If you’re looking for fresh meal ideas, consider planting “menu gardens.” Grow a few of your favorite foods together in pots or raised beds, following a theme – salad-bar fixings, for example, or pizza toppings, or juicing ingredients.
Meal preparation will be simpler, cheaper and healthier.
“Even if you have land to grow a large garden, one advantage of growing a few edible plants in a small space or container close to the kitchen is that it makes it easier to pull together a fresh recipe,” says Patrice Powers-Barker, an extension educator with Ohio State University.
“The entire family meal doesn’t have to be created from scratch,” she says. “Make some of your easiest go-to recipes and then dress them up with fresh herbs on top, or add fresh seasonal vegetables to your traditional side salad.”
Be creative. Add, subtract or substitute the edibles you grow in much the same way you modify food recipes.