Veggie friends and enemies

Plant a Kitchen Garden

When planting a kitchen garden a good rule of thumb, 'green or otherwise' is to plan out which vegetables grow where and who is their neighbor. I used to plant willy nilly, until I caught myself wondering why some years veggies turned out beautifully, other years- not so much.

Then I got introduced to companion gardening. Essentially what this means is when gardening, if you plant vegetables together that complement each other, you often get a higher yield. The other great benefit is that quite often these combinations also help with pest control.

Without a companion chart, - which I suggest everyone get- the basic rule is to sort out your seeds and plant complementary families together. Such as beets do well next to cabbage, but not at all well when faced with being cosy with pole beans. Vegetables have friends, they also have enemies.

Below is a quick companion guide- also showing some veggies to not plant beside each other. A hand reference to keep around when it's time to get to sowing!

Companion planting chart


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Greenhouse

Do you need a greenhouse?

Frankly I think the answer to this depends on where you live. In milder climates with long growing seasons, the benefits of a green house are most likely reduced for the average back yard kitchen garden.

I myself have two distinct challenges. I live in a cold winter area, and because I live up the hill, my winter temperatures are even longer due to altitude and the small valley I live in.

I'm not a construction expert, so building a greenhouse set me a bit of a challenge. I wanted something simple and small. That even someone like myself who can barely manage a hammer could successfully put together. This was one of those projects, where I happily said. Thank god for the internet.

After hunting around a bit, I decided on an e-book. The reason being I wanted to be able to print stuff out and take it with me outside. Being that I have the memory of a goldfish some days, I straight out opted for instructions on materials and how to that I could cart to the hardware store and out to the yard.

After some rough stops and stumbles due to my not so talented construction skills, I got my greenhouse up and running last summer. At the moment I'm happily anticipating putting it through it's paces in another week or so. I passed the book onto some friends just the other day, as they are considering putting in a greenhouse on a much larger scale that I have done. I'm looking forward to seeing what they build!

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Preparing the soil for your Kitchen Garden

Welcome to Plant a Kitchen Garden.

Behind every successful kitchen garden is a gardener who has spent at least a little time carefully preparing the soil. Whether you are planning on a huge plot, or a few small containers, the theory is relatively the same.


Good soil

Good soil should be about half and half. Meaning about 50% solids - inorganic matter. Mostly this will be comprised of either clay, sand or silt. Most commonly it will be a mixtures of all three. If you are lucky enough to have that combination, you've got Loam - which is considered the ideal. Loam is comprised about approx 20% clay, 40% of both silt and sand.

The other 50% should be made up of organic matter. Anything now dead, that was once living. Things like grass clippings, composted material from you kitchen, such as vegetables. I admit one of the things I love about my garden is being able to feed all the left over vegetable matter back into it the following spring, after a compost cycle. For some reason this particular trait fulfills some odd little need inside me. In a pinch, I confess I've used peat from the garden store, when starting up a new kitchen garden after we had just moved to a new property. It worked perfectly fine, so don't feel you have to have that self made compost in order to get started.


The main goal of having both types of matter in the soil, is to keep the soil porous so that air and water can filter through, and giving plant roots space to develop.

Spring chores!
Every spring before planting your kitchen garden, you should get into the habit of incorporating new organics into your soil, while preparing your vegetable beds, as old organic material does continually break down further, so it's always a good idea to keep adding.

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Happy gardening!

Kitchen Garden

Everything you need to know about planting your kitchen garden.

If you think planning your kitchen garden is difficult, please read this article.

What is a kitchen garden?
A kitchen garden is a garden comprised of vegetables that you plan to harvest and eat. The idea is not to plant what you think should be planted, but sit down and plot out what you like to eat. If you don't particularly care for tomatoes, don't plant any. If you like garlic or onions or herbs and lettuce, these are what you should be planning on planting in your kitchen garden.

How much to plant?
This will also take some planning. You will need to research the space required for each type of vegetable you wish to grow. Do they need to be started inside or can the seeds be sown straight into the ground? Do any vegetables you pick have other specific requirements. Such sun/shade/soil/water. Also, check the maturity time. There is no point planting a vegetable that matures long after fall frosts have killed it off.

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Planting a kitchen garden

Welcome to Plant a Kitchen Garden. This site provides tips and information for people who want to design and plant a kitchen garden, as well as gardening tips in general. If you have questions not covered in Plant a Kitchen Garden please feel free to post a comment, or send an email to me.