While browsing through the gardening books, Designing the New Kitchen Garden, caught my eye, especially the word “potager”. When I looked it up in Credo Reference, I learned it means a small kitchen garden and comes from the French word potagère. I should have recognized the word because one of my favorite soups is French Potage*, a blended vegetable soup of leeks, carrots and potatoes always served before meals in France.
Bartley's book is more than planting rows of vegetables in a patch of dirt. It recalls the history and development of kitchen gardens, beginning in the Middle Ages as medieval monastery gardens, where gardens supplied vegetables, fruits, herbs and healing plants. She writes about private potager gardens in Texas, Maryland and Vermont and includes wonderful color photos and garden plans for a kitchen garden. Flip through the pages on a quiet, rainy day and imagine your new garden filled with vegetables and herbs, ready for soup.
Bartley, J.R. (2006) Designing the new kitchen garden: an American potager handbook. Portland, OR: Timber Press. SB324.3 .B38 2006
*Chappell, M. (2008, January). The soup cure. Vegetarian Times, 355, 78-63. Retrieved March 20, 2011 from EBSCOhost .
Recipes for 6 healing soups used in different cultures around the world.
