Our top tips for designing & creating your kitchen garden.
Although it’s still feeling a bit wintry out there, the first signs of Spring are slowly appearing. Bulbs are sprouting, primroses are popping up and when the sun does come out, there’s enough warmth there to remind us that we will be able to ditch our woolly hats eventually.
Our thoughts are turning to gardening and how best to ensure we have a good supply of salad leaves, herbs and soft fruit this summer… and we’re taking inspiration from kitchen gardens of old.
Kitchen gardens are so called simply because they tend to be right outside the back door to the kitchen and supply the inhabitants of a house with all the culinary ingredients they could possibly require. Some of the country’s oldest estates boast enormous and beautiful kitchen gardens. Often walled, sometimes rambling, sometimes regimented, the classic kitchen garden concept has been replicated in all sorts of places and never more so than now. It’s not just restaurants that are increasingly relying on their own kitchen gardens for ingredients and it’s not just sprawling mansions. You can create your own kitchen garden at a scale to suit you and your home. Anything from a window box or balcony to back yard or driveway edge could be home to a kitchen garden. You could begin with a trough or half barrel, or takeover the entire back patio… whatever works for you. The main thing is to make sure you don’t over face yourself. Start small and once your small space is a success it can soon grow to something a little more grand in scale.
Last Summer may have been a lot less sociable than usual but the weather was truly glorious. Lots of garden veg patches provided bigger bounties than ever before. Being able to grow and pick your own is a delight but is often scuppered by busy schedules, prime time holidays and initial enthusiasm waning. It really helps to be ahead of the game when it comes to gardening so that’s why we’re starting to plan now.
Our kitchen garden recipe for success….
#1. Choose a sunny spot - preferably one that gets morning sun and then six to eight hours of sun daily. Make sure it’s sheltered from cold winds too.
#2. Check that you’ll be happy with how it looks from inside the house. You want your view from the kitchen to be a beautiful one if possible.
#3. Make a plan of your proposed garden if you’re going for anything more complicated than a trough. And even that would benefit from a planting plan.
#4. You could aim for a geometric grid pattern of rectangular or square beds with little gravel paths in between. Ready made raised beds can be bought from the garden centre, or they’re pretty easy to construct from old scaffold planks or sleepers (there are loads of tutorials on you tube). Or just gather a selection of decent sized pots and planters together in a group.
#5. Be sure to include the access pathways so you can easily can reach in to weed, plant and harvest. If you can, keep nearby edging clear of thick grass or plants as that can be the perfect place for slugs to lurk.
#6. Prep your soil, making sure it’s dug through, has plenty of fertiliser and not too many rocks and lumps. Once it gets to Mid-march, it’ll just be a case of plucking out any sneaky weeds and then popping your plants or seeds in place.
#7. Growing from seed is the cheapest option and feels very rewarding. You can swap seeds or the resulting plants with friends and family too to widen your collection further.
#8. We’d say don’t go for the basic stuff like potatoes carrots and onions unless you have a lot of space. Concentrate on the tasty, exciting gourmet veg varieties like designer courgettes and French beans, delicate baby veg, posh lettuce and mixed salad leaves. Grow what you like eating, including herbs, and save money by growing those that are more expensive to buy.
#9. You might want one bed for greens such as sprouting broccoli or Swiss chard and another for peas and beans (we like mange tout and sugar snaps because there’s no wastage or shelling).
#10. Tomatoes are a bit high maintenance and need lots of watering and feeding, but they don’t take up much space and can produce lots of tomatoes (of interesting varieties) all summer long.
#11. You could go for posh perennial veg like globe artichokes and asparagus too. They take a few years to establish but can be brilliant ongoing.
#12. It’s a good idea to mix up your planting, as a large area of a single crop attracts pests. There are some flowers which are great natural insect repellants to mix in as well.
#13. Once things begin to grow you shouldn’t need to weed much as the plants will smother any new weeds. If you do have problems with slugs, we’ve found copper tape to be the best solution. It can be fixed to pots or around the tops of your raised beds.
#14. Aim for a succession of crops throughout the seasons and sow salad seed every couple of weeks for a harvest all year.
With just a bit of hard work now, we can benefit from a whole summer of delicious seasonal home grown veg.
We’re already looking forward to cooking with all our fabulous home grown ingredients, hosting dinner parties showcasing what we’ve harvested and enjoying al fresco dining using the freshest possible fruit and veg from our flourishing kitchen garden. Better get to work!