Have you noticed lately how the price of fresh vegetables and fruit is going through the roof? I sure have and I've done something about it, I've started an edible garden! A lot more folks are doing this and it's a sensible move. There are some very attractive vegetable plants available that provide a lovely landscape and also supply good crops.
It certainly helped to halve my spending on fresh vegetables and I now have a beautiful edible garden instead of the traditional veggie patch. With a little planning, you too can grow a decorative extended vegetable garden that will repay you over and over again. Don't let a lack of space stop you, they can be successfully grown in containers too.
Most people who create edible landscapes use perennial vegetables, because they come back year after year, without the need to replant them each year. The double bonus is that you'll have a spectacular garden that also feeds your family!
By selecting the varieties that regenerate every year, with a little bit of care you'll have home grown vegetables for a very long time. All it takes is keeping an eye on the weeds and pests, then with an occasional prune, a drop of water and some feed you have an attractive vegetable garden.
These perennials will die down during the colder months, but come springtime they'll shoot again and produce another great crop. So by being selective with your planting you'll ensure that you get fresh produce every year.
You can use many different types of edible plants to replace various aspects of traditional landscaping. You can use fruit trees in place of standard trees or if space is limited there are some wonderful dwarf fruit trees that produce abundant crops. Many perennial herbs can be used to replace ground covers and shrubs. And ornamental vegetables can be used in place of flowers, borders, or other accents.
If you want your garden to retain some individuality you can plant all sorts of combinations of plants, for example some of the different varieties of herbs will look spectacular among your flowers. Don't be afraid to experiment with mixing all sorts of plants to achieve the look you desire.
Curly parsley looks beautiful with many different types of plants. You can plant it with pansies, lobelia, strawberries, dusty miller, or dianthus. Sage and oregano are very beautiful plants, and make great low shrubbery. They look fantastic as edging in front of larger bushes.
Leaf lettuces look lovely planted in beds as accent areas. You can plant a bed of different colors and varieties of leaf lettuce, and then edge it with a border grass. There are several types of plants that have edible flowers.
Many of these plants also have other edible parts. They can look very striking as part of a landscape while they're in bloom. Sugar snap peas have gorgeous white, pink or purple flowers, and they produce delicious peas.
Nasturtiums bloom in yellow, orange and red and are edible. Salvia flowers in purple and blue, as does sage. Dill has beautiful yellow colored flowers, while chives produce striking, globe-shaped purple blooms. Red and white flowers adorn the fava bean plant.
Going back to the perennial vegetables and herbs mentioned earlier, you have a good variety to choose from including ginger, dandelions, asparagus, rhubarb, fennel, broccoli, garlic chives, sorrel, sweet potatoes, artichokes and chives. These and others make wonderful edible gardens and are very easy to maintain.
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