The Kitchen Garden Design

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The Kitchen Garden Design

by on May 4, 2022 with No Comments

Permaculture Quote: "Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive."
David Holmgren

Overview

In this post, I’m continuing the series of short articles where I provide an insight into how I am using permaculture design in my gardens. This design is part one of a two-part design for my front garden. This first part is an overview of the front garden design I built-in 2018. The redesign will be covered in part two. Each post in this series will be connected to a different permaculture design that I have worked on as part of my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. At the end of the article, I will provide links to each of the full design write-ups to provide a greater understanding of the design process that is involved in a permaculture design.

No-dig gardening

With the back garden design halfway through I began the process of creating a design for the front garden. This design was going to be a more traditional kitchen garden with beds growing a range of annual vegetables. Once the initial building of the beds was complete, I would be practicing a no-dig approach.

In recent years popularised by the current no-dig garden expert Charles Dowding, no-dig gardening is where we help preserve the soil structure by feeding the soil life with organic matter on the soil surface. At times the use of a spade may be needed to dig something out but generally, the soil will lay undisturbed.

Framework

For a more detailed understanding of how a permaculture design is laid out I’ve provided a link at the end of this article to the full design process I used for this design. In short, a permaculture design uses a framework that helps guide the designer through all the areas of the design process in an ordered manner helping to avoid oversights that could have a detrimental effect on the end design. The framework I’m using for this design is Patrick Whitefield’s design process, the same framework I used for the back garden. This framework consists of six key sections, Base Map, Evaluation, Questionnaire, Research, Design Proposals, and Re-Evaluation.

Budget

Having just moved into the house the previous summer money was in short supply. The budget for this design was going to be a couple of hundred pounds mainly to be spent on compost and seeds. Reusing what I had was a large part of this design, I had some old timber boards that still had a few years of life left in them, these would be used to create a raised bed for growing salads in.

And so, it begins

One of my goals for this design was to get rid of the lawn and grow food. The design was going to consist of four beds. Of highest value would be the salad picking raised bed. This bed would go on to provide me with quality salads for three years until I redesigned the garden. Over time the other beds would also provide a fair amount of food for the house.

In the first year, it was so nice to be able to see the garden change from the lawn into food production. I also had areas for composting and for my wormery.

 

Throughout the summer months, with all the plants in full growth, the garden provided a calming space to spend my time. However, during the winter months, it tended to look a little messy with lots of tarps in the garden hiding things that may one day be of use. This aspect of the design was the result of no budget to work with, but I was still able to get three years’ worth of home-grown food out of the garden before a time arrived when I had some extra money to invest in the garden.

Evaluation

Having little to no money at the time of starting this design limited me to what could be done in the garden. Ultimately this was the most valuable part of the design that enabled me to spend three growing seasons working in the garden observing. Observation is a key tool in permaculture that helps to improve the system you are designing. Whether it’s a small garden or a whole farm system, the ability to observe the system over multiple yearly seasons before making major changes allows for much better decision-making in the design process.

In the second part of this design, my observations will be reflected in how I was able to improve this garden.