How to Create a Hip and Functional Kitchen Garden

A kitchen garden was traditionally known as a potage and originated as a garden area separate from the other gardens surrounding the house. This garden was traditionally a place where fruits and vegetables and herbs were grown in order to be used in the kitchen to prepare meals. So what happens if you want to have your own “kitchen garden,” but you don’t have enough room to create individual garden beds?
Let’s say you live in an apartment and you have the desire to try your hand at gardening, but nowhere to do it; well lately, creative individuals with crafty green thumbs have come up with a few innovative ways to bring the delicious taste and quality of home grown produce straight to your kitchen, from your kitchen. Here’s how.

Tea Tin Herb Garden
This is one of those ideas hat is so clever I fell in love with it immediately because it takes something old and uses it in a great new way. The idea is to take those wonderful little old tea tins and use them as planters for an herb garden in your kitchen. If you can find about 5 or 6 of them, then you can create an enchanting little area in your kitchen that will look chic and give your room a great energy. By using a group of tins that are all slightly different, you keep your little garden looking unique and vintage chic.
You can plant any herb you want in these, just make sure they get the water and sun that they need. The bottoms of the tins do not have holes, so take care not to over water them, and place them in your kitchen window, or at least rotate them to a window at least every other day for sun.

Topsy Turvy Planters
A lot of companies are starting to offer their equivalent to the “topsy turvy” planter, or a planter that you can hang from the ceiling by rope or cord or chain. These planters are great for your kitchen garden because you can hang them pretty much anywhere, and the design is conducive to minimal sunlight.
You still have to make sure that these plants get their fair share of sun, but because the soil is inside the planter, the heat stays inside and circulates through the soil, warming the roots and promoting quicker growth. The plants you grow in these planters can be a little more substantial as well, you could try to grow some peppers or tomatoes in these, just make sure you hang them somewhere where a flourishing plant will not be in your way.

DIY Planters
Nowadays you can find a DIY guide for everything, why not planters. Basically if you have a creative mind and a little bit of craftiness in you, you can turn almost any kind of container into a great planter, add a few more and you have yourself a full fledged little kitchen garden. Mason jars are part of a rustic chic trend going on right now, and it just so happens they are one of those items that you may already have in your kitchen that can double great as planters.
These jars work great for planting herbs or for starting seeds for other plants. You can leave these jars upright on the counter or mount them on a board and hang the board on the wall. If you have any other containers, like small buckets or a set of quirky teacups, you can use these too. The more unusual the item the better, and again, it looks great to have a series of the same items that are the same but slightly different from one another, this adds character to your little garden.
You can also get creative with an actual planter box and mount it in a creative and new way; hang a few smaller ones on the wall above your counter or put smaller containers inside one for a different look.

There is no limit to the possibilities when creating your kitchen garden. If you have a little space to work with and you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty and you are willing to try new things and think outside the planter box, you can make a very cool and unique little garden for yourself that will continue to repay you for your care by making your meals taste fresh and flavorful, and you get the satisfaction of knowing that you did it all yourself. It takes work to keep those plants alive and growing and you should look at you garden and be proud.