You Don't Have to Garden All Day, Every Day to Enjoy Garden-Fresh Food Daily

I am many things, but a homesteader is not one of them. What I am is a kitchen gardener, a mom of four, and a business owner. I frequently use a four-letter word to describe myself: busy.

If you're busy, too, maybe you just can't see how you could possibly fit gardening into your schedule. If you only have, say, 15 to 30 minutes a week to tend a kitchen garden, would you even be able to produce anything to eat?

I'm here to tell you that the answer is yes. You absolutely can grow food to enjoy daily, in a small garden, with less than half an hour of tending each week.

Here are five types of garden-fresh foods you can enjoy every single day even if you're busy, even if you're not a homesteader or farmer, even if you have just a small garden space.

Tea from the Garden

Herbal teas—specifically mint tea, chamomile tea, anise hyssop tea, and lemon balm tea—are super easy to provide for yourself year round, no matter how much space or time you have (or don't have). 

Mint, anise hyssop, and lemon balm are prolific perennial herbs that grow for most of the year and then grow bigger and bigger once they come back every spring. German chamomile (the kind I prefer to grow for tea) is an easy annual plant.

All of these herbs are simple to grow, and none of them are picky about their soil or care. You can grow them in the ground or in a container at least 12 inches wide and deep. Give them minimal care, and in return, you can harvest fresh leaves throughout the growing season.

Use half of your leaf harvest fresh, and then hang and dry the rest so that you can brew cozy teas during the winter months, when your plants will die back.

Just one mint plant will easily provide enough mint tea for several cups a week for the entire year. Several mint plants would mean your entire household can have cups of mint tea every single day.

That's organic tea that you grew yourself with minimal waste and food miles.

This is something we can all do to replace our store-bought teas with leaves from our backyard or apartment balcony. (Learn more about growing your own organic herbs.)

Green Juice

You can absolutely make yourself some garden-fresh green juice every day of the year, no matter where you live, if you have a garden. I'm not talking about anything fancy with cucumber or other fruits—just simple juice made from greens like spinach, kale, Swiss chard, and parsley. You can provide these greens for yourself year round from a simple salad box.

Here's how.

During the growing season, you'll harvest from your leafy greens every single week. When your plants are mature and putting on lots and lots of large leaves, you'll do double harvests. You can use half the harvest fresh for juices, smoothies, a hybrid I call "smuice," and salads, and you'll dehydrate (or freeze) the rest. That way, you can store your harvests and use them to make juice the rest of the year.

In colder climates, you'll get fresh greens from spring to fall, and then you'll use your dried greens in the winter season. In warmer climates, you'll likely need to flip that.

You don't have to have a juicer to make your own garden-fresh juice. You just need a high-speed blender and a nut milk bag or cheese cloth (to capture the pulp). I use my Vitamix to blend up my leaves with some water. Then, I pour the mixture through a nut milk bag, squeeze it, and let all the liquid run through. I discard the pulp in my compost pile so that it can turn into soil for next year's greens.

Green juice is super easy to provide for yourself. Swiss chard, kale, and parsley are all biennials, which means they want to last in your garden for two whole years. They'll hang in there through the summer and produce an abundance of leaves for your daily green juice, plus enough to save and store for the winter months.

Garden-Fresh Salad

I know what you're thinking: But, Nicole, isn't there anything I can eat? And the answer is yes, there is. It's homegrown salad. Now, I'm not talking about boring box salad. I'm talking about fresh, delicious salad that you grow yourself in your garden.

In addition to the leaves you're growing for your green juice, you can also grow spring mix, arugula, mizuna, and purple mustard. You can toss in more herbs like chives, cilantro, and dill. You can even throw in edible flowers like pansies, violas, marigolds, and chives blossoms. There are so many different flavors, textures, and colors to explore! That's what I mean by homegrown salad.

If you live in a colder climate, you'll enjoy this homegrown salad from early spring through late fall. You'll be able to have greens growing in your garden for a 6-month period. During the 6 months you're off, you'll transition to growing sprouts and microgreens indoors. You can grow these tiny leaves in a windowsill or on your kitchen counter, and you'll still be able to fill your salad bowl (the harvests will just be smaller).

If you're in a mild climate like me here in Nashville, your salad season will run from about February through December, but you'll need to take a break from lettuce and spinach over the summer. You can still do kale and Swiss chard. You'll really only need to supplement with indoor gardening in December, January, and February.

Now, if you're in a hot climate, you'll flip the schedule for the cold climate. Your season will run from October to March. You'll be growing tons of salad greens while the people up north are snowed in. When your weather warms in the spring, you can grow arugula and mustard greens. You can switch to sprouts and microgreens in the summer, or if you don't mind introducing some new flavors, you can grow alternative greens like Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, and longevity spinach. They're all called spinach, but none of them actually are spinach—go figure. Your kale and Swiss chard may push through your hot summer months if they have some afternoon shade and are kept watered.

So whether you live in a hot or cold climate, you can have a year-round supply of salad you grow yourself. It'll be a combination of your quintessential salad greens, plus some things you've likely never tried before. That's how you adapt to the changing seasons.

Egg Dishes with Veggies from the Garden

Eggs are a great way to have a little bit of protein for breakfast or lunch, and egg dishes with fresh food from the garden are a favorite of mine. In the spring and fall, I harvest lots of greens—green onions, chives, herbs, etc.—to put on omelets, frittatas, and scrambled eggs.

In the summer, my garden is in the warm growing season, so this is when I harvest tomatoes, peppers, and onions to add to my egg dish to really kick it up a notch.

During the coldest part of the year, when my garden is shut down, I turn to frozen veggies from my garden: kale, spinach, chives, parsley. There are lots of things you can freeze so that you have something green to add to your meals every single day, even when it's freezing outside.

If eggs aren't your thing, pick another protein you love and mix in some greens from the garden for your breakfast or lunch. It'll fill you up and make you feel so good for the rest of the day. Fresh or frozen, you'll get so many amazing nutrients from your garden with each and every bite. 

Herbal Dips, Sauces, & Herb Spice Blends

The last thing that you can eat every single day from your garden would be an herbal dip. You can also make your own herb spice blends to add to just about anything you cook.

Perennial herbs like rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage start growing in the spring. Basil takes off in the summer. Every time you harvest from these herbs, think of your two selves: your current self and the meal you're about to enjoy, and then your future self and all the different ways you can use preserved herbs.

All of these herbs can be dried and saved for later use when the weather isn't great and these herbs are no longer producing.

What can you do with all these herbs? The real question is what can't you do? You can make sauces, dips, and pestos. One of my favorite recipes is chimichurri—it's pretty much life-changing if you make it with garden-fresh parsley. An easy-peasy dip you could make is just to chop lots of herbs and add them to some olive oil with a little sea salt in a dipping dish. Give everyone bread, and voila! Something quick your whole family will love.

There's an herb or herb blend that will improve any and every dish you make in your kitchen. And if you've only ever tasted jarred sauces and canned sauces, then you haven't lived yet. You can make sauces and use them fresh and then freeze the rest. I love to freeze leftover pesto in little ice cube trays so they're the perfect size for a future pasta bowl. You just pour your sauce in an ice cube tray, freeze it, and then pop the cubes into a sealed bag for easy storage in the freezer.

If you're into canning (which I am not), you can preserve your sauces for long-term storage in your pantry.

You can, of course, blend all your dried herbs together and use them to season your proteins to kick up their flavor a notch.

There are so many things you can do with your herbs, either fresh or dried. I've even jazzed up desserts with herbs, like rosemary and lavender shortbreads.

Enjoy More Garden-Fresh Food Year Round

Those are five types of things you can really, truly eat every single day from your garden, even if you're not a homesteader, even if you don't have a huge garden, even if you've never gardened before. Herbs and leafy greens can grow in a very small space, with little tending required.

Listen, the garden doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be a crazy time commitment on your part. For just a little space and a little effort, you can enjoy small things from the garden every single day. And all those small things add up to make a huge difference in your everyday life.

I mean, just imagine drinking every morning a cup of tea filled with leaves you grew yourself. That's 365 cups of tea in one year. It adds up. Imagine eating a salad every day filled with leaves you grew yourself. That's a lot of boxes of plastic salad you're not buying. It adds up.

So don't tell yourself that a small garden isn't worth your time or money or energy. The garden always gives back so much more than you can put into it.