The kitchen garden

Building a good vegetable garden is a true dream.. if you have the space.

there’s many things I could live without but my salad patch isn’t one of them, very few simple things bring so much satisfaction to my everyday life as picking my own tomatoes and herbs, lettuces and onions, its also a great spot to visit during long work hours to disconnect and relax over a good cup of tea.

Nowadays there is no excuse not to have one, with a little bit of imagination you can build them in the teeniest spaces, terraces and balconies, plant pots, basket, even windowsills.

In our country homes we are lucky to have space to dedicate to them and from day one of design process we make sure we find a suitable place, sunny and close to the house to build them.

The weather in the Mediterranean obliges to fit them with a good irrigation system, that will help to ease the maintenance and keep watered at all times.

We have planted them on the ground before, which is good for plants that need more space like potatoes and pumpkins, melons and cucumbers but for salads and tomatoes, herbs and less invasive types of plants we use raised boxes most of the time.

These raised boxes are terribly easy to keep clean, you get less bugs and the weeds grow a lot less, also your dogs don’t run all over them ( or children ) mainly its less bending down thus your back really thanks you for it!

For some of us would be a hobby for others just a chore, but eating your own eco produce bits any eco purchase, the taste is simply never the same.

Each one is built out of resistant planks of wood, sometime reclaim train tracks, or wood as hard as possible you can find, they are independently irrigated to control each box, as some plants need more water than others, they are all fitted with an automatic programmer to adjust the time at different times of the year.

We place them close together but you can see the distance we left from one box to the other,  enough to pass with  a wheelbarrow, for maintenance, we also lay anti- weed fabric under the gravel, some lights hanging from the mandarine tree and some tree trunks at the end to sit and watch the plants grow! They are quite well equipped, the more they are, the more time you’ll spend around it.

Lastly we planted a good hedge of Teucrium, which is very drought resistant and it’ll help protect the plants in the winter months.

I encourage you to try, start with basil and parsley and some cherry tomatoes, everyday salad bits ..those little things are the ones that make the difference and make us that little bit more happy!

😉

Some images of the last Boxes we built at the farm.

Wishing you all a good beginning of month!

X

Paula