are cycled, and suitable companion planting is done! This environmentally friendly method attracts a variety of birds and pollinators.
You really can have your cake (well, vegetables) and eat it too with a “potager” kitchen garden!
How Does a Vegetable Garden Differ From a Kitchen Garden?
Understanding the distinction between a kitchen garden and a vegetable garden is crucial before you begin designing one.
A kitchen garden is a tiny, cozy area that’s close to the house, preferably by the kitchen, where you can easily pop out to grab some tasty food, such as tomatoes, salad greens, or herbs, for cooking. Large vegetable gardens are not as managed and visually beautiful as these, which frequently include a sitting area.
On the other hand, vegetable gardens are typically larger, more purposeful, and labor-intensive areas where a variety of vegetables are produced. Vegetable gardens might be a few feet or several acres in size.
How Should a Kitchen Garden Be Planned?
It makes sense that grow-your-own and kitchen garden trends have recently become more popular. You will be rewarded with the freshest and tastiest produce to eat right out of the ground if you cultivate the best fruit trees and plant the simplest vegetables. Additionally, since you will be aware of every step involved in cultivating those delicious delicacies, you can be certain that you will be eating healthful, organic food that is abundant in nutrients and devoid of any harmful chemicals.
Determine how much space you have. When thinking about how to design a kitchen garden, take some time to think about what would work best for you and where you might have room for beds or containers.
Choose a plot size that you can handle and that you would like to develop.
Make a plan of the beds that are required. Be realistic—growing a lot of crops on a large plot will need a lot of labor in terms of preparation and upkeep.
Think about incorporating a kitchen garden into borders. If you don’t have enough room for a separate kitchen garden, you can still produce vegetables by blending them with ornamentals in your flower beds.
Grow in pots: Even in the tiniest backyard, a wide range of crops can be grown in creative vegetable garden container designs.
Consider growing vertically: there are several ways to trellis a vegetable garden so that you may grow produce up against walls and fences, even in the smallest of places.
More area can be used for crops at ground level by supporting climbing plants like pumpkins and beans with arches and pergolas.
Creative solutions can arise from spatial constraints.
Pots can be set on stairs or ladders, and planters and shelves can be fastened to walls. By hanging plants from a window box, you may simply increase the growth area within it. There are lots of inventive methods to organize a kitchen garden, even if you have limited space.
Let The Weather Guide Your Kitchen Gardening Decisions
Observe weather patterns: “The first step in planning a kitchen garden is to understand the weather predictions in terms of the high and low temperatures for the next seven to nine months.
What microclimate is there in your kitchen garden? “While most of us are taught to identify our gardening zone, this doesn’t always provide us with an accurate picture of the weather patterns in our own local area on a monthly basis. So, first spend some time mapping out the expected weather for the remainder of the year.
Plants should be matched to the weather and temperature: “Every plant in the kitchen garden, from potatoes and lettuce to carrots and tomatoes, has a specific type of temperature and sunlight they prefer to grow at their best.” In order to design a kitchen garden, you schedule the plants you wish to cultivate during the months when the weather will be most favorable for them.
Create a schedule for the garden for every month. “You can start to map out how to plan a kitchen garden and what you’ll plant and harvest each month in the garden by knowing the predicted weather for each month and the plants that prefer that specific amount of heat and sunshine. Consider that while larger plants may take up to 100 days to harvest, smaller plants, such as lettuces and radishes, may be ready as soon as 45 days after planting
What Benefits Does Having A Kitchen Garden Offer?
Several benefits come with owning a kitchen garden, such as:
GROWING QUALITY CROPS: Because they are higher in nutrients than vegetables cultivated commercially, your fruit, vegetables, and herbs will not only taste better but also be healthier for you.
BEING MORE SUSTAINABLE: One of our favorite sustainable garden ideas is to grow vegetables in your own kitchen garden, which lowers the carbon footprint of your food and lessens your dependency on intensive farming.
GOING ORGANIC: Compared to buying organic produce at the store, producing veggies organically is easier and will save a significant amount of money.
GOOD FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH: Growing plants and spending time in nature have been shown to have great effects on mental and physical health, which is just one of the many benefits gardening offers.
What Time Is It Best to Plant a Kitchen Garden?
Although you should wait until spring to begin planting, you can begin designing a kitchen garden at any time. “Whenever the temperature begins to rise and you have passed the frost day, which is typically after the third week of April, you can begin planting your kitchen garden.” “you can start planting the seeds of your produce indoors toward the end of winter, this way you’ll have more mature plants ready to be planted outside during spring.”
there are a few veggies that may be grown at different seasons of the year:
Planting eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes is best done in May or June.
June is the best time to plant cucumbers, yellow squash, and zucchini.
You can grow okra, maize, and beans in late June or early July.
You can plant greens such as lettuce, spinach, and others in the early spring, late fall, or even summer.
You can grow potatoes in late fall or early spring.
You can plant herbs in any season of the year.
Not to be overlooked are Swiss chard and everlasting spinach, which thrive all year long and into the winter.
Additional Plants to Grow
Think of vibrant edibles paired with vibrant flowers! Consider fragrances and textures as well! Here are some recommendations:
Edibles with aroma and color: Scarlet runner beans, curley parsley, purple basil, brilliant nasturium, purple chives, savory, blue borage, purple chives, rosemary, sage, thyme, and bright green or red cabbage leaves are some examples of colorful hot pepper plants.
Bright and fragrant flowers (including self-sowing ones!): globe thitle, fleabane, gladiolus, hollyhocks, speedwell, bee balm, cosmos, dwarf marigolds, mallow variants, fragrant gerandium, sedum, columbines, coreopsis, sweet peas, poppies, and so on.
Residing Boundaries
A kitchen garden is a great place for fruit trees! To create a see-through effect, consider training apple or pear trees to grow on wire fences or brick walls. Blueberry bushes can also be used as a hedge that is tasty.
Vegetables: Perennial vs. Annual
To make tilling and amending your annual beds easier, you should keep perennial and annual vegetables apart in your kitchen garden. For the annuals that grow quickly, think of making tiny triangles or pockets of plants in place of rows. Then, when annuals like radish or lettuce develop, you can maintain the beds filled by continuing to plant in succession and sowing more seeds.
How Should a Kitchen Garden Layout Be Plotted?
For a more conventional vegetable plot, try to create a well-organized design using raised bed ideas and garden paths. The term “potager” refers to this formal approach. Separate into four sections, preferably with walks, and, if available, place a small, circular bed in the middle.
The four beds are then allocated to different plant groups.” Use the first one for roots, separating it into sections for carrots, beetroot, and new potatoes. For crops such as legumes (beans and peas), use the second method. Salad and herbs belong in the next one, and a combination of veggies like spinach, chard, and sweet corn should go in the last one.
Determine which design best suits your demands and available area as each plot is unique. You can combine fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in blocks or rows; there are no restrictions. To ensure that you have a clear mental arrangement, sketch the design first on paper.
In addition to being essential components of formal kitchen garden design, symmetry and balance can also be used to emphasize and provide drama to an informal style. But arrange the plants in triangles to stagger them for maximum production.
Planting a variety of crops might be beneficial because a huge area planted with a single crop may draw more pests.
Remember to provide access pathways so you may move between the crops for planting, harvesting, and weeding.
How Should a Small Kitchen Garden Be Started?
You can start a different crop every month of the growing season to have a succession of crops.
For a harvest that lasts all year, aim for little, successional sowing and replanting every few weeks.
“garden stores may lead you to believe that you can only plant your garden in the spring, but the truth is that, with proper planning, you can add plants and seeds to the garden every month of the growing season.”
When you start your kitchen garden in the summer, you can sow a variety of vegetables for harvesting in the fall and winter, such as peas, pumpkin, pak choi, beans, beetroot, spring cabbage, sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and chard.
Numerous crops are suitable for direct sowing into the warm soil. Additionally, nurseries provide tiny vegetable plants that you may put straight into beds or containers.
Developing A Kitchen Garden In Pots Or Raised Beds
A simple and practical option for kitchen gardens are raised beds. They can be filled with ready-to-use, deeply rich in organic matter soil. If your garden’s soil is of poor quality, they are an excellent option.
In addition to improving soil temperature and providing enough drainage, raised garden bed ideas can also serve as a barrier against pests like slugs and snails. Beds can be manufactured by you or purchased already made. Cover wooden mattresses with black polythene to prolong the life of the wood and keep it dry. Crop rotation would benefit greatly from four beds; you may find out more by reading our guide to crop rotation.
You can also grow a variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs in containers. You may use a variety of repurposed and upcycled containers for this purpose; just make sure the material they are made of is safe and the container is large enough for the crop you have chosen.
When in bloom, a tripod of beans in a container or growing out of a garden bed makes a lovely sight. It also takes up very little space.