8 Veggies to Include in Your Kitchen Garden and How to Grow Them – GWC Mag

The idea of having a kitchen garden is to have veggies ready to pick right at your fingertips. Imagine making a big salad or soup and needing cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, greens, peppers, radishes, or spring onions. Rather than heading to the supermarket, you shop in your kitchen garden instead.

The veggies you choose for your kitchen should first and foremost be ones that you love and want to eat regularly. You aren’t looking to plant veggies that have a long growing season and are picked all at once like pumpkins, potatoes, and corn, but rather the ones that produce for weeks on end throughout the summer.

If you are ready to start your kitchen garden, check out these OGP articles that will help you grow a beautiful bounty.

1. Tomatoes

Oh! It’s a sad day every fall when the tomato plants finally give way to the cold weather, and the endless onslaught of fresh tomato sandwiches comes to its culmination. For those who love homegrown tomatoes, there are ways to extend the season a little later in the year. In the right climate, i.e. the tropics, tomato plants are perennial and can grow/produce for several years. In other words, with a bit of imagination, ingenuity, and initiative, we could be enjoying home-produced tomatoes beyond the normal expiration date of our plants. Who wouldn’t want that? Here are 7 Tricks for Getting Garden Tomatoes in Later Than the Neighbors.

2. Cucumbers

As summer rolls in, so does an abundance of fruits and veggies from our gardens, with the cucumber being high on that list. With each healthy plant, you can harvest a good 10 crunchy cucumbers. Grow enough plants to keep you, your family, and your friends in cucumbers all summer. It is easy to become uninspired by cucumbers. We think of them in salads, and that is just about it. But, cucumbers are, in fact, a little more versatile than that, and they can be useful in the kitchen and the bathroom. Read on to learn How to Grow Cucumbers and Fun Ways to Use Them.

3. Jalapeños

Hot peppers are often all about the heat but add a little additional flavor to your meals. But, that’s not the case for one fiery little friend. Jalapeños (Capsicum annuum) are fantastic for adding just the right amount of heat to your dishes as well as having a very distinctive flavor.  They are classed as mild-hot on the Scoville scale, but each jalapeño can be different, so beware! Fortunately, they are really easy to grow and provide you with mountains of peppers in just one season ready to add to your hot sauces, salsas, and chilis. Read on to learn How to Grow Your Own Jalapeños and Fun Ways to Use Them.

4. Greens

Green is good. And, what’s more, greens—from now on we’ll be talking specifically about those dark, leafy things—have become so easily available in such massive variety. Salads used to be iceberg lettuce, but in today’s market, there are all of these different options at our disposal. There is hearty stuff like kale and chard. There are dainty leaves like arugula and spinach. We’re even coming to recognize secondary crops like the greens of beets and radishes. Learn How to Grow Your Own Greens.

5. Radishes

The thought of planting seeds in the hope of a near future harvest might be quite daunting for noobie gardeners. It seems pretty straightforward, though—seeds, soil, light, water, and time. For the most part, this is the case, but there is a little more to it. However, this shouldn’t turn off aspiring gardeners. There are lots of veggies that are quite forgiving for those with less than a green thumb. This isn’t to say that there is nothing to do. Gardeners will still have to pay attention, but here is a list of veggies that are quick to mature, are not too fussy, and produce a healthy harvest. Learn how to grow radishes and a number of The Best Veggies for Beginner Gardeners to Grow.

6. Herbs

Growing food at home can save us all a lot of money whilst likely providing healthier food than we’d normally get. One of the best avenues into home gardening is the culinary herb garden, and perhaps the best way into culinary herb growing is starting with perennial plants. Unlike vegetables, many of our favorite and most common culinary herbs come from perennial plants. That means creating an herb garden can pay off for years to come. Culinary herbs, whether dried or fresh, are extremely expensive to buy, yet they are extremely easy to grow. Learn all about Growing Your Own Perennial Culinary Herb Garden at Home.

7. Squash

For gardeners, squash is both a blessing and a curse. As a blessing, it is one of the most reassuring plants to grow because it is agreeable and vigorous in most situations, and the harvests tend to be huge. On the other hand, the harvests are sometimes so large—just a few zucchini plants provide more than a family can eat—that it becomes overwhelming to find ways to deal with all the fruits. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine a summer garden without zucchini and/or yellow squash padding out the harvests. Nothing says autumn soups and winter roasts quite like butternut squash and pumpkins (also a squash). In other words, there’s no way around it: We’ve got to grow them because we love to eat them. Here is A Little Guide to Growing Squash, from Acorn to Zucchini.

8. Peppers and Eggplant

The nightshade family, or Solanaceae family, is a group of plants that contains many a familiar culinary friend as well as a couple of surprises. Tomatoes, eggplant, and white potatoes all belong to the same family, as well as all varieties of bell and hot peppers. You may not know that goji berries, tomatillos, ground cherries (Physalis spp), and even tobacco (Nicotiana spp) also belong to the nightshade family! Many of those members work beautifully in a kitchen garden, so learn about peppers, eggplant, and other Useful Plants in the Nightshade Family and How to Grow Them at Home.

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