Kitchen garden
The plants are grown for domestic use; though some seasonal surpluses are given away or sold, a commercial operation growing a variety of vegetables is more commonly termed a market garden (or a farm).
[2] Such large examples very often included greenhouses and furnace-heated hothouses for more tender delicacies, and also flowers for display in the house; an orangery was the ultimate type.
A symbol of American self-sufficiency and the colonial homestead, practical kitchen gardens were the center of home life in early America.
[6] The French doctor and printer, Charles Estienne, wrote in detail about the 16th century kitchen garden in Maison Rustique; his book was largely compiled from classical authors.
The hedge, Estienne says, can be planted with red and white gooseberry bushes, medlar and olive trees, woodbine, whitethorn, wild apples, brambles, and eglantiness.
Lattices were woven from willow branches and every year renewed, unless made with juniper poles that had been reinforced with charred oak.
In the UK, by the 19th century, as the breeding of vegetable cultivars greatly increased, a plethora of magazines, societies and competitions in local or county fairs, supported what had become (and remains) a popular form of specialist gardening.
[9] According to Estienne, of the planted crops, turnips required the most room, and planted next to these were coleworts, and a path leading to plots of sorrel, arugula, parsley, spinach, beets, and orach, then separated from the greens another path to the root vegetables, leeks, onions, garlic, carrots, and scallions, and so on for edible flowers and winter potherbs like thyme, sage, lavender, rosemary, hyssop, southern wormwood, savoury, lemon balm, basil, costmary, spikenard, chamomile, and pennyroyal.
Marigolds could grow perennially in untilled fields, and their juice and flowers were reputed to have many benefits from soothing eye irritation to relieving tooth pain.
Strawberry juice and wine were rumored to have similar benefits for the eyes, and, according to Estienne, the berries themselves had "no neede of greate toile or tilling".
Modern researchers continue to study whether reduced tillage improves weed control and yield for strawberry plants.
[10] Other plants found in the kitchen garden: asparagus, artichoke, sow thistle, endive, chicory, watercress, scallions, chives, parsnips, purslane, smallage, tarragon, borage, bugloss, radishes, rapeseed, skirret, poppy, mustard, cucumbers and gourds.
[16] With worsening economic conditions and increased interest in organic and sustainable living, many people are turning to vegetable gardening as a supplement to their family's diet.
The herbs are usually used to flavour food in cooking, though they may also be used in other ways, such as discouraging pests, providing pleasant scents, or serving medicinal purposes (such as a physic garden), among others.
