Why Having Two Gardens is a Good Idea: Planning a Kitchen Garden

The Kitchen Garden

A kitchen garden serves a different purpose. It isn’t about bushels or stocking shelves. It’s about convenience. I enjoy stepping outside in the middle of cooking supper, apron still on, and gathering what I need without having to walk all the way out to the main garden. It’s nice to be able to slip out the door and snip a handful of basil or pull a few radishes. Thoughtful and intentional meal prep, while still being convenient. 

What to grow in a kitchen garden

Vegetables

In my kitchen garden, I grow what we’ll eat fresh — the everyday vegetables that don’t need rows upon rows. Lettuce and salad greens like arugula and spinach, radishes, summer squash, and green onions all find their place here, along with patio tomatoes and sweet banana peppers. They don’t take much room and work well in small beds close to the house.

I’m also planning a trellis for a few cucumber and cantaloupe vines. With some training, growing them upward saves space, keeps the fruit clean, and makes picking simpler. No hunting through sprawling vines on the ground! 

Herbs

If I had to choose my favorite part of the kitchen garden, it would be the herbs. Though I do dry herbs for winter, fresh herbs are one of my greatest kitchen joys. I grow dill for pickles, parsley for dressings and stewed chickens, and cilantro for my Spanish dishes. Mint, thyme, oregano — the list of flavorful herbs to grow goes on and on.

I also enjoy growing herbs like chamomile, catnip, and lemon balm, close at hand for making teas. There is something deeply comforting about stepping outside in the evening to gather herbs for a warm cup before bed.

Flowers

A kitchen garden would not feel complete without flowers. Zinnias and marigolds are must-haves for me. It takes only a moment to cut a small bouquet for the breakfast table, and that simple act makes an ordinary morning feel special.

Edible flowers, such as nasturtiums, can be sprinkled into salads, stirred into dressings, or added to baked goods. Beyond their beauty, flowers bring balance. Intermixed with vegetables and herbs, they draw in pollinators and beneficial insects, keeping the garden lively and well.

Two gardens may seem like extra work, but for me they serve different purposes. One fills the pantry for the year; the other fills the kitchen day by day. And between the two, our home feels well provided for.

Building the kitchen garden

There are books and Pinterest boards galore, all filled with beautiful kitchen gardens, large and small. It’s easy to get lost in the inspiration. But before building anything, it’s important to decide how a kitchen garden will best serve your home, and build from there.

For us, it’s a blend of practicality and aesthetics.

We chose to build raised beds using reclaimed lumber from an old chicken coop we tore down here on our property. It felt fitting to give that wood a second life. We also brought a couple of wooden beds with us from our previous home, built from lumber we found stacked behind the barn when we first bought the farm. 

The rustic beds suit our old farmhouse. Nothing is too polished, and that’s just the way I like it. We moved the beds around more than once, studying them from different angles, until we settled on a layout that felt right. I’ll admit, I’m a bit particular. I wanted to look out from the kitchen porch and be pleased with the view. I also wanted it to look nice from the road. A garden should feed the eyes as much as the table!

For now, we’re starting small, filling the beds with the basics, but leaving room to grow.

We have four shallow beds, measuring 5 feet by 2 feet by 6 inches deep, arranged around a central bed that measures 4 by 3 feet that is 12 inches deep. Behind them sits a long narrow bed that will serve as a backdrop to the garden and is 6 feet by about 18 inches and is also 12 inches deep. I flanked that bed with two young rosemary bushes and circled them with stones that were once used in landscaping around our old homeplace.

To prepare the beds, we lined the bottoms with cardboard and filled them with a planting mix of mushroom compost, pine bark fines, riverbank sand, organic humus, and manure. Good soil is worth the effort at the beginning.

We plan to lay crushed rock between the beds and create a stone path leading to the kitchen porch. We’re fortunate to have plenty of stones and old brick on hand, which we’ll use to landscape the space without much added expense.

Looking ahead 

It’s a bit too early to plant anything more than greens, onions and root vegetables. However, those seeds are already in the ground, and soon the rest will be planted. 

I hope sharing our plans encourages you to consider adding a kitchen garden of your own to your home. Something close at hand, built with care, and grown with purpose.

Pin it:

Related Reads:

A Guide to Keeping a Garden

A Guide To Home Canning