Grow your own produce to cook fresh

There’s nothing like cooking with fresh produce and what better way to have it available than by growing your own garden! A vegetable garden not only provides you with good fresh produce, but also adds a bit of interest to your garden. It can be as simple as a few herbs or you can go all out and grow vegetables too.

Fruits, vegetables and herbs are very rewarding to grow and there is an extra special flavor to produce that you have grown yourself. Plus, you know that no pesticides or chemicals have been used when you grow it yourself.

While cooking with fresh food you’ve grown yourself can be great, be warned, a vegetable garden is labor intensive. If you don’t like gardening or working outdoors, you’re better off buying your produce at the grocery store. The only way to get a good healthy crop of fruits, vegetables, and herbs is with tender loving care and attention.

If you decide a vegetable garden is for you, start growing early and you can produce a bumper crop weeks earlier than normal. This will give you a good harvest at a time when such fruits and vegetables are particularly expensive in the store.

You can make your garden as functional and attractive as possible with careful planning. If space is at a premium, you can choose some of the more decorative vegetables and herbs and plant them in your flower beds.

Be sure to choose a sunny spot in your garden, as most herbs and vegetables need full sun to grow well. If you’re growing fruit trees, you need to make sure they don’t cast a shade on your vegetables and herbs.

When planting your herbs, remember that they will stay green most of the year, so be sure to plan how they will contrast with your existing plants. Tall grasses can be planted in the back of a traditional flower garden, and low-growing grasses are excellent for flower garden borders.

If you don’t have a lot of space in the garden, you can plant herbs in containers and they will do just fine. You can also plant lots of vegetables in containers. Peas, potatoes, and tomatoes are just a few that will do well.

Some vegetables are attractive enough to plant among the flowers, but remember that you will have holes once you harvest them.

Many people think you need acres of land to grow fruit trees, but there are a wide variety of fruits you can grow even if you have a small garden. Small apple trees can even grow in pots on the patio, and strawberries do well in containers. There are even cordoned apple and pear varieties that can be grown against a garden fence.

If you want to enjoy the taste of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs in your gourmet kitchen, there really is no reason why you can’t have the joy of growing and harvesting food for your own kitchen table in your own garden. no matter how small the lot.