Ward and I have been talking lately about planting a kitchen garden this spring. We’ve been finding that fresh herbs make an incredible difference when it comes to cooking, so a kitchen garden this summer makes sense.

Luckily, we have a fair bit of land, and about a quarter of it is in full sun, so we have a lot of options.

We’re envisioning a raised garden just outside our kitchen:

Unfortunately, while this spot gets a lot of afternoon sun, it’s mostly shaded in the morning. Still, I’ve grown various herbs in containers on this deck in previous summers, and it’s nice to have herbs within easy clipping reach.

In our front garden, which has been in “landscape-stage” for a few years now, we’ll be able to grow quite a lot of herbs.

It’s been great fun sitting down with the gardening catalogues, dreaming about our new garden and picking out plants. We’ll be ordering most of our plants from Richters Herbs; they offer a wide variety, and many of their herbs are available as small plants or plugs.

So far, we’ve picked out the following herbs:

Basil: Genovese basil, Greek bush basil, and Thai basil
Chives
Garlic Chives
Mint: English Mint, Peppermint mint, and Spearmint mint
Rosemary

We already grow thyme, lemon thyme, oregano and sage in our front garden. They’re perennials, and make for a divine-smelling walkway in the summer. We’ll be uprooting our existing front garden this summer, though - but of course we’ll find a place for these herbs!

Richters also has a, smaller, vegetable selection, and we’ve been putting together a list from these, too. Our main criteria? It must be available as a plant or a plug! Given our short growing season, it doesn’t make sense to plant outdoors from seed, and we just don’t have the space to propagate seeds indoors (I wish we did!)

Our list of vegetables for our kitchen garden, so far:

Calabrese broccoli
Japanese eggplant
Gai Lohn
Kale
Leek
Walla Walla onion
Pak-Choi
Sweet Chocolate Pepper
Golden Cal Wonder Pepper
Cayenne Chile pepper
Jalapeno chile pepper
Thai Chile pepper

We haven’t decided on a tomato yet; there are a couple of heirloom varieties that look interesting.

And the exceptions we’ll make to planting seeds are carrots, lettuces, and of course, cilantro. There are many varieties of each that have a shorter growing season. And I’ve never been able to resist growing my own cilantro!

In the middle of a cold winter day, planning out a kitchen garden is a wonderful dream activity. Whether we’ll actually get all those plants planted out by spring, I don’t know; truth is, we’ve had as much fun out of all of this as if they were already planted and ready to be harvested!

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