Planning a Kitchen Garden by Stephanie Foster

A kitchen garden is a wonderful way to get fresh vegetables for your family. The goal is to plant produce you can use, obviously enough, in your kitchen.

This means you need to figure out what you would enjoy eating fresh from your own garden. Tomatoes, beans and zucchini are classics for a kitchen garden. Herbs make a nice touch and do more for your food than the dried herbs you can buy at the store.

Tomatoes will need to be staked as they grow. You can buy tomato cages at nurseries and home improvement stores or you can buy stakes and use nylons to hold up your tomatoes. Otherwise the plants are prone to falling over.

Zucchini grown at home is far superior to what you buy in the grocery store. The one catch is that most people find themselves with more zucchini than their family can eat. It seems to happen no matter what you do. Just the nature of the plant. Fortunately you can often find neighbors or coworkers willing to take the excess off your hands.

Some foods are not as easy to grow in a home garden. My mother grew corn when we were growing up, but the problem was how much space it took for the amount of corn you get. The neighbors didn't like the plants there either.

Green beans or peas are fun to grow. You will need something for them to climb. Many people grow them near the house and put up strings for them to climb towards the roof. They also do well growing on a chain link fence.

But before you start planting, take a piece of paper and plot out what you want to grow. The plants will need room to grown, and that will determine how many plants you can fit in your garden. This will also help you make the best use of your garden space. Make sure you include enough room to walk around different sections of your garden to care for your garden and pick your produce.

Pest control is always a concern. Marigolds are attractive and help discourage pests. Ladybugs can often be purchased at garden centers to handle aphids. Other bugs require other treatments to discourage them.

A kitchen garden is a great family activity. Even young children love planting seeds and seeing what comes up. It's an easy way to teach them where food comes from and encourages them to eat their vegetables.

Author Resource: Stephanie Foster blogs at http://www.gardenmedley.com/gardening/category/mygarden/ about her garden. If you would like more tips on vegetable gardening, she suggests reading at her site.

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