Simple Joys: A Kitchen Cutting Garden
One of the greatest pleasures of summer in New England is access to fresh herbs and produce! And one of my favorite ways to have easy access is to keep potted herbs right outside the kitchen door on my back deck.
Our kitchen deck with annuals and potted herbs for a kitchen cutting garden
True confession: I am SO not a gardener! I love gardens. I grew up with a Mom who had beautiful gardens and loved digging in the dirt…she was forever tinkering and transplanting and weeding and our yard was GORGEOUS. She’s 88 now and her yard is still gorgeous and I still find her out there weeding and complaining about plants that refuse to do her bidding or delightfully grinning at the ones that are blooming profusely! I’m afraid I am a tragic disappointment to her on the gardening front! I love gardens, and I acquired a bit of knowledge about plants from growing up around a gardener, but I loathe digging in the dirt. Mostly because I run screaming when I encounter anything slimy and wriggling…like earthworms. Yes, I know they are good for the soil, but it really doesn’t help keep me from fleeing when they surface *shudder*.
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My solution to my lack of gardening skill/patience, is to plant in lovely earthworm-free pots! I have a collection of faux stone fiberglass pots which are great because they don’t weigh a thousand pounds but don’t look like cheap plastic either! I set them on these little plant pot feet so they can properly drain. And my deck off the kitchen seems to have the ideal conditions for growing herbs - which I LOVE to have on hand for cooking. Nothing elevates everyday meals like fresh herbs!
Side note: we also go through a ton of tomatoes and I have TRIED to grow these. I’ve gotten lovely tomato trees with lovely foliage but tomatoes? Not so much. I learned that this cheap plant I bought at a discount store was an “indeterminate” variety of tomato when it grew to over 8 ft and took over! Apparently indeterminate is a variety with no fixed growth height. Determinate plants are bred to stay a certain height…who knew?! Anyway, my foray into tomato farming resulted in a battle with the squirrels and chipmunks which I lost. I excitedly watched the blossoms turn into infant tomatoes only to discover that they had been picked or bitten into or used for chipmunk soccer….
Our “indeterminate” tomato plant could have given Jack’s fictitious beanstalk a run for its money!
SO I have refined my gardening to not only pots, but just herbs with a mix of trailing vines and ivy and some annual flowers for color! Our favorite herbs to grow are:
Basil - this is one I plant the most of because who doesn’t love a good caprese salad in the summer? It is also a key ingredient in our favorite adult summer lemonade recipe. And it is a staple for tomato sauces like this super easy and flavorful one! If you are particularly organized and feeling all Martha Stewart, you can make pesto out of all of it that is left at the end of the season and store it to use all fall and winter. I have managed this once…okay maybe twice, and MAYBE this year will be the third time!
Rosemary - there are endless applications for this aromatic herb - topping for homemade focaccia or mixed into our rustic bread along with roasted garlic are favorites, but mixed with roasted veggies, in sauces, on baked chicken…soooo good
Tarragon - I would grow this for my favorite roasted potato salad alone (recipe coming to the blog soon - honestly, I thought it was already on here)! But it’s a great addition to chicken salad as well. It’s a bit trickier to find tarragon plants and it doesn’t seem to flourish quite as much as the other herbs in the pot, but it’s holding on so I can make the potato salad for the 4th!
Parsley - this adds a fresh finish to a lot of recipes and is a handy garnish to dress up the presentation of any entree
Thyme - I have a favorite grilled vegetable marinade that uses fresh thyme that we make often in the summer, but it is a great ingredient to add to many soups and poultry recipes. Also, bonus aesthetics, creeping thyme spills out over the edge of the pot nicely!
Sage - Pan-fried sage and browned butter sauce for butternut ravioli…yum, but also great in a number of chicken and pork dishes
Cilantro - I grow this under protest because I dislike cilantro intensely, but the rest of my family loves it and it keeps it out of the fridge LOL. I do, however, accommodate it in this delicious and healthy quinoa summer salad.
Mint - ice tea, mojitos, and mint juleps, ‘nuf said. This SHOULD be a perennial, but so far I have not had luck with it reappearing season to season. It is also a staple for garnishing desserts and making infused water
Chives - I love having these on hand to add to potato dishes, egg salad, and garden salads. They are a perennial (at least here) so they just reappear every year without having to plant them and they make pretty purple flowers too! This is the first year in over a decade that they haven’t come back and I had to buy a new plant.
Potted herbs planted with ivy, sweet potato vine, and something flowering and drippy to cascade over the edges of the pot for some artistic flair
Basil, creeping thyme, tarragon, parsley, sage, and rosemary in a container herb garden bordered with some ivy
The secret ingredient to my herb growing is Osmocote pellets. I mix it in to the soil when I plant and it releases fertilizer into the soil with each watering.
One of my favorite morning rituals in the summer is sipping tea and watering my pots on the deck. I had a hose spigot added to the wall for convenient access to water. And I do have one end of the deck against a wall that gets sun most of the day that I may try out a vertical garden on next season. I might even try growing tomatoes again - maybe the rodents will ignore them on the wall :)
Some favorite products (links in legend)
multiblade herb scissors | herb snips | osmocote | pot feet