An herb garden is the perfect choice for gardeners that want something fresh at their fingertips but don’t have much space. Herbs are easy to grow, and pretty with vastly different foliage.
Two cannot-do-without requirements to successfully grow herbs: sunlight and well-drained soil. Provide these two and you can start an herb garden. Gardeners are more apt to use herbs for culinary purposes if the herbs are nearby. Thus, herbs are often the starting plant for a kitchen garden.
As with any garden, location, location, location matters. Remember herbs thrive with sunlight and well-drained soil, so choose an area that provides these two requirements.
Prepare soil by tilling deeply. Using a garden fork, loosen soil to one foot in depth. If the soil is too sandy or is a heavy clay soil, amending with compost will benefit both. Compost will lighten a heavy soil, allowing for increased drainage and compost to sandy soil improves water-retention properties. Compost should be welldecomposed dead organic matter or composted cotton burrs.
All herbs have been started from seed at some point in their life cycle and they are generally easy to start from seed. They can be started indoors from seed, but as soon as the little leaves emerge, they must be given 6 hours of bright light or the seedlings become leggy, flop over and are doomed to fail. This is why most herbs are best grown outdoors in containers or directly into the garden, and transplanting small plants has the great advantage of rapid establishment.
The most common herbs found in an herb garden are basil, chives, dill, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme. Of these basil and dill are annuals that live one season, set seed and die. They readily reseed and spread freely.
Perennials in this group are chives, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage, tarragon and thyme. While marjoram, oregano, sage and thyme are perennials they are damaged by frost and are killed by freeze; they can, however, be successfully overwintered in a greenhouse and reintroduced to the garden the next spring.
Herbs that overwinter in the garden are chives and rosemary. Rosemary overwinters as a bush that will resume growth in the spring. Chives are grown for their tender, mild leaves that will die back after flowering; chives overwinters as small bulblets and new leaves will emerge from the bulblet in the spring.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.
