This French container planting technique fills small gardens with fresh vegetables – Martha Stewart has practiced it for decades

It's finally time to dine al fresco, and that means those of us with home gardens are ramping up our crops of fresh produce for beautiful summer meals.

While not all of us have large garden spaces, a resurfaced clip on the Martha Moments Instagram page reminds us that a French technique called potager allows for ample growing everywhere from garden plots to back porches. It's giving us some major vegetable garden container ideas.

'In France, if you have a little tiny garden or a great big garden, chances are you'll also have what they call a potager,' Martha explains in the clip. 'Potager is a little vegetable garden where you grow just enough for your everyday cooking. It's a very nice thing to do in this pot. Here we have a caprese salad growing, we have a tomato, we have our fresh basil. We even have a little bit of oregano. And when this is ripe and full-grown, you'll have meal to meal a lovely salad. All you need is the mozzarella.'

Shop the porch vegetable garden edit

We are instantly sold. However, Martha mentions a few tips and tricks to keep in mind when potting fresh vegetables, herbs, and flowers in your backyard.

First and foremost, when prepping your pots, create drills in the soil for your seeds.

'Just sprinkle the lettuce seeds,' Martha suggests. ' You want them to grow very full and thick because you're going to be cutting them, maybe with scissors, or pulling them out as as you thin them.'

Next, she suggests covering up the furrows with a bit of soil, about twice the thickness of the length of the seed.

'Make sure you water it and until it germinates, you can cover this whole thing over with just a piece of black plastic,' she says. [It] keeps the moisture in and the sunlight out. Remember, seeds do not need light to germinate. Once they're germinated, remove the plastic and watch those lettuces mature into delicious salads.'

When it comes time to pick your veg, 'Use a sharp scissor and just take the largest leaves, leaving the plant to regenerate itself,' Martha recommends.

Finally, mix and match different herbs and vegetables in large pots a la companion planting, creating a blend of seasonal veg all in one place; Martha has opted for one pot with butter crunch, oak leaf, and arugula, and another with shallots, tomato, and basil.

Potager is a convenient and highly effective way to garden this summer, and it's a method we can certainly get behind.