It is one of the biggest trends of recent years, growing your own fruit and vegetables. Eating from your own garden is tasty, fun and healthy. Moreover, any outdoor area is suitable, whether large or small. Plants that are edible or fruit-bearing are often very ornamental, so why not make use of this double function? Maintaining an edible garden used to have a corny ring to it, but that idea has completely disappeared. People are working to use food responsibly and are willing to go the extra mile. Besides, you can have a lot of fun with it.
How to start?
The easiest way is to start replacing some ornamental plants and shrubs with edible ones. In edible garden design, edible plants actually have the same role as ornamental plants. Instead of a hedge, you can use red or white currant bushes, for example. Along the fence you can grow a raspberry or blackberry bush. Edible shrubs are mainly found in borders. Some examples of edible shrubs are the currant, gooseberry or blackcurrant. It is also nice to grow a grape or kiwi over the pergola. The best effect is achieved by varying the plants. Make up combinations based on structure and colour, but also look at the seasons and when which plant flowers or has fruit. The best thing, of course, is to be able to enjoy your own fruit and vegetables almost all year round. Some plants grow faster and become larger than others. So take that into account when planting.
Small beginning
Would you like to start small or do you have very little space? Then grow your fruit and vegetable plants in pots. Strawberry plants in particular lend themselves well to this. Make sure you water the pots regularly and always use pots with a hole. Plants dry out more quickly in a pot than in the ground.
Many types of edible plants can grow quickly or become overgrown. If there is a lack of space, this type of planting is not ideal. Nevertheless, there are many breeds that make plants grow more compactly. So you can still have a raspberry or blueberry bush in your garden without running out of space.
Planting
Below, we have compiled a list of plants that are perfect for the edible garden. Besides fruit plants, you also want plants that stay beautiful all year round, and for that our grasses are very suitable.
- Lycium barbarum Princess Tao is a shrubby Goji berry plant. The berries are medicinal and have a good effect on health. According to traditional Chinese medicine, regular consumption of the goji berry retains youthfulness in the body.
- Vitis Lakemount (geënt) is a white seedless grape that is suitable as a table grape, but also as a wine grape. It is a climber that can grow several metres high.
- Stipa tenuissima Ponytails also called Feather grass is a fine ornamental grass, with straight upright growth up to 80 cm high. The leaf has a very fine, almost hair-like structure with a green colour that can change to light brown.
- Fargesia rufa has the good property not to proliferate, remains compact and grows to an average height of 1.5 to 2 metres. It is a nice bamboo to place in an area of the garden with little high planting, for example near water.
- Vaccinium Sunshine Blue also called blueberry or American blueberry. It is a compact shrub, whose fruits have a nice fresh taste and a beautiful sky-blue colour. You can eat them straight from the bush, but they are also very suitable for processing into jam, cake or juice.
- Rubus Navaho® Summerlong® is a productive and healthy blackberry variety. The great advantage of this burr is its robust upright growth. The branches do not grow very long and are very sturdy, which makes it suitable for a small garden or a balcony.
