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Functional Gardening with Cottage Style  |
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 When you hear the term “Cottage Garden,” or “English Garden,” what comes to mind? Do you see thatched roofs, picket fences, and a fountain of blooms grouped closely together and cascading up and over everything in sight? Are there ducks wandering in and out of the garden gate and bunnies munching on carrots? You’re probably picturing an artist’s rendition of an old-time English cottage, nestled in the English countryside.
True cottage gardens are distinct for their eclectic nature of combining flowers and vegetables in the same space and English gardeners have a sixth sense for knowing what to plant and when. Cottage gardens are functional, not merely ornamental. Native flowering perennial plants are closely spaced and intermixed with annual and vegetable plants.
As vegetables come and go throughout the season, they are replaced with other vegetables, so there is no waste of space. Large vegetable plants can be surrounded by smaller vegetable plants and you can plant delayed plantings of vegetables with shorter growing times so you can vary ripening of your food crop throughout the season instead of all at once.
You don’t have to worry about placing vegetables in straight rows either. Simple following the spacing guidelines on the seed packets and intersperse your vegetables amongst your flowers. Vegetable plants quite often have showy foliage and their own flowers that will enhance to your gardenscape just as much as any other plant will.
Implementing the practices of a cottage garden style is a great way to enhance your yard and turn it into both a beautiful and useful space. Spend a few dollars on vegetable seeds and young plants and help reduce your grocery bill this summer with these cottage garden tips.
Second Plantings
Vegetables that you can start easily from seeds and that have shorter growing time can be planted at various times throughout the season and produce multiple crops. The benefit of this is instead of gathering a crop all at once you can space it out to be available throughout most of the growing season.
Vegetables like beans, peas, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber and summer and winter squashes have typically a 50 to 60 day growth time. You could easily start some seeds at the beginning of the season then wait a few weeks and plant a second planting, and so on, all depending on the length of your growing season.
There’s also enough time with shorter growing plants to grow one type of vegetable then plant a new one in its place after you’ve harvested the first one.
Vegetables like corn and pumpkins need up to 120 days. You could plant additional plantings of these, but space them within a couple of weeks and probably only a second planting will have enough time to make it through the season before the fall frosts end their cycle.
Container Plants
Use containers to add additional space for vegetable plants, especially for vegetables that need to be trellised or for small amounts of seeds that yield small crops like herbs.
Tomato plants and beans that require trellising can be overwhelming in a small space but they can be easily maintained in a container when you place a support in the container for the plant to grow on. Use a large pot, roughly 16 to 20 inches in diameter, place a spike or tomato cage for support and one plant per container. One well-maintained tomato plant will produce many tomatoes to feed a family of four during the summer months.
A few seeds of commonly used herbs like parsley, chives, and basil will go a long way. Some herbs will not survive in colder climates so you can use them all year long if they’re in portable containers that can be brought indoors during colder weather.
Planting for the Future
Don’t eliminate planning for the future by planting fruit trees and perennial vegetables, like asparagus, as part of your garden and landscape that will become established over time and yield food down the road.
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