- If you want the freshest produce,
you might just have to grow it yourself.
And what better place than a kitchen garden?
You're watching "Preppy Kitchen,"
where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make
delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
Except for today,
because I'm taking you on a tour of my brand new garden.
Let's go.
I'm so excited for you guys to see this, come on.
(upbeat music)
Since before I moved to Connecticut,
I've always dreamed about having my own kitchen garden,
where I can grow my vegetables,
have all the varieties that I love, and just come outside
and pick fresh herbs, fresh produce,
and use them in all of my recipes.
Our kitchen garden is right off of the kitchen
and it consists of raised beds with a gravel path.
This makes it so easy to just come out,
kneel right down, and get to work.
We have 10 boxes in our vegetable garden.
And this is our first year growing some of the varieties,
but we have tomatoes, herbs, eggplants, leeks.
And that's just to scratch the surface.
These eggplants have been growing so fast.
Just last week, they were like half the size.
So they're just gonna be a bountiful harvest.
And I'm already thinking about ways to use them.
One thing to remember when you plant your garden
is you have to plant things that you love to eat.
Not just things that you think are easy to grow,
or that look pretty, but things that you really enjoy.
Our central beds are devoted to herbs.
And I love my fresh herbs.
And look at this basil.
This basil is beautiful, so happy.
And, what's better than walking through your garden
and just, mm.
Would you like some dill?
I do, I love dill on everything.
And now I don't have to portion it out.
I can just go into the garden, take some,
and put it on my eggs in the morning,
or have it with my salmon.
This, my friends, is fresh oregano.
And, as you know, I'm part Greek,
oregano is like the main herb you have in Greek cooking.
And it's part of my favorite recipe,
which is (speaking Greek), mm.
I am so excited that we're growing chives,
one of my favorite things to use.
And the supermarket is sold out of them
like almost all the time.
I don't know what people are doing,
but they're eating all of my chives.
But now I have my own, and they're delicious.
Let me know in the comments
what your top garden plants would be.
Very curious for next year when I'm planting.
(upbeat music)
So we're all from California.
We love our guacamole, all our Mexican food.
And part of that has to have cilantro.
I'm sorry, all the soap tasters out there
probably don't like it, but I love it.
And I need it in things like guacamole and pozole,
in my enchiladas, it has to be like sprinkled on everything,
and very liberally.
Brian doesn't like it, so it's all for me.
That's totally fine. (laughing)
So in this bed we have onions, leeks,
leeks are one of my favorite things to eat, and celery.
Right behind me we have beets, we have peas,
we have some cucumbers.
There is one zucchini plant that got
mixed in there by accident, but that's okay.
And we also have some Brussels sprouts.
And in this bed we have our rainbow carrots,
we have cabbages, and we have our eggplants,
as well as one little baby tomato plant,
which will be rocketing up,
and hopefully climbing that whole obelisk.
If you're wondering what all these spiny guys are,
they're not decorative, they're artichoke plants.
Pretty soon they're gonna be like this tall
with one massive artichoke in the middle,
a ring of like regular sized artichokes.
And then they'll have baby artichokes below
that are gonna be the kind that you would see
like out of a can basically,
that people preserve for later.
I'm sure you guys have a ton of questions, by the way,
about planting a vegetable garden,
like kind of how we did it, what the steps were.
So please let me know in the comments.
And I'm gonna try and answer as many as possible.
(upbeat music)
Do you hear that crunching sound?
(rocks crunching)
Instead of having like a dirt path,
or sand, we have pea stone.
And there's a couple of reasons for that.
One, I'm not tracking it in the house on my shoes,
like I would with all the dirt, or sand, or stuff like that.
And two, it's a clean look.
I love the way it sounds.
It's one of my ASMR favorite things is just to
walk through the garden, and see the plants,
and just appreciate being outside.
These little myrtle topiaries you see, which are so cute,
came from our friend Anthony Bellomo's store.
And he's actually a garden designer,
and helped us plot out some of the garden,
and decide how big the beds should be.
And just took some of the design weight off of
our shoulders, so we could focus on the gardening stuff.
Thank you, Anthony.
I could not have done this all myself, clearly,
I'm in the kitchen most of the time, or with the kids.
So our good friend, Nick, executed this whole garden,
and made it come to life in no time.
I'm so grateful to him.
And, he's here right now.
Nick, come on over.
Thank you so much, Nick.
This was like the most amazing thing to see,
just come together so quickly, and so perfectly.
- It was a fun project to do and everything looks wonderful.
- Can you tell us like, just what is the benefit,
for people at home, of having raised vegetable gardens?
- Sure, of course.
A couple of advantages.
You don't have to bring big machinery in every year
to till the garden, to prep it for the next season.
Another advantage is you're not totally bent over.
- Yes, my knees.
- It is easier to weed, and to harvest,
and to enjoy the garden.
- Some people have really, really, I've seen tall ones.
Like in my mom's neighborhood.
They're basically waist high,
which I thought was kind of extreme
because that's a lot of soil to pop into there.
But, no bending required at all.
- Correct.
That is rabbit-proof too.
- Oh, mm, interesting.
So for the lumber, we used cedar.
It's gonna age really well.
But you can use different kinds as well.
- Of course, any wood is fine.
Besides pressure treated.
- Oh, what's the problem with that?
Well, the pressure treated
is chemically enhanced for longevity.
And we don't want that leaching into the vegetables.
- Right, 'cause if you have an organic garden,
you have to have organic soil too.
So really, you should be starting with nice organic soil,
or get your soil tested at home.
Because there could be just pollutants
and things that you don't know about lurking underneath.
It's very important if you're growing your own veggies.
Can you take us through the espalier trees?
Because one of the dreams that I had
in this vegetable garden was having
some espalier trees on the border,
and they are not easy to find.
You tracked them down for us.
And we got like the perfect number,
even though we hadn't ordered them a year ahead of time,
which a lot of people do.
- Well, it's a tree with horizontal branches.
And the trunk would be shaved to eliminate most of 'em.
So what we'd like to look for are two lateral,
pretty level branches.
And these are beautiful examples of them.
- If you take a look here,
we have some little offshoot branches.
And as they grow, they're gonna be trained like this.
So those'll be attached to
a piece of bamboo normally, right?
- Correct.
- And then held in place,
so as it grows, it'll be nice and straight.
And your espalier trees can grow together
and just make a beautiful, productive area
of that space right next to your house.
The nice thing is that the next time I make an apple pie,
or an apple tart, I can literally just go
right outside of my kitchen door,
pick a few apples, and bring them in.
So this is gonna be just apple picking station 101.
Nick, thank you so much for explaining
some of the ins and outs of what to do
for your own kitchen garden,
and for making my kitchen garden dreams come true.
- It's been a pleasure.
And we're thrilled that you love it.
- Hopefully the next time I see you
I'll have a big bushel of produce,
and you might have some of those squash blossoms.
- Oh, I hope so.
- One last thing I forgot to show you.
We have pepper plants in two of our beds.
So we have jalapenos, which are perfect for guacamole.
We have some sweet chili peppers,
which are really great for nibbling on.
And there are some Thai chili peppers too,
which I love for some extra spicy dishes.
I hope you get a chance to do some gardening of your own.
Be outside, grow your own veggies.
And, if you like this video, check out my farm playlist.
See you around.