Centre County gardening experts share tips for starting a kitchen garden

As Happy Valley steadily marches toward springtime, with warmer temperatures filling the forecast, many are eagerly awaiting that first chance to get outside and begin digging around in the dirt. However, if you’ve never really embarked on a home gardening project, it may be smart to start small — like with a kitchen garden.

Often designed to be compact, easily accessible from your home and filled with herbs and produce that you use regularly, a kitchen garden provides a rewarding, fulfilling and typically beginner-friendly gardening experience.

That said, exactly how do you get started and how can you best ensure your success along the way? To find out, we spoke with a handful of Centre County gardening experts.

As you’re first planning your kitchen garden, experts told us, think about location and size.

Nellie Bhattarai, an organizer with the Harris Township Community Garden, recommends beginners opt for an easier workload — and more satisfying results.

“Be realistic about the space you are committing to maintain for the entire season,” she said. “A ‘happy feeling’ about your success may be a good inspiration for a bigger garden next year.”

Meanwhile, Scott Case, owner of Patchwork Farm and Greenhouse, said, “Location is the first step. You need a space in the sun. … After location, decide how you want to garden. The ground gets further away the older we get. [It’s] easy to dig up an area and plant in the ground, but raised beds or container gardening might be more appropriate.”

Along these lines, Penn State Extension Master Gardener Laurie Lynch (who’s been involved with the heavily trained group of Master Gardener volunteers for more than three decades) recommended the GrowBox, a planting container on wheels with its own internal water reservoir.

“You put [in] your soil and then your plants on top,” she described, “and you pour the water in, and it soaks up the water from the bottom. It takes that, ‘Oh, should I water? Or, oh, I’m not watering enough’ away. It takes care of itself. When you pour too much water in, it comes out … and if it rains, it all evens out.”

At the same time, though, don’t cramp your garden.

Case continued, “My nephew got into gardening a few years back and filled a small space with every vegetable imaginable. By July the place was a jungle and, being the good uncle, I suggested he needed a bed stretcher. Once he got the joke, I told him he made the typical rookie gardening mistake. The plants look so small when you buy them but some of them get huge (pumpkins, for example). Leave enough space for plants to grow.”

Then, as you’re picking out your plants, opt for items that you do actually consume on a regular basis. As Bhattarai pointed out, “if you grow 20 pounds of turnips, but really don’t enjoy turnips, you may find your motivation lacking.”

Accordingly, she said, pick ingredients you’re excited to eat, either right in the garden (like fresh green peas) or ingredients you can incorporate into preserved dishes you might eat all season long (like fresh tomatoes for spaghetti sauce).

Lynch similarly mentioned considering planting ingredients you might like to eat, but that aren’t readily available at the grocery store.

“I love sorrel and I like to make sorrel soup in the spring. I don’t know that I could find that around here,” she said.

“Last year I planted a lot of shishito peppers because I love eating them, and you can’t always find them in the grocery store,” she added. “I can take two steps out the door, pick two handfuls, come into the kitchen, sauté them, char them on the stove and eat them.”

Regardless of your personal preferences, though, if you’re not sure which plants are going to be ideal for a beginner, our experts had a few suggestions.

“Basil is a great plant. It is used often in summer cooking and you can grow it in a container. Peppers don’t take up a huge amount of space and most beginning gardeners will have success with them,” Case said. “Easy herbs are basil, parsley, dill and coriander. Rosemary is more finicky but doable. Easy vegetables include zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and beans. Tougher vegetables include eggplant, which flea beetles love to defoliate. Sweet corn takes large amounts of space and needs to be planted in blocks because it is wind pollinated.”

Once you have your location, gardening style and plants picked, don’t forget regular maintenance. For example, don’t overlook mulch.

“I cannot emphasize this enough,” Bhattarai said. “Covering the ground around your plants with newspaper or cardboard and a layer of grass clippings or straw on top will both hold moisture in the soil so it is available for your garden plants and will suppress weeds. The benefit of this is so very clear in the middle of the summer when you are strolling through your garden making observations instead of endlessly watering and weeding your garden.”

All in all, though, don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

“Let your garden evolve and be in awe of all that you witness. You may find volunteer plants that you didn’t expect or find that your tomato plant grows twice as tall as you expected. Celebrate the unexpected!” said Bhattarai. “Gardening is about more than just the harvest: fresh air, movement, awe, learning opportunity. ... Remember to appreciate these ‘silver lining’ elements when things don’t go as you planned.”

Need more help?

You can always contact the Penn State Extension Master Gardeners. Email their Garden Hotline with a description of your issue, as well as photos, at CentreMG@psu.edu.

Holly Riddle is a freelance food, travel and lifestyle writer. She can be reached at holly.ridd@gmail.com.