To start a kitchen garden in a small Australian backyard, build one raised bed roughly 1.2 m × 2.4 m in the sunniest spot you have, fill it with a 50/50 mix of quality vegetable mix and aged compost, and plant five easy crops to begin with: lettuce, silverbeet, spring onions, cherry tomatoes and bush beans. Done well, this single bed feeds a household several meals a week through the warm months and pays back its setup cost in one season.
You do not need a big yard, a tilled lawn, or a weekend workshop. You need sun, water, and a small patch of soil you can reach into without standing on it.
Why start a kitchen garden now?
The straightforward reason is cost of living. A pack of supermarket herbs costs $4 and lasts a week. A $4 punnet of parsley seedlings, planted out, feeds your kitchen for six months. The same is true of salad leaves, spring onions, silverbeet and chillies - the things you reach for constantly and pay a premium for.
The less obvious reason is taste and waste. Vegetables picked the same day you eat them taste better than anything you can buy, and a kitchen garden makes you cook with what's actually ripe rather than what's on a shopping list. Most households throw out about 20% of the fresh produce they buy. A small backyard plot eliminates that, because you only pick what you need.
Choosing your first bed: how big, how high, where
How big
Start with one bed, 1.2 m wide × 2.4 m long. That's the standard "no-walk-on" width - you can reach the middle from either side without standing on the soil and compacting it. Two and a half square metres feels small, but it grows a startling amount of food.
Resist the temptation to start with three beds. Most home gardens fail because the first season is too ambitious, the gardener burns out, and the beds turn into weed nurseries. One small bed managed well is the right starting point.
How high
A 30 cm raised bed is the sweet spot for Australian conditions. Deep enough for everything except long carrots, shallow enough to stay affordable. Build it from untreated hardwood sleepers, Colorbond steel garden beds, or recycled bricks. Avoid CCA-treated pine - the arsenic leaches into soil.
Where
Sun is non-negotiable. Most vegetables need 6+ hours of direct sun daily. In an Australian backyard, that usually means the northern side of the house (in the southern states) or anywhere unshaded by fences, sheds, or the neighbour's gum tree.
Watch your yard over a single sunny day - note where shade falls at 9 am, midday and 3 pm. Anywhere that gets sun from late morning to mid-afternoon will grow vegetables. Anywhere in dappled tree shade will grow disappointment.
What to plant first
Beginners do best with crops that grow quickly, forgive mistakes, and you'll actually eat. Skip the cauliflower, the brussels sprouts, and anything that takes 100 days and one shot at success.
The starter five:
- Lettuce (loose-leaf varieties) - picks within 30 days, regrows after cutting, no pests in spring.
- Silverbeet (rainbow chard) - almost indestructible, crops for 8+ months from one planting.
- Spring onions - grow in any gap, take 70 days, replace the supermarket bunches you buy weekly.
- Cherry tomatoes (Tommy Toe) - one plant gives 3–5 kg of fruit. Choose cherry, not slicers, for your first year.
- Bush beans - direct sow, 60 days to harvest, fix nitrogen for next season's crop.
Add herbs in pots beside the back door: basil, parsley, mint (mint must stay in a pot - it's invasive in soil), chives, coriander. Herbs are the highest-return crops you can grow.
What it costs to set up
A realistic first-year budget for a single raised bed in Australia:
- Raised bed kit (1.2 × 2.4 m, Colorbond steel): $250–$350
- Soil and compost (about 1 m³ delivered): $120–$180
- Seedlings and seeds for the first season: $40–$60
- Stakes, twine, a watering can: $40
- Total: around $500
A productive bed returns $300–$600 of vegetables a year, indefinitely. Year two costs almost nothing - you'll have your own compost and seed.