While herb gardens, vegetable gardens and edible container gardens (edimentals) have been popular for a while now, the interest in growing our own food has expanded further into the home landscape, integrating and/or replacing traditional plantings with edible options – a practice referred to as food-scaping.
Food-scaping can take a bit more preplanning and upkeeping effort than traditional landscaping, but the results can not only be just as beautiful, but healthy and cost-effective as well.
How to Start Your Vegetable Garden
The basics of landscaping design apply to food-scaping as well:
- Determine the specifics of your planting site (sun orientation, amount of sun, soil pH, etc.) so you can select the best plants for the location.
- Opt for native plants and varieties cultivated to our gardening zone here in New Jersey to optimize garden success.
- Raised beds are ideal since they provide excellent drainage and aeration for tender young roots. You can also easily adjust soil nutrient and pH levels for specific plants. While many raised beds are created in containers, you can also create one by simply mounding soil. Make sure the soil height is at least 8” but aim for 12”-18” ideally.
- Keep garden bed widths around 30” wide so they’re easily accessible from either side.
Planning Your Vegetable Garden
- Of course, a major consideration in plant selection is choosing what you like to eat! Herbs, fruits, vegetables, edible flowers – there is a rich variety of options from which to choose.
- When planning your garden, think about harvesting times and frequency, annuals vs. perennials, growth habits (wide-spreading, vertical, fast or slow growing), color and existing non-edibles perennials. These factors can all influence the placement of your plants.
- Plan for the aesthetics of harvesting. For instance, you can hide the picked over appearance of frequently harvested plants like lettuces, by planting them behind vegetables such as broccoli or cauliflower or remove them whole to harvest and replace with new lettuces or annuals to fill in gaps.
- Refer to companion planting guides to keep your plants healthy and productive as well as attractive. For example, tomatoes do well when planted next to basil, garlic, carrots, celery or onions.
- As with any garden design, think about color, texture and growth habit when selecting plants. Particularly with annual edibles, you may want to cluster them more closely together to keep the garden looking lush, even if it means sacrificing a bit of your harvest.
- Consider clustering different varieties of the same plant for textural interest. Kale is a great option for this, with its many leaf varieties and color variations.
- Intersperse pollinator-friendly plants (e.g., purple salvia) among edibles to optimize fruit and vegetable production.
- Succession planting can be an important part of food-scaping. Cool weather crops like peas and lettuces will bolt once the weather gets warmer. Plan to replace them with warm weather vegetable, herb or flower options.
- Fruit trees are a great perennial addition to the edible landscape. Many provide beautiful spring flowers and stunning fall color along with delicious fruits.
- Berries (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, etc.) can make wonderful edible hedges, adding structure and color to your landscape.
- Don’t forget about root vegetables, since many have attractive leaves or flowers above the ground, like leeks, carrots, artichokes, parsnips and garlic.
Plants to Consider for Your Vegetable Garden
When it comes selecting plants for your edible landscape, natives are always a great place to start.
Blueberry – New Jersey is known as the Blueberry Capital of the World, and Highbush Blueberries are native to the state, so this is a plant well worth considering for the landscape.
Pawpaw Tree – While You may not be familiar with Papaws, they are native to New Jersey. The reason you don’t often see them in the market is because their fruit is very delicate. A member of the custard apple family, the Pawpaw is about the size of a mango whose flavor is described as tropical, sweet and similar to banana flavored custard. Packed with nutrients, the pawpaw is the only larval food plant for the zebra swallowtail.
Beach Plum – These shrub-like plants are found wild along the Jersey Shore and produce small, reddish/purple fruits used for making jams and jellies. They produce white flowers in the spring.
Black Chokeberry (Aronia) – This deciduous shrub has fragrant white or pink flowers in the spring and produces tart, matte-black berries in early fall. The berries are very high in healthy antioxidants and are often used to make jams or syrups.
Rutgers University’s Cooperative Extension provides an extensive list of recommended vegetables/varieties to grow at home – NJ Home Vegetable Garden
