A kitchen garden is a small garden, usually close to the house, where you grow vegetables, herbs, and sometimes fruits for your own meals. The name tells you exactly what it's for: producing fresh food for your kitchen.

Unlike large farms that grow crops to sell, a kitchen garden is personal and practical. You might plant tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, basil, and peppers, things your family actually wants to eat. Many people find satisfaction in walking outside to pick fresh herbs for dinner or pulling up carrots they planted months earlier.

Kitchen gardens have existed for thousands of years. Before modern grocery stores, most families maintained kitchen gardens to supplement their food supply. Even wealthy estates with ornamental flower gardens kept separate kitchen gardens, often tucked behind walls or hedges where gardeners could grow useful crops.

Today, people create kitchen gardens for many reasons: to save money, to know exactly how their food is grown, or simply because they enjoy gardening. Some are just a few pots of herbs on a sunny windowsill, while others occupy a corner of the backyard. The size doesn't matter. What makes it a kitchen garden is that you're growing food for yourself, not for show or for sale.