From Garden to Table: Designing Your Edible Landscape for Beauty and Bounty

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Imagine stepping into your garden, where the very essence of beauty merges seamlessly with practicality. Each plant, flower, and shrub not only adds to a stunning visual display but also promises a bountiful harvest of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. This is the heart of creating an edible landscape—a harmonious blend of form and function that transforms your outdoor space into a living, breathing canvas of sustenance and aesthetic appeal.

In this guide, courtesy of Edible Gardens Inc., we'll share essential tips and innovative ideas to help you cultivate an edible landscape that is not only a feast for the eyes but also for the table. Whether you're a seasoned gardener or a green-thumbed newbie, get ready to turn your garden dreams into a delicious, blooming reality.

Use Raised Beds

Raised beds offer a multitude of benefits for your garden, from improved soil conditions to...

Dandelions, pansies, and chives oh my! 

Let’s talk about the edible flowers of the midwest! 

Below is a list of the fall edible flowers you can grow in Kentucky and the midwest as well as some ways to use edible flowers. Some add strong flavor, others are used in herbal remedies, and all of them look beautiful taking any dish from good to gorgeous! I always encourage gardeners to plant fruits, vegetables, and flowers to increase their food security through their garden. The flowers help attract more beneficial bugs and pollinators and if you use the flowers listed in the blog you can eat them all too so no space in the garden goes to waste.

Keep in mind when growing these treat them just like fruits and veggies, avoid using pesticides and herbicide on the plants especially the flower and try to only use natural fertilizers. Give me a call if you want to fertilize your beds because I’ve got a great all natural soil booster I can come and...

 1. Look at your yard, this is vital. Look at it in the morning, midday, and afternoon. If you want, just sit in your yard for a day and if anyone asks, say you're working on your garden because it's the truth. You need to know where the sun hits in your yard. While you watching take note of where the sun hits at each point in the day. Placing your garden in the right place will set you up for success right away.

2. Once you've observed your yard, use the information you collected to find a spot that gets around 6 hours of direct sunlight. If you have to choose between shaded in the morning or shaded in the late afternoon choose the afternoon shade as this can be helpful in the peak of summer.

3. Make a plan. Before you put a shovel in the ground you need to make a plan for your garden. This will help you stay focused and motivated because you will have a clear goal. Your plan should include a garden layout; how every you want to organize your garden. Here at Edible Gardens, we...

Myths in the gardening world are problematic. They deter hopeful home gardeners and confuse new home gardeners by making it sound complicated! That's why today I want to discuss 4 common home gardening myths and the truth behind them! 

Dismiss the myths that are holding your garden back!

Myth #1: The best spot for your garden is a spot that gets sun all day.

A full day of sun for us can be as much as 10 -14 hours but your veggies and fruit don't actually need that much. In the farming world full sun means 6 hours of direct sun, and some plants like lettuce and do well in as little as 3 hours of sun. The best spot in your yard for a garden only needs 6 hours of direct sun and for many plants shade in the afternoon is beneficial. A bit of shade in your garden can help reduce issues like sun scald in peppers and tomatoes. It can also help reduce water loss, mid-day wilt, and high temperatures in the garden. If you do not have a good spot that gets both direct sun for 6 hours...

The cool season is not far off and that means fall gardens are in! We all love free plants and this summer you may have had to purchase some cool season plants to supplement your garden so today I want to talk about how you can take the scraps of 7 common cool season plants and regrow them! I will walk you through how to regrow green onions, romaine lettuce, celery, carrot tops, bulb fennel, leeks, and herbs. 

What you'll need: 

- A container (glass preferable), this could be a cup or a dish 

- Fresh water 

- A sunny window is preferred but a bright indirect light will also work 

- Food scraps! 

You may have already dabbled in the art of regrowing food scraps; green onions are an easy and common way to start. 

1. Green Onion 

I am starting with green onions these are by far the easiest plants to regrow from grocery store scraps or from your own garden scraps. When you buy them at the store you get the whole plant but often only use the...

Planting, caring, pruning, and watering, growing your own vegetables takes time and effort but it is so worth it to harvest fresh and local produce. That is unless your beautiful vegetables fall prey to destruction like Blossom End Rot. The rot eats the fruit from the bottom up greatly reducing their quality and their palatability. What may be even more concerning than watching your beautiful tomato or pepper rot is knowing that blossom end rot affects the whole plant. It is not a disease or caused by a pest, Blossom End Rot is caused by a lack of calcium in the soil. If one fruit shows signs it is not uncommon for multiple more fruits on the same plant or in the same bed to also develop rot.

The Cause

Blossom End Rot is found in tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, melons, and peppers and is caused by a calcium deficiency in the soil. Plants need calcium just like people, they need it for cell structure and to fight pathogens with out calcium the cells can break down and rot. There are two...

11 Benefits of Raised Beds

1. Complete control over your soil 

When you use raised beds, you are starting from a clean slate. There is no need to fight through clay to add amendments or try to add some humus to your sandy soil, instead you get to use the best and richest soil right from the start. You can fill your beds with well balanced, pH neutral, fertilized soil and have the perfect growing conditions day one.

2. Easy access to your plants

If you are like me and your back has given up on you then a raised bed is a life saver. After my first pregnancy I knew I couldn't keep up with the inground gardening anymore I needed to be kinder to my body, so I made some raised beds. The raised beds we make here at Edible Gardens Inc. are unbreakable and have a beautiful top trim that is wide enough for you to rest your hinny on! This is my favorite feature of the raised bed when it comes to maintaining your garden, I go out sit on the trim and tend to my beautiful veggie plants with...

Green Onion seeds are like the friendship bread of gardening, because they are easy to grow harvest, and share! They are the perfect plant to grow from seed because they have a reliable germination and go from seed to harvest in just 50 days. Once they have flowered you can harvest the seeds and a few flowers can produce enough seeds to plant, for next year save, and share with fellow gardeners, or someone just getting into gardening. It’s the perfect gate way crop. 

A few green onion facts you should know before jumping in! They are cool weather crops, that means they will grow in whatever time of year is your cool season, for us here in Kentucky that is the spring and fall. For some that might be the winter months if you live in a very warm climate. Green onions are bi-annual crops meaning they will over winter for one year and then go to flower the next so if you are growing with the intent to harvest the seeds, plan a year ahead.  

When harvesting seeds from...

1. Water, Water, Water!

The most important part of garden maintenance in the summer is watering, the right amount and the right timing. When you water make sure you are watering deeply so that you do not under or over water your plants. If you wait till the soil is mostly dry for the first inch or two then water it for long enough that the water reaches deep into the soil, you will increase your plants drought resistance. Plants roots seek out water and nutrients so if the water is found near the surface of the soil, because the gardener isn't watering for long enough, than the roots will stay shallow and close to the surface. If instead there is plenty of water deep in the soil because the gardener routinely waters for a long period of time the roots will grow deep to access the water. As the gardener you can start by watering two times a week in the late spring but as the temperatures rise you may need to increase to four times a week to keep the soil damp. If you continue to...