Angie Bennett Mosier Brian Woodcock Angie Bennett Mosier

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Lettuces and other spring greens can be planted early and harvested young, but they don't stand a chance with our brutal summers. But nevermind; delicious squash and tomatoes get ripe just as lettuce peaks. Strawberries are cold hardy and start producing berries in April.

Whether it's a window box or a full-fledged vegetable plot ripe for harvest, kitchen gardens conjure different images. One person thinks of old etchings from French garden books: Espaliered fruit trees lining garden walls; aerial views of geometric beds filled with lettuces, eggplant and tomatoes lined with herbs and strawberries. Perhaps another recalls summers spent with grandparents where Southern soil is tilled in rows, each vegetable to its own: tomatoes, okra, squash, beans. To many, though, a kitchen garden is as simple as a few pots on an apartment balcony or a sunny windowsill filled with parsley, basil, thyme and chives. No matter the size and shape, a kitchen garden provides us with not only food but also a reminder of many important factors that revolve around how we eat and live.

"Kitchen gardens are the only way to get food that is literally minutes off the vine. When you go into the back yard to pull something out of the garden, it can be in your pot in a moment—so fresh," says chef Virginia Willis, author of the recently released cookbook Bon Appetit Y'all  (Ten Speed Press 2008). Willis and her partner, Becky Minchew, always plant tomatoes but love to throw something unusual into their Kirkwood garden. "Last year we had one big cardoon—the prehistoric looking thistle that artichokes come from—growing in the middle of the squash and tomatoes," Willis says. "In Paris you see vegetables and flowers growing in the same gardens and pots so we might have a zucchini hill right next to a rose bush. It's all a garden, whether you eat it or not; plus it's fun."

The act of placing a seed or seedling into a pot, taking care of it and then incorporating it into a recipe is a demonstration of the cycle that keeps us all going. Because we usually depend on others for all the hard work (taking care of plants and animals, nourishing them, harvesting, packaging and selling our food) we are not constantly reminded of the efforts required to put healthy food on a plate. Planting is a simple acknowledgement of the beauty of growth and nourishment. Having your own tomatoes in the garden or basil growing in the window is a satisfying feeling. More than that, it's the easiest way to add "soul" to a recipe. As Willis reminds us, "Growing food, serving and eating it is the most satisfying feeling; it is primal. It is the essence of being human."