Urban Kitchen Gardening Guide

Wherever you are, it ought to be possible to grow some of your own food. Particularly, if you use our urban kitchen gardening guide for some inspiration in the process.

You may not be able to grow everything that you eat if you live in an urban area but as you’ll see, you ought to be able to easily give your salad spinners a workout and find a few extra toppings for your pizzas before they go in that awesome pizza oven you just bought.

What Makes A Good Urban Kitchen Gardener?

Before you get started, it’s a good idea to see if you are up to the task.

You will need:

Some spare time. This isn’t hard but you do need to water and weed the plants on a regular basis.
Patience. Most veggies won’t grow overnight, you will need to tend to the garden while waiting for a generous harvest.
Resilience. You win some, you lose some. While you will grow tasty food – you will also have some failures.
Research skills. We’re going to assume that you don’t intend to douse your garden with chemical rubbish and that means that when challenges arise, you need the skills to get online, work out what’s wrong and fix it.
Elbow grease. You’ll need to be prepared to get your hands dirty and do some work, digging, potting, handling plants, etc.

If you have all these traits then you’re going to enjoy running an urban kitchen garden.

How To Make Your Urban Kitchen Garden

Firstly, you need some space to grow in.

If you have an area of about 12’ x 12’ in a backyard, then you can create a raised bed there and fill it with soil easily.

If not, then you can always create a garden in plant pots.

Your soil mixture should be 1:1:1 and that’s red sand, soil and compost.

Ideally, you’ll be using your own home produced compost but if you’ve not started home composting then you can buy-in some to get you started.

We’ve got some other tips on where to locate your garden:

It needs to get at least 6 hours and, ideally, 8 hours of sun everyday – make sure to observe the place you put it and ensure that it’s got enough light
A kitchen garden near your back door is very easy to tend to but if you can’t get the sun, put it out the front door
You need a ready supply of water close by – ideally, something you can connect a host to
Don’t use treated timber to surround a raised bed – it can poison your crops
If you expect harsh winters, don’t forget you can move plant pots indoors – you can’t take the raised bed with you
Vertical gardening is a good way to use up space – get some trellises to facilitate this and you can even use them to mask uglier parts of your backyard as well as support everything from tomatoes to cucumbers

What To Grow In Your Urban Kitchen Garden

Once you’ve got the space prepped for growing in then it’s time to find yourself some plants that are going to complement your food choices.

Of course, this is always a matter of individual taste but we’ve got some great suggestions for your urban kitchen garden and here they are:

Italian food lovers: san marzano tomatoes, genovese basil, etc.
Spicy salsa: hot peppers (to your tastes) and tomatoes
Salad fans: exotic lettuce species such as “little gem”, cucumbers, radishes, etc.
Canned food fans: pickling cucumbers, dill, pole beans, etc.
Food snobs: grow the things that cost the most in the supermarket – endives, edamame, shallots, etc.

You should also be aware that, by and large, pests and disease tend to leave hardy veggies alone in urban environments – so you shouldn’t need to spend much time treating your garden for these issues.

However, if they do become infested – you can make your own gentle pesticides from substances such as turmeric ash or neem.