How to Grow a Cocktail & Garnish Garden | Small Space Gardening

A beautiful container garden filled with herbs (parsley, mint, basil, chives, lemon balm) and edible flowers, like pansies, is a perfect addition to your kitchen garden!

📌 STEP-BY-STEP: https://aptv.org/garden-party/garnish-garden/

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Looking for recipes to garnish?
🍋 Lemon Possets: https://youtu.be/eKeA811YPrA
🌽 Corn Salad: https://youtu.be/BJO_Nr5MnMY
🍹 Watermelon 2 Ways: https://youtu.be/GLFVsY6eosM
🦃 Sweet Tea Turkey with Molasses Glaze: https://youtu.be/Pzxh72cPI34

Watch more Garden Party videos here · https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbvFsXmUt97hd9ye88Z-bQM_LnfXgGVBo

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🎥 CHAPTERS
00:00 Grow Your Own Garnish Garden
1:28 Best plants for cocktail & garnish garden?
3:10 What is the Point of Garnish on Food?
3:50 Best Herbs for Garnish Garden?
6:49 Final Touches

#gardening #cottagecore #diy #garden #gardentips #cooking #homegrown #GardenToTable #GardenParty

Are you looking for a way to spice up and add a little more flavor
to your dishes or cocktails? Well, I’m going to show you how. With the addition of a garnish garden
right outside your door. I’m Trace Barnett,
and welcome to Garden Party. Today we are planting a garnish garden. And not just garnishes in dishes, whatever you’re making in the kitchen. But it can be in cocktails, jams
and jellies. Anything that you’re cooking. Just a little bit of nature’s spice
to make it really lively. So this part of my garden
has never been utilized. It’s basically up here
beside my vegetable garden and I’m like, I have this huge table. Why not create a garnish garden? I’ve kind of went through my already
planted garden, and I’ve kind of pulled some herbs and things that we can plant
both by seed and plug plants. It’s really got a ton of flavor. So the first thing when you’re really
designing your garnish garden as you want it to be elevated,
if you don’t have something that’s elevated,
then maybe use a baker’s rack. That way you don’t have to bend over. It’s all about ease of snipping
and clipping and just running out and grabbing them on the go. In keeping with our garden party,
old lady basket theme. Because, you know, just like any other
90 year old woman, I collect them. I love to take these old just crap pots. These pots are just faded plastic pots. Nothing special about them. And I’ve already filled them with dirt. I’m going to go ahead and start
planting our herbs in there And then we’re
just going to enwrap them with hay. So you won’t even tell
that those crap pots are in there. So for great plant options that have a ton of flavor,
but also a lot of visual appeal. Parsley is going to be one of your best
friends. Parsley is one of those great plants
that packs a ton of nutrients. As well as flavor. And another one of my favorites is
marigolds. Marigolds are a great garnish plant,
and they also just smell good too. Now, one thing I like to do
when I’m planting a garden garnish garden, or any kind of container
garden or vegetable garden is I’m giving everything room to grow into the pot. I also like to fill in with seasonal
things like lettuces. And what that allows me to do,
as these plants kind of die back as it gets warmer, I’m then able to add more plants
or the other parsleys, marigolds. Whatever’s
growing in there can fully mature. This is one of my absolute
favorite trailing thymes This is I forget the exact variety,
but there are so many. thyme varieties out there, but I really love this spilling one
because it can go in a ton of cocktails I do a blackberry spritzer
that I love thyme in, it’s just delicious. I’ve been telling you, this is the ugliest pot of them all
so I spray painted it lime green. I really like the bright colors,
and then I keep it in this basket because then it’s also portable
if I’m having a party. Now, this is one of my favorite
garnish plants. And this is basil. Now there are so many different
basils out there. So I’m planting a variety of sweet basil
today. lemon basil, And I’ve got some purple basil started in
the greenhouse that I will add in later. Now I’m really spacing my plants
in my garnish garden out and leaving tons of room
because most herbs, most plants that have great foliage,
that’s good for flavoring things, they also require
a lot of space. Rojo seconds that. You know, garnishes are a really great way
to finish a dish off. It really takes it to that next level. That’s how all this beautiful food
photography works is. There’s a lot of garnish on there, but
it also adds such a good depth of flavor. My rule of thumb is, is whenever
I’m cooking, I usually try to garnish with whatever flavors
that I’ve put in the dish, and luckily, a lot of these herbs and flowers are easy to grow for us here in Alabama,
and a lot of them stay green year round. So it’s something that you can plant
and just kind of interchange. And it’s just right there for you outside
your kitchen. Then you just take your garnishes, throw them on your dishes
and voila, a masterpiece on a plate. So one of my other favorites is sage. Sage is one of those great things
to grow in a container elevated, because here in the South, it doesn’t
necessarily love humidity or heat. So by elevating it and growing it
in a container, it just does so much better. And I mean, sage is one of those things
that can go from like gravies and stuffings
to also a cocktail as well. I guess I’m really thirsty today. So this is another
one of my favorite plants. And this is just a simple viola Pansies and violas are one of,
you know, the tried and true great edible flower plants. And they do fade
as the weather warms up here in Alabama. But if you want to take these off
right before they just all die down, they’re absolutely beautiful.
When you sugar them. And then you can put them on desserts like cupcakes, all kinds of cakes, pound
cakes, everything. So in our last pot over here,
I’m going to add in just a bit of fennel. Fennel is one of those great
foliage plants because it also serves as a wonderful plant for pollinators
and just a little bit of chive. So I love garlic chive. And I also love these wonderful purple
chive too. This is one of my favorite blossoms
in the garden, and I also love the spicy, spicy, spiky texture of the plant. So I’m going to add just a little bit
of lettuce as filler now. Lettuces, kales, kohlrabi
are all wonderful garnish garden plants. Now just to finish off our garden here,
I’m going to throw in just a few little seeds. Now I talked to you just briefly
about how the lettuces will die back. And I’ve left a spot here
open here in the corner. And so this is my absolute favorite
foliage, tasty foliage and flower plant. And this is nasturtium.
You don’t need to soak nasturtium even though they have a hard
exterior coating. You just need to take those and plant them into your pots
about fourth of an inch depth. They grow super quick,
so they’re going to pop up and be smiling at you in a matter of days. One of my other favorite
garnish plants are microgreens. And so microgreens are one of these things
that you want to grow just about a week before
you want to utilize them, because you don’t want them
to get too large. These are chicken
feeders, galvanized chicken feeders. They have drainage holes at the bottom, and I’m just spreading out a few of
these seeds here for our microgreens. These are a combination of kohlrabi. There’s broccoli all kinds of wonderful
flavorful plants here. You don’t want to bury these too deep. Give them a little tamp just like that. And these
will be up in just a couple days. So just plan them
when you’re ready to feast on them. A couple of other plants
that you might want to consider putting on your garnish garden
would definitely be Swiss chard. It’s one of my favorites. I’ll just love the colors of the stems. They come in all the colors of the rainbow
and another one is kefir lime. I love kefir lime, especially if I’m cooking curries,
any kind of Asian or Indian dishes. And plus
the trees are just gorgeous themselves. So now let’s put the final touches
on our garnish garden. We’re just going to take
a little bit of hay or straw and put it all around our plants. Cover up those ugly pots, hold a little bit of moisture
and then we’ll label everything. And there you have it. Keep your garnish garden
watered sufficiently. Give it a little bit of time. Release fertilizer every now and then. And most importantly,
be sure, pick it regularly and use it. Happy flower garnishing. I’m Trace Barnett and welcome to. I kind of like them back there though Someone just fell, out of a,
off something. I don’t remember any of that, though
just do it exactly like that again. So let’s garnish this up. Huh! Where did our hay basket go. Chickens are active today. How wild does that look? Pretty wild. How’s those look? I just raked all that into my boot. Did y’all see it? I forgot the question.