Culinary Garden
The culinary garden is a harvesting garden. Sometimes they call them kitchen gardens, chefs gardens and urban farms. A Culinary Garden is a great way to grow fresher, better-tasting ingredients to use in the kitchen, while saving money. Growing your own food can bring a tremendous sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. In addition, knowing where your ingredients come from makes it easier to know they are organic and free from harmful pesticides. The design concept is simple and practical, straight rows and blocks, nothing fancy. These gardens are for higher yields and easy harvesting. The planting layout shows this, tight rows planted close.
Ready to get started? Receive a 20% discount on the plants and products related to the entire garden. See sales associate for more details.
Garden Diagram
Plants Included
Lettuce – ‘Freckles’
Lettuce – ‘Gourmet Mix’
Lettuce – ‘Spicy Mix’
Lettuce – ‘Red Romaine’
Lettuce – ‘Bibb’
Lettuce – ‘Green Simpson’
Lettuce – ‘Red Leaf Mustard Greens’
Carrots – Cosmic Purple
Kale – ‘Dwarf Blue’
Kale – ‘Nero Tuscano’
Swiss Chard – ‘Bright Lights’
Spinach – ‘Bloomsdale’
Radishes – ‘French Breakfast’
Celery – ‘Tango’
Beets – ‘Detroit Red’
Garden Recipe
A Culinary Garden is a great way to grow fresher, better-tasting ingredients to use in the kitchen, while saving money. Growing your own food can bring a tremendous sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. In addition, knowing where your ingredients come from makes it easier to know they are organic and free from harmful pesticides.
The plants chosen for this garden will carry you from spring into summer.
That’s why leafy greens and root crops like spinach, lettuce, kale, carrots, beets, radishes, celery are a good choice.
1. When selecting an area for your garden find an area that receives six to eight hours of sun.
2. When planting, always use a good compost to improve the soil, my favorite is Malibu compost and earthworm castings.
3. You want to loosen the soil to a depth of ten to twelve inches and mix it in.
4. For fertilizing I use an organic fertilizer my favorite is All purpose by Down to earth. And use this every six to eight weeks.
Care & Maintenance Tips
Around May you can transition into more herbs like basil, arugula and cilantro.
For veggies you can plant bush beans, tomatoes, bush cucumbers, peppers and eggplant.
How do you control for rabbits? Is there veg garden fencing that you can install?
Hi Janet,
Rabbits are perhaps the most difficult garden pest to manage. There are a myriad of home remedies, concoctions, repellants and so on. Some of these are valid in certain applications, but others, in my opinion, are mostly urban myths.
Any advice I would lend would need to be very specific to your particular circumstances. If it is only one or two rabbits I would highly suggest a live trap. Havahart is the normal brand and these can be purchased at most big pet stores or animal supply dealers. Rabbits are relatively easy to catch in one of these traps and it does not harm the rabbit. If it is a short term or isolated issue and seems to be only one or two rabbits you might consider one of the rabbit repellants, like Animal Stopper. Any repellants, even home remedies like garlic, hot pepper, etc., need to be used religiously, without a break. These repellants are really used as a training tool, much like how you might train a new puppy. The rabbits need to experience the repellant at every encounter. If they only come across the repellant periodically you will not change the habits of the animals, and you will also be faced with the probability of using the repellant indefinitely. Lastly, and the most effecting, certain control for rabbits is physical exclusion. Using heavy hardware cloth or other wire around the perimeter of the garden and at all entrances will work wonderfully, if it is maintained and installed thoroughly. Rabbits can burrow to some degree, so the wire needs to be dug into the soil at least a short distance.
I hope this helps.
Ron
what food should I use for hydrangea’s? raspberry, whites and midori colors to maintain their colors?
Hi Mary,
Hydrangeas will grow just fine with most general purpose fertilizers. Any organic fertilizer labelled for roses would be a good choice. Begin feeding in early spring, when the buds are swelling up and the new foliage is just starting and finish up about September. No need to feed in the winter months.
You may already be aware that Hydrangea flower color is regulated by the soil’s acidity or alkalinity. A few things about this first: Acidic soils usually mean purplish to mauve to blue flower colors on most varieties. Alkaline soils usually mean pink to almost reddish tones on most hydrangea flowers. White hydrangea flowers will always be white, they do not change their color according to acidity/alkalinity.
Our soils here in Southern California are nearly always somewhat alkaline, meaning that just about any colored flower hydrangea plant will soon become a pink flowered hydrangea plant in your garden, regardless of the color it was when you purchased it. If pink is what you are looking for, you don’t need to do anything special, just fertilize as mentioned above. But, if you are wanting a purplish to mauve to blue flower color, then you have some work to do. For these colors you will need to keep the soil around the plant acidic, and that will take a bit of effort. Changing alkaline soil to acidic soil is most easily accomplished through the ongoing addition of aluminum sulfate to the soil around the plants. Aluminum sulfate is usually called “Hydrangea Bluing Formula” at most garden centers. It is a powdered supplement that can be dissolved in water and applied. It will take some trial and error in order to get exactly the color tone you want, but it can be a fun project.
Hope this helps.
Ron