Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Make your vegetable garden a feast for the eyes
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/homegarden/2008982140_zhom04kitchengar
den.html

Tips for making a beautiful kitchen garden.

By DEAN FOSDICK

The Associated Press

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Ellen Ecker Ogden's kitchen garden, featuring lettuce and salad greens, in
Manchester, Vt. Ogden says everything she knows about gardening she learned
at art school. The co-founder of "The Cook's Garden" seed catalog designs
ornamental kitchen gardens, where plants are chosen as much for their
colors and textures as for their flavors.

Ellen Ecker Ogden's kitchen garden, featuring lettuce and salad greens, in
Manchester, Vt. Ogden says everything she knows about gardening she learned
at art school. The co-founder of "The Cook's Garden" seed catalog designs
ornamental kitchen gardens, where plants are chosen as much for their
colors and textures as for their flavors.

Ellen Ogden says everything she knows about gardening, she learned at art
school.

The co-founder of "The Cook's Garden" seed catalog also designs ornamental
kitchen gardens, where plants are chosen as much for their colors and
textures as for their flavors.

"I've always been interested in using my eyes as well as my mind while I
garden," Ogden said. "I usually border my (vegetable) beds with lively
things like decorative parsley, fennel or kale."

Today's ornamental kitchen garden generally is smaller and less formal than
the traditional potager (puh'-tuh-zhay) that originated in 16th Century
Europe. With the typical French château potager, a tasty tapestry of
herbs, fruits, flowers and vegetables was planted a few feet from the
kitchen door and delivered dew-fresh to the table.

Ogden carries that tradition literally from the garden to the dining room
at her Manchester Village, Vt., home. She garnishes with chives and
flowers, and grows pansies around her vegetables so she can gather them as
she walks by.

"One of the things we know but don't think much about is that a splash of
color enhances the appetite," she said.

The humble vegetable, if chosen well and given some landscaping help, can
elevate the kitchen garden from a rectangular plot into a living, vibrant
work of art.

The medieval potager garden was distinguished by a combination of walls,
gates, walkways and growing beds. They provided a sense of privacy, a
degree of shelter, enough space for crop rotation, seasonal beauty,
usefulness and order. Many of those plants, including fruit trees and
shrubs, were trained to grow upward or espaliered into two-dimensional
decorations on walls or fences. Herbal knot gardens also were customary.

Contemporary kitchen garden design is more casual and more personal. It
borrows features common to healing gardens (raised beds, walkways),
meditation gardens (twisting and turning trails, statuary or fountains) and
outdoor rooms (trees, benches and hedged borders).

"I like to incorporate some history into the kitchen gardens I design for
my clients — history involving family and memories," said Jennifer
Bartley (http://americanpotager.typepad.com/american_potager/), a landscape
architect from Granville, Ohio, and author of "Designing the New Kitchen
Garden: An American Potager Handbook."

Bartley uses the formal potager outside her window as a "tasting garden a
little of everything to snack on through the season.

"I use it to eat from daily," she said. "I also use it to entertain. After
guests arrive, I'll send them out into the garden to make some impromptu
salads before they get comfortable around the table."

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Potager pointers

Here are some tips to make your creative gardening endeavors more
palatable:

• Follow the sun. Vegetables need their day in the sun, or at least six
to eight hours worth, if they're to produce the best yields. But showier
varieties deserve visibility, too. Place them near the kitchen door for
convenience; yet also position them where they can be enjoyed from the
windows.

• Plan small and then plant smaller. We're talking about using a heavy
mix of perennials here, things like asparagus, rhubarb, horseradish,
chives, strawberries, fruiting shrubs and trees. Find varieties that are at
the same time attractive and flavorful.

"Start with a 10-foot by 10-foot section. You always can add to it later.
Then grow just the things you enjoy or can't get at the farmer's market or
grocery like luxury herbs and fancy, tender little greens," says Ogden
(http://www.ellenogden.com/), the co-founder of "The Cook's Garden" seed
catalog (http://www.cooksgarden.com/).

• Skip the bigger plants, like sweet corn. They not only take up a lot of
room but they rob the soil of nutrients. Salad greens or tomatoes provide
more nutritional value for the space, Ogden says.

• Succession planting. Get a second crop into the ground immediately
after harvesting the first. Depending upon your climate and the maturity
dates of your plants, a compact ornamental kitchen garden can be good for
as many as three crops per growing season. Speed things along by using seed
sown in peat pots. That way, they'll be ready to drop into the ground after
the cool weather plants (beets, cabbage, radishes, mustard and spinach) are
done.

• Border plants. If you prefer a living barrier to stone walls, then
choose a hardy ornamental shrub that will flower, fruit and produce a
colorful background when viewed from within or without.

• Lay off the chemicals if you intend to nibble on the blooms. You'll be
washing them, of course, but gently if you want to deliver them intact to
the table. Better that you grow such things organically to make them even
more food-safe.

• Some edibles taste fresher and last longer when picked than others. But
you can enhance those flavors by harvesting in the cool of the morning.
Keep the clipped edibles crisp by covering them with a cool, wetted towel.

• If you're starved for room, then plant deep and grow things up as well
as out. Use vining plants like grapes, beans and squashes.