For gardeners who love to spend time in the garden and the kitchen, does it get any better than to open their back door, take a few steps and harvest flowers, fresh herbs and vegetables for the dinner table?
Kitchen gardens are spaces devoted to growing edibles while maximizing crop culture in small spaces. There is no one design for a kitchen garden, but there are certain elements found in every kitchen garden.
Kitchen gardens are designed to be in close proximity to the house for both the handiness of harvesting plants and for the esthetic appeal of looking out a window to gaze on living plants.
The charm of a kitchen garden is the blending of herbs, vegetables, flowers and even fruit in harmony. Plants can be placed in raised beds (March 10 Texas Spur column) in rows or neat squares, as in a square-foot garden or in intricate designs. The garden may be planted in such a way to suggest an informal arrangement, but often crops in a kitchen garden are interplanted into geometric patterns like diamonds or triangles.
With careful crop selection and judicious replanting of seasonal crops, kitchen gardens can provide fresh edibles year-round. Following are some suggestions:
• Fruit trees. Strategically placed fruit trees provide focal points. Select dwarf varieties of peach, plum, cherry, apple or pear that mature at different times to provide a harvest all summer.
• Herbs. Depending upon your palate and penchant for certain ethnic foods these are easy to grow: lemon, sweet or Thai basil; lemon thyme, Mexican oregano, and rosemary are standards.
• Vegetables. Seed companies breed varieties for smaller spaces that are still high yielding. Dwarf and miniature varieties can be grown in shallower soil or containers. Varieties below are from Johnny’s Select Seed catalog, Johnnyseeds.com (877) 564-6697.
• Tomatoberry Garden tomatoes, cherry tomato types
• Lunchbox pepper series, multicolored, bitesize
• Patio Baby eggplant, purple 2-3 inch fruit
• Diva cucumber, 5-7 inch fruit
• Patty Pan squash, small scalloped fruit
• Kalette kale, dwarf kale
• Barese, dwarf Swiss Chard
• Li Ren Choi, baby pac choi
• Tatsoi, Asian greens
• Butterhead lettuce, small Bibb type
• Thumbelina carrot, a small round root
• Any radish
• Edible Flowers include calendula, with yellow orange blossoms; begonia, with salmon pink blossoms; pansy, multicolored; borage, lavender blossoms; roses; chives.
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