“Find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, the hands, and the mouth."
-Lanza Del Vasto
Potager gardens differ in some respects from harvest gardens, which are typically planted in early spring and harvested in fall, with the majority being stored by freezing or canning. In a kitchen garden, harvesting and planting is ongoing. Its purpose is to supply the kitchen with fruits and vegetables harvested at their peak. Replanting can supply the kitchen with additional food, or can nurture the soil with green manure. Certainly there is reason to grow enough to feed the family, share with others and also put some by for winter, but ahh, to taste a vegetable at its peak is sheer ecstasy.
A potager is also a very visual garden, where thought is put into placement, and allows for leaf texture contrast as well. For example, growing purple pod beans adds color contrast, and they are delicious. Rainbow chard is lovely, the stalks are all different very vibrant colors, and the crinkly texture of the leaves make it a real knockout. Edging the garden with red tinged lettuces makes a fantastic edible border that contrasts nicely with the other plants nearby.
Potager gardeners love food, at its juicy succulent best. Not just a good tomato, but a true tomato, picked warm and juicy from the vine at the peak of its ripeness. The enjoyment is a complete one because it is entwined with the memory of the plant in its various stages of development. It’s not only the taste, but also the care and honest labor that went into making it. This is a kitchen garden at its best, when a gardener has nurtured a plant from a tiny seed or seedling to the time when it is harvested at its peak of freshness.
Here are some suggestions that will help you create a potager garden outside your own back door.
• Consider how the site chosen fits. Think about the effects of wind and hours of sunshine, but also consider the overall setting: Will it be in ground or in containers nearby?
• What veggies, fruits, herbs and flowers do you love? Those are the ones to plant. That might sound odd, but consider if you would like to be serving more salads, with unique flavor, then searching out interesting looking lettuces will be very important. If you prefer to can spaghetti sauce for the winter months, a few extra tomato plants, some onions, peppers and basil will be prominent. This is your garden, and your tastes and needs. If you grow what you love, it will be terrific.
• Next, consider the overall design. This will depend primarily on how you plan to cultivate the garden—by hand or by machine (and what kind of machine), which will determine not only the garden's shape but also how wide the paths need to be. Any pattern is possible—spiral, checkerboard, wagon wheel. As the season progresses and plants grow, the outlines of your beds will evolve. In the informal country style, there is rarely bare earth or much space between rows; the beds are quickly filled in with companion plants, mulch, green manures, or self-sown volunteers. This saves an incredible amount of time, as bare earth will bring weeds that need to be pulled.
• A good design includes vertical accents. These can be temporary (a stand of corn, tomato towers, bean tepees), or permanent (berry bushes, a small apple tree).
• Potagers are essentially tapestries of myriad colors and shapes. The intermingling of herbs, flowers, and fruits with vegetables requires careful placement of perennials so that they do not interfere with the growth of seasonal crops. For example, if you choose to add rhubarb to your garden, place it near the edge so it will not cause difficulty in cleaning up the garden in autumn. Aggressive herbs like mint or tansy need to be contained. They will run rampant and try to take over the garden. All the annuals mix well with vegetables, and may even serve as beneficial companion plants—for example, planting coriander among carrots, said to deter the carrot fly.
• Also keep in mind that a kitchen garden can be grown in containers. A patio that is in the sun can host pots of herbs and vegetables, and the pots can also be brought inside to a sunny window before freeze. Nearly anything can be grown in containers. Root vegetables such as potatoes can be grown in large whiskey barrels, tomato plants in an 18’ pot or larger, and you will have ease of harvest and a decorative element as well.
• Edge plots with contrasting plants, including herbs and flowers, which will mask bare spots as the season progresses. Choose varieties in keeping with the scale of the garden. Keep free-ranging perennials in bounds with buried strips of metal or plastic.
• After harvesting, use fast fillers such as chervil or cut-and-come-again salad greens. Many will self-sow and can be moved easily to fill gaps when required.
