How to Grow a Kitchen Garden

In the 1800s kitchen gardens could be found outside every kitchen door. While the practice of growing your own vegetables and herbs — especially chives — has slacked off some since the 1800s, in recent years, especially today when many individuals are faced with compromised finances, homeowners are rethinking the idea of growing their own vegetables.

How to Plant Old-Fashioned Kitchen Gardens

It’s important to know what types of vegetables you’ll want in your kitchen gardens and how much space each will need before you begin working up to garden plot. More often than not people build gardens that are too small, and then they end up expanding year after year, which means a lot of extra work. So, when growing your own vegetables, don’t start off too small. A nice starting size would be approximately 10×10. That’s a great size for a ton of vegetables as well as chives and parsley.

The garden can be planted along the house or garage, beside a fence, or in the middle of the yard. The main thing to take into consideration before you break ground, however, is to make sure the spot you choose gets plenty of sunlight. If you have trees in your yard, compensate for tree roots and also for shade. Most vegetable gardens require approximately eight hours of sunlight. Chives and other herbs will require little moisture and lots of sunshine.

What to Grown in a Kitchen Garden

When you begin growing your own vegetables and herbs you’ll soon realize that the ideal kitchen garden is one that has room for onions, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, cucumbers, a few hills of potatoes and plenty of herbs. If you only have a small space, shoot for one cherry tomato plant, one hot pepper and one green pepper and a few herbs such as chives, which have a mild onion flavor. Definitely grow the herbs and vegetables that you prefer, but also know the vegetables that you plant.

Tomato Plants

A tomato plant is an excellent idea for a kitchen garden, but since tomato plants come in a variety of sizes, shapes and flavors, you’ll have to pick and choose. If you want plenty of tomatoes for salads, the cherry tomato plant is the only tomato plant you will need. Growing your own vegetables means having cherry tomatoes on hand to be sliced for sandwiches, skewered for barbecues, chopped up for salsa and also blanched, peeled and used in stews, soups and chili.

Because a cherry tomato plant will produce lots and lots of fruit, it should be staked immediately after being put into the ground. Just put a tomato cage around the plant early and you won’t ever have to worry about the plant spreading out and taking up too much room in your kitchen garden nor will you have to deal with cracked vines and ruined tomatoes.

Onions and Chives

The same is true of onions. While onions don’t take that much space, they do need some room to expand. While a three-inch spot of chives is enough for the entire summer, and green onions for raw eating don’t need much space, white, purple or yellow bulb onions grow best in rows or clumps of three to five.

Chives also grow well in pots. Chives can be harvested all summer long, but once some types of chives bloom the flavor of the chives may be slightly less pungent or slightly bitter.

Leafy Vegetables

Leaf lettuce is a genuine summer treat, especially if you love salads. Add a few cherry tomatoes and a few raw green onions and you are in business. Head lettuce is a lot harder to grow and is not suggested in a small garden.

Cabbage plants will need about about a foot and a half square per plant and will need to be either dusted for worms or spayed with a mixture of one teaspoon dish washing soap to one gallon of water several times a week once cabbage moths start showing up or it will soon be chewed to bits. (You’ll know once the cabbage moths have arrived, their larvae will crew holes in the leaves of the plant and you’ll see the white butterflies flitting around the garden.)

A Variety of Peppers

Peppers — mild green, yellow, red, orange — or hot green or red jalapenos, Cheyenne or any of the many many other hot peppers need about one square foot of growing space per plant. Keeping the plants in rows is always preferable because it offers walking space so you can get into the garden without harming the foliage and vegetables, but plants that are grown in kitchen gardens can also be spaced in clumps.

Where to Place a Kitchen Garden

Once you have determined what you want in your kitchen gardens, it’s time to think about where you will put the kitchen garden. The word “kitchen” gives you the idea that it should be close to the kitchen, but if that is not possible, don’t let that idea get in the way. Just put the garden wherever there is room and remember when growing your own vegetables and herbs, chives are the easiest herb and cherry tomatoes the easiest vegetable.

Since all of the plants mature at their own pace, keep a sharp eye on your kitchen gardens and nothing will go to waste!

For additional gardening information read: Gardening with Kids