With all this talk about the kitchen garden, I get this question a lot:
“Nicole, what exactly is a kitchen garden? Is it a garden that’s inside your kitchen?”
And while the kitchen garden isn't inside your kitchen, it is a garden that's grown to be brought into the kitchen on a regular basis. To help explain, I thought I'd compare a kitchen garden to a vegetable garden to help you discover which one fits you best. Here are four key differences:
Size
A kitchen garden is relatively small, ranging from 20 to 200 square feet. Generally, a kitchen garden is designed inside of raised garden beds for a clean and distinct feel. But a vegetable garden could be huge, requiring hundreds to thousands of square feet. It's often growing sprawling fields of pumpkins, gourds, or corn.
Location
A kitchen garden is located as close to your kitchen as possible and is designed to be a focal point of your landscape and a central gathering place for family and friends. A vegetable garden is usually located further from your home due to its demand for additional space and its sometimes not-so-tidy appearance.
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Tending
A kitchen garden is tended regularly. In fact, you may head to your kitchen garden three to four times per week to grab herbs or greens for that day's meals. Kitchen gardens are tended a little at a time, and the harvests are often used fresh rather than preserved. Think: a daily salad, green drink, or one garden-inspired meal a week. A vegetable garden is tended more intensively with big planting, harvesting, and storing days. Think: canned beans, salsa, a freezer packed with harvests, or even a root cellar.
Purpose
A kitchen garden is developed more as a key component of creating a healthier lifestyle than for huge harvests. Kitchen gardens are focused on the fun of learning and experiencing seeds become food, enjoying the change in seasons, and having a few things to harvest and share inside the kitchen regularly. In the kitchen garden, you can grow a large quantity of a small variety of plants. Or you can grow a small quantity of a large variety of plants. On the contrary, a vegetable garden is grown almost entirely for production. The purpose is much less focused on experience and much more toward lots and lots of produce.
While I think large vegetable gardens and homesteads are wonderful, they're honestly just not practical for most of us. But, a kitchen garden really is possible for anyone.
Because a kitchen garden can be quite small, doesn't require intensive tending, and can be used in so many simple ways, I'm convinced there's a way for just about everyone to have some form of a kitchen garden—growing a little of their own food for the experience and joy of adding small harvests to their everyday meals.
So, what do you think?
Are you meant to have a vegetable garden or a kitchen garden?
Being a mom of four kids and a business owner, it's going to be kitchen gardening for me, for at least all of the foreseeable future.
The kitchen garden is my favorite part of my home. It makes cooking so much more fun for me and gives me a spot to "get away" in my own backyard. But I don't have the energy or time to tend a vegetable garden at this stage in my life.
If you're on the fence about starting a garden, I hope this distinction gives you insight and encouragement that you don't have to live like a farmer in order to have a garden. The kitchen garden really is possible for all of us, and I'm excited to grow with you in your own gardening journey this year.
If you haven’t already, learn more about the Kitchen Garden Academy and discover three ways you can make the kitchen garden part of your everyday life next year.
Thanks so much for growing with me!
