Two Old Gardeners and a Blog

Have you noticed lately how the price of fresh vegetables and fruit is going through the roof? I sure have and I’ve done something about it, I’ve started an edible garden! A lot more folks are doing this and it’s a sensible move. There are some very attractive vegetable plants available that provide a lovely landscape and also supply good crops.

Give your wallet a break and lower your spending on these items by growing a great looking edible garden. It doesn’t matter if you only have a small garden area, they can be easily grown in containers and you’ll have fresh fruits, vegetables and even herbs for years.

By making a point of selecting mostly perennial vegetables simply because they return each year, there’s less replanting. Add to that the fact that your garden will not only look beautiful but be practical at the same time and you’re on a winner.

So with the choice of plants taken care of for a yearly harvest, all you need to do now is a little feeding, watering, occasional pruning, weeding and pest control. In exchange you’ll have fresh fruits and vegetables for years and years.

They’ll usually die during the winter, but every spring they’ll return and go through a growth cycle again. There are plenty of varieties of vegetables that you can plant that will keep feeding you year after year.

You can use many different types of edible plants to replace various aspects of traditional landscaping. You can use fruit trees in place of standard trees or if space is limited there are some wonderful dwarf fruit trees that produce abundant crops. Many perennial herbs can be used to replace ground covers and shrubs. And ornamental vegetables can be used in place of flowers, borders, or other accents.

Don’t be afraid to mix up your planting, you can have some wonderful combinations with a little imagination. Edible plants can look at home in a flower bed and many herbs will give your garden an individual appearance.

Curly parsley looks beautiful with many different types of plants. You can plant it with pansies, lobelia, strawberries, dusty miller, or dianthus. Sage and oregano are very beautiful plants, and make great low shrubbery. They look fantastic as edging in front of larger bushes.

Leaf lettuces look lovely planted in beds as accent areas. You can plant a bed of different colors and varieties of leaf lettuce, and then edge it with a border grass. There are several types of plants that have edible flowers.

Also there are a lot of plants with edible flowers, leaves, stalks and tubers. One that springs to mind is the humble sugar snap pea… beautiful pink, white or purple flowers and then the delicious peas. They will brighten up any landscape when they’re in bloom.

Fava beans produce white and red flowers. Chives have amazing purple globe-shaped flowers. Dill has lovely yellowish blossoms. Nasturtium blossoms are edible, and some in red, yellow, and orange. Sage has blue and purple blossoms. And salvia also has blue and purple blooms.

Going back to the perennial vegetables and herbs mentioned earlier, you have a good variety to choose from including ginger, dandelions, asparagus, rhubarb, fennel, broccoli, garlic chives, sorrel, sweet potatoes, artichokes and chives. These and others make wonderful edible gardens and are very easy to maintain.

Want to load your small garden with plants and perfume? Tom Johnson has a Free Report for you called Container Gardening Secrets.