Planting a Kitchen Garden

Kitchen gardens have been around for much of history. They were grown on large estates in Europe and on plantations in the blossoming United States.
Originally, kitchen gardens were often grown as a way to designate herbs and vegetables that could be used in the home, as opposed to crops that were grown for sale or ornamental gardens grown for their looks. Kitchen gardens are practical and useful.In past posts, I’ve mentioned a few times that my father-in-law cultivated several varieties of herbs for me so that I would have a kitchen garden. The vision was to create a small, raised bed garden, where I would grow (primarily) herbs and that it would be close to our backdoor so that I could quickly and easily snip a few leaves of any variety of herb to use on a daily basis in cooking. I think we carried out the vision pretty well.Here’s what we are growing in our kitchen garden:Boxwood BasilSpearmintThai Basil (This guy is starting to look a little sad. I don’t think he is a fan of the heat.)Sweet MarjoramGreek BasilWild MarjoramLemon ThymeSageGrapefruit MintGreek OreganoLemon BalmOreganoEnglish MintSweet BasilAs for cooking with all of these different types of herbs, I’ve been known to rock a mean pesto (and I’m sharing the recipe below), but other than that, I haven’t done a ton of cooking with fresh herbs. I have plans for mint tea and use dried oregano often, so I can start replacing that with the fresh stuff. What about you? Any ideas about what to do with these herbs? What would you do with them? If you don’t have a kitchen garden, I highly recommend planting one. I’ve found it to be beautiful and useful.