Gayly Gardeners: Kitchen Gardening

by David Womack
Special to The Gayly

Fear not - if you want the freshest produce, the best grown food and the handiest food, you're better off growing it yourself and grow it right.

Today we want to live healthier, be good to the earth and enjoy the wonderful mix of tastes, flavors and scents that defines us “Gayly Gardeners”. So, by creating a kitchen garden (food scaping) we can express a little of our culinary skills and a dash of personality.

A few basic kitchen garden guidelines:

• Location: Should be close to your kitchen window and right outside the patio's boundary. Containers can be very helpful for a suitable location.

• How about considering a dedicated area, just for your plants you like to cook with; to see, smell and touch. Let's not forget the most important part is to oooh and ahhhh over.

• During the growing stages keep in mind “elbow room” space. Your kitchen garden should have well drained soil that provides the nutrition to grow those healthy edibles.

• Your kitchen garden should be of a manageable size and be low maintenance, so you can enjoy its bounty instead of endless tending needs and weeding chores.

• Last but not least, it should be both practical and pleasing. After all, you're going to spend a lot of time in and near your garden.

What to plant and when to plant it can be a hard task to consume. I have such a challenge with this because I really want a massive garden, but I can only manage to cook and store a small harvest of vegetables. On the other hand, my herb garden is amazing.

When deciding on your edibles, design a lay-out, plan and chose your plants. Read the plant labels and pay attention to the growing cycles. You look for dates of the last spring frost and the first frost of fall. Once this has been established then you can begin the selection.

Don't forget to jot down this information on the calendar and/or in your garden journal.

One of the greatest pleasures of having a kitchen garden is the freedom it offers you to plant whatever variety you would like to try. Using a multi-pot planter box for a centerpiece, this is a great place for a bonsai rosemary tree. Parsley, cilantro and sweet basil can find a wonderful growing spot in the kitchen, even on the window sills.

Most vegetables like tomatoes, bean families, onions and garlic can be planted in spring. Outside and along the front porches, here's where container gardening unfolds, by using support stakes, homemade structures and tomato cages.

Some of these vegetables can be started indoors by seed just weeks before Frosty leaves town for the year. Then you can get starter packs at your local garden center for the vegetables that might be a slight challenge from seed.

Another part to our kitchen garden is the herbs, which are easy to grow and well worth the effort. This is where the tastes and aromas come alive and bring in flavor by kicking out the bland. Herbs, with their abundant uses, enhance gardens by adding color, interesting foliage and subtle fragrances. Just as our planting schedule for vegetables, herbs can be started by seed or starter packs.

Harvesting the rewards: Your first harvest will be starting a month or so after planting your garden. A small yield will begin your excitement. Then a few plants for the salad will emerge like radishes, chives and cilantro. Once you have visited the garden, each trip will offer something to pick. So, keeping up with harvesting this will encourage continual production of fresh produce.

Always remember that your garden is a place where you can regain a quality in your life that recently seemed lost.

Copyright 2017 The Gayly – June 14, 2017 @ 11:15 a.m.