How to Create and Manage Your Own Personal Kitchen Garden

Entry #2544, June 20, 2013

Having your own kitchen garden is not as difficult as most people imagine it to be, and it comes with its own distinct advantages. It gives you a chance to connect with the cycles of the seasons and grow healthy, natural vegetables that usable in your meals. A homegrown vegetable will not only add a personal touch to your cooking, it is also likely to impress your family and friends.

Kitchen garden ideas

Image via:  Nurit Geffen-Batim Studio

Choose an ideal location:

You will have to site your kitchen garden in a place where your plants can get access to sunlight and adequate water. You can use a square plot allowing for adequate spacing between your plants. Nothing is more likely to kill your plants than overcrowding them. Allow a small space for you to be able to move about and water your plants without trampling on them. You can also think about future growing seasons. Cultivate new plants during different seasons. Do this in any part of your garden, where you do not cultivate most of the time. This way, old soil will be able to regain lost nutrients.

Take necessary steps to keep plants healthy:

Since the personal kitchen garden will not be very large, you can raise your plants on garden beds to provide the best drainage and prevent the soil from being too compacting. Take the soil pH by using a soil test kit. Decide what plants you are going to plant and find out at what pH they grow best. You can reduce high acidity by the use of lime, while highly alkaline soils require gardener’s sulphur. You can easily find these in any agricultural shop. Once your plants start growing, you may add additional soil components as per requirements. You also have to be careful, of course, to never step on plant beds.

Kitchen garden ideas for your home

Image via: JLF & Associates, Inc.

A well-planned kitchen garden will not require too much of your time to maintain. It is the easiest way to provide you with cheap, homegrown vegetables each year round. Kitchen gardens are also an ideal way to introduce your children to the concept of seasonal plants. You can make gardening a family activity, which you enjoy during the weekends. Even if you are unaware of prerequisites to growing anything, you can educate yourself on the basics of soil and plant development very easily. The best way for you to have a successful garden is, if you grow vegetables that you actually use in your cooking. You are more likely to care for them than ornamental plants.

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