I have been gardening to one degree or another since I was a toddler. My father planted a large vegetable garden each year, and I was always involved in the planting, tending, and harvesting. When I was about 5 or 6 years old, Dad gave me a corner of his vegetable garden to tend as my own. Over the years, my percentage of the garden grew and grew and I somehow managed to convince my parents to buy vegetables from me, a dream job for an

aspiring gardener, and one that I’m sure my parents agreed to only because they wanted me to learn lessons in both gardening and profiteering. Many of my earliest lessons in vegetable gardening came from the PBS program The Victory Garden, where I first learned techniques like growing plants in raised beds and fertilizing with compost. Such techniques were nearly considered radical at the time, as America was then hooked on rototillers and chemical fertilizers. The prevailing notion seemed to be that there was no problem that couldn’t be fixed by a rototiller and some chemical potions. Time-honored methods of soil building, fertility management, pest control, and crop management were set aside for a few decades, only to be dusted off again in recent years.

I gardened during the summers while attending college, found sunny window sills for container gardening while we lived in an apartment, and returned eagerly to outdoor vegetable gardening when we bought our first home. About this time, I had an epiphany, when we took a trip to France. This trip changed my life, forcing me to look at edible gardening in a whole new way, for here was a country apparently so dedicated to good food that nearly every home along our path through Burgundy, across the Loire valley, up to Paris and West to the Champagne region, included a well-tended garden complete with not only lush vegetables, but sumptuous fruits and glorious flowers. Louisa Jones, in her beautifully illustrated book The Art of French Vegetable Gardening writes “In 1994, the French government survey office estimated that 23 percent of all fruit and vegetables consumed in France are home-grown.” This percentage is enormous compared to our record here in America, and after traveling through the French countryside, I have no doubt that it is correct. The huge proportion of locally grown produce surely accounts in large part for the quality of French food, which is simply wonderful. I believe it must be impossible to have a bad meal in France, where almost every restaurant is a great restaurant, and many are simply magnificent. Seemingly everyone knows how to work both the land and the kitchen. Lush vegetable gardens are everywhere, lining the streets, on display in front yards, clinging to craggy cliffs, filling sunken grottos. For the past few years, I have studied and practiced all I could about this style of gardening, known as potager gardening.

A potager (pronounced poh-ta-ZHAY) is simply a French kitchen garden, although some subtle differences set it apart from traditional Western colonial kitchen gardens. The word derives from the old French word potage, or soup. An interesting link can be made here to a phrase still used today among kitchen gardeners - “soup to soup,” which refers to the four-season nature of a properly planted edible garden. Winter soups are made from the stock in the root cellar - onions, garlic, potatoes, various other root vegetables, dried herbs and perhaps a few leaves of kale snapped off the frozen plants outdoors. Fresh salads and summer vegetables are enjoyed through the warmer months, but the soup returns in the fall when fresh tomatoes, peppers and zucchini are just a memory.

Many people associate potager gardening with formal knot gardens and parterres, but this association need not be so. Knot gardens and parterres are highly ornamental structures, meant to be seen from above, which may or may not use edible plants as one of the colors in the palette. Potagers need not be formal, although often they are. Perhaps the most impressive kitchen gardens are those that start off in the springtime with formal structure and definition, but evolve into verdant drifts of vegetation that spill over walls, cover fences, and obscure paths, rendering the formal hardscape as just the skeleton of a well fleshed body, rather than the prominent feature of the garden.

Potager gardens bare some resemblance to English Cottage Gardens as well, but whereas cottage gardens are typically flower gardens with a few vegetables thrown into the mix, a potager is the opposite - a vegetable and fruit garden that includes flowers as a harvestable crop for indoor display.

So what is the difference between a potager and a kitchen garden? I’m sure that depends on whom you ask, but for the purposes of thekitchengardener.com, we’ll treat them as near synonyms. The only difference is that potagers are distinctly French, and as much as possible are meant to conform to the French aesthetic. Perhaps the distinction can be drawn more clearly with photographs, when comparing Thomas Jefferson’s famous kitchen garden at Monticello with the magnificent potager at Chateau Villandry.

Potager or kitchen garden - use what name you like. Our primary goal here at TheKitchenGardener is to inspire you raise a significant portion of your food in your own slice of Earth, whatever you choose to call it. By embracing traditional gardening practices and updating where necessary with modern science and the power of the Internet, we hope to lead a renaissance of kitchen gardeners across America and throughout the world. The seed of self-sufficiency lies deep in all of us - a primal desire to work the land and provide our own food. What has been forgotten is the knowledge of how to make that seed grow. What has yet to be figured out is how to successfully incorporate self-sufficiency into modern lifestyles.

I consider myself more a student than a teacher. Each day in the garden I learn, I make mistakes, and I try new things. The Internet has been a wonderful source of information for me, and I sincerely hope that those of you who tend your own kitchen gardens will reach out to me and share your experiences and knowledge. We can learn from each other. Together we can advance the art and culture of kitchen gardening for the sake of our health, the health of our families, the benefit of the environment, and the joy of eating fresh, flavorful food.

Stay tuned for more articles from TheKitchenGardener. New articles will appear sporadically for the next few months, as the site is developed and expanded. Official launch will hopefully be some time in January 2006. In the meantime, please excuse our appearance while site construction is underway!

-Diggity

 

aspiring gardener, and one that I’m sure my parents agreed to only because they wanted me to learn lessons in both gardening and profiteering. Many of my earliest lessons in vegetable gardening came from the PBS program The Victory Garden, where I first learned techniques like growing plants in raised beds and fertilizing with compost. Such techniques were nearly considered radical at the time, as America was then hooked on rototillers and chemical fertilizers. The prevailing notion seemed to be that there was no problem that couldn’t be fixed by a rototiller and some chemical potions. Time-honored methods of soil building, fertility management, pest control, and crop management were set aside for a few decades, only to be dusted off again in recent years.

I gardened during the summers while attending college, found sunny window sills for container gardening while we lived in an apartment, and returned eagerly to outdoor vegetable gardening when we bought our first home. About this time, I had an epiphany, when we took a trip to France. This trip changed my life, forcing me to look at edible gardening in a whole new way, for here was a country apparently so dedicated to good food that nearly every home along our path through Burgundy, across the Loire valley, up to Paris and West to the Champagne region, included a well-tended garden complete with not only lush vegetables, but sumptuous fruits and glorious flowers. Louisa Jones, in her beautifully illustrated book The Art of French Vegetable Gardening writes “In 1994, the French government survey office estimated that 23 percent of all fruit and vegetables consumed in France are home-grown.” This percentage is enormous compared to our record here in America, and after traveling through the French countryside, I have no doubt that it is correct. The huge proportion of locally grown produce surely accounts in large part for the quality of French food, which is simply wonderful. I believe it must be impossible to have a bad meal in France, where almost every restaurant is a great restaurant, and many are simply magnificent. Seemingly everyone knows how to work both the land and the kitchen. Lush vegetable gardens are everywhere, lining the streets, on display in front yards, clinging to craggy cliffs, filling sunken grottos. For the past few years, I have studied and practiced all I could about this style of gardening, known as potager gardening.

A potager (pronounced poh-ta-ZHAY) is simply a French kitchen garden, although some subtle differences set it apart from traditional Western colonial kitchen gardens. The word derives from the old French word potage, or soup. An interesting link can be made here to a phrase still used today among kitchen gardeners - “soup to soup,” which refers to the four-season nature of a properly planted edible garden. Winter soups are made from the stock in the root cellar - onions, garlic, potatoes, various other root vegetables, dried herbs and perhaps a few leaves of kale snapped off the frozen plants outdoors. Fresh salads and summer vegetables are enjoyed through the warmer months, but the soup returns in the fall when fresh tomatoes, peppers and zucchini are just a memory.
Many people associate potager gardening with formal knot gardens and parterres, but this association need not be so. Knot gardens and parterres are highly ornamental structures, meant to be seen from above, which may or may not use edible plants as one of the colors in the palette. Potagers need not be formal, although often they are. Perhaps the most impressive kitchen gardens are those that start off in the springtime with formal structure and definition, but evolve into verdant drifts of vegetation that spill over walls, cover fences, and obscure paths, rendering the formal hardscape as just the skeleton of a well fleshed body, rather than the prominent feature of the garden.  Potager gardens bare some resemblance to English Cottage Gardens as well, but whereas cottage gardens are typically flower gardens with a few vegetables thrown into the mix, a potager is the opposite - a vegetable and fruit garden that includes flowers as a harvestable crop for indoor display.

So what is the difference between a potager and a kitchen garden? I’m sure that depends on whom you ask, but for the purposes of thekitchengardener.com, we’ll treat them as near synonyms. The only difference is that potagers are distinctly French, and as much as possible are meant to conform to the French aesthetic. Perhaps the distinction can be drawn more clearly with photographs, when comparing Thomas Jefferson’s famous kitchen garden at Monticello with the magnificent potager at Chateau Villandry.

Potager or kitchen garden - use what name you like. Our primary goal here at TheKitchenGardener is to inspire you raise a significant portion of your food in your own slice of Earth, whatever you choose to call it. By embracing traditional gardening practices and updating where necessary with modern science and the power of the Internet, we hope to lead a renaissance of kitchen gardeners across America and throughout the world. The seed of self-sufficiency lies deep in all of us - a primal desire to work the land and provide our own food. What has been forgotten is the knowledge of how to make that seed grow. What has yet to be figured out is how to successfully incorporate self-sufficiency into modern lifestyles.

I consider myself more a student than a teacher. Each day in the garden I learn, I make mistakes, and I try new things. The Internet has been a wonderful source of information for me, and I sincerely hope that those of you who tend your own kitchen gardens will reach out to me and share your experiences and knowledge. We can learn from each other. Together we can advance the art and culture of kitchen gardening for the sake of our health, the health of our families, the benefit of the environment, and the joy of eating fresh, flavorful food.

Stay tuned for more articles from TheKitchenGardener. New articles will appear sporadically for the next few months, as the site is developed and expanded. Official launch will hopefully be some time in January 2006. In the meantime, please excuse our appearance while site construction is underway!

-Diggity