Plant A Pizza Garden

Just about everybody likes pizza. Why not get creative and plant a pizza garden? Your garden can be as simple or as elaborate as you like. Here are a few ideas.

Draw A Big Circle

Start by drawing a big circle in the garden area where you wish to plant. This can be your “pizza”. Now lets go and get some great plants for our pizza.

Pizza Plants

A typical pizza incorporates tomatoes, garlic, onions, oregano and basil into the Pizza. Let’s start by planting these plants into our circle.

Planting Our Pizza

Start in the center and plant a plum tomato plant (plum tomatoes make ideal pizza sauce). You may want two or three of this tomato plant. We’re planting the tallest plants in the center and working our way around. Next you’ll want to plant some other tomato plant. We like yellow cherry tomatoes for a unique color combination on our pizza. Plant onions (depending on vairety some may be taller than tomato plants so switch the onions to the center if this is the case) around the tomato plants. Leave room to harvest and weed your plants.

Now it’s time to plant the garlic. After the garlic you’ll want to plant your basil and then the oregano. Go according to height and work your way around and out of your pizza circle.

Water

Water your pizza garden as needed. Don’t let it dry out and don’t let it get too soggy.

Weeding

Weed your pizza garden by hand. Be careful to not pull up any of the plants for your pizza.

Harvesting

As your tomatoes ripen you can begin making pizza’s. This is the fun part. Children will enjoy collecting the variety of ingredients out of the garden to make their pizza. Grab a few plum tomatoes and cook them up into a thick paste. This will become your pizza sauce. Throw in some torn leaves from the basil and oregano and add a bit of chopped onion (or even just some of the green tops) and some chopped garlic cloves. PUt this on your favorite pizza crust. Top with their favorite cheese and meat and some of the cherry tomatoes sliced in half.

Bake Your Pizza

Bake your pizza in a hot oven until the crust rises and the cheese melts. Eat and enjoy.

Summer Fun

A pizza garden can last all summer long so the kids can enjoy many pizza’s throughout their summer gardening adventure.

End Of Summer

At the end of the summer you’ll want to harvest all of the plants except the oregano. Oregano will come back year after year so you can bring some of it in to dry out but you may wish to leave the bulk of the plant out side for the next season. Dry the basil. Pull the garlic and dry it for the season and pull the onions and dry those too. Plum tomatoes can be processed into sauce and cherry tomatoes can be put in the refrigerator to eat on salads until they are gone.