Growing herbs Indoors and Out in Your Garden or Yard -

- good for your health and wildlife will benefit too!

Growing Herbs Indoors and Out – they look great, they smell great and they taste amazing. They are good for the environment too.

Growing herbs is easy and fun. If you like cooking and enjoy the benefits of fresh tasty organic food from your garden, grow herbs - it’s a good way to supplement your diet!

Most culinary herbs are rich in nutrients as well.

Many herbs also have therapeutic properties which make them an ideal addition to your diet. For example, mint is a "digestive", that is, it aids digestion and thyme has anti-bacterial qualities.

Growing Herbs Indoors and Out:

Some of the easiest herbs to grow are also the most useful.

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme – called to mind from the famous folk song - are all easy if you have a garden in a temperate region of the world.

Mediterranean herbs such as marjoram and basil are not difficult either.

For best results, dedicate an area of your garden close to the kitchen to grow herbs. It’s nice to know that there is a place where you can find something tasty at any time of the year to uplift your cookery!

The soil does not have to be especially rich. Many herbs grow well in quite poor sandy and stony soils in their native settings. So choose somewhere sunny but close to the kitchen and don’t worry too much about soil quality, as long as the ground is well drained.

I find it’s easiest to start most herbs off in seed trays. That way you can keep a close eye on them and they don’t get lost in weeds when you get busy with other things.

Buy good quality seed, organic if possible, and follow the instructions closely. Below you will find instructions and tips for a few of the commoner useful culinary herbs to get you started.

Growing Herbs Indoors and Out :

Parsley (Petroselinum hortense)

Parsley is notorious for being slow to germinate. It can take three weeks to come up - or even longer. Once you have your seedling crop, plant it out when it’s about 1-2 inches high. Be careful not to let the roots become bare when you ease the seedlings out of their seed tray. They do not take well to drying out. Growing them in soil blocks or small cells will prevent these difficulties.

Keep them well watered. Once they have established themselves they require no special help. If they tend to run to seed, just cut their heads off.

If you want parsley available right through winter it is a good idea to start more seeds off in summer or autumn. At the end of the growing season let one or two plants run to seed and you will have plenty of seed to start again.

Even easier, just let them seed without hindrance and you will have dozens of new plants in the spring with no trouble at all! (You may even end up weeding them out as a weed crop!)

If you prefer, flat-leafed parsley is a good choice as it is easier to germinate. It also self-seeds abundantly and has a lovely fresh taste in cooked dishes and salads. It doesn’t taste quite like curly leafed parsley, though so you won’t get that traditional taste when you cook fish pie with parsley!

Sage (Salvia officinalis)

A sage bush is a valuable addition to any herb garden. They can grow quite large and sprawling, so put them towards the back of your herb collection and prune them in summer. A sheltered position in the sun is best. Sage keeps going all year round, hence the traditional turkey stuffing at Christmas.

Sage does not set seed well, so buy one from a good garden centre and when it is mature, take cuttings to produce new plants. Purple sage is good and you can find some other colours as well as the traditional grey-green leaved varieties.

Sage can be nice chopped finely in salad. Even if you aren’t keen on the strong, rather medicinal taste, a sage tea is great for sore throats as a gargle. The flowers are quite striking with their blue spikes and they are an absolute magnet for bees.

Rosemary is another absolute must for any garden. It yields a delicious, aromatic herb which transforms a plain meat dish into something special. This woody shrub is probably a bit too large for the average herb garden, so plant it anywhere you would plant a medium sized shrub. It grows about a metre tall and can spread out quite a lot too. You can prune it to keep it in bounds of course. Even if you have only a tiny garden, it creates a stylish and attractive display.

Again, it is not one to grow from seed. It is easiest to buy one, or beg a cutting from a friend to start. It is another sun loving herb but is pretty hardy and will be available all winter long for those delicious winter stews and roasts.

Tarragon (Artemisia Dracunculus)

Tarragon is a versatile herb which is also very easy to grow.. The easiest way to start is to divide a bit of root from a well-established plant.

Alternatively, you can take cuttings or just buy a young plant. Give it a fair amount of room as it likes to spread. It grows each spring and disappears in winter as it is perennial. The best pickings are from the tips of the plant. The flavour develops as the summer progresses - it may be rather bland in spring. You can use it in almost any dish but it goes especially well in egg dishes, with white fish and with chicken. It has a mild but distinctive flavour and can be used instead of basil in many recipes. Try it in omelets and flans. It is also excellent raw in salads. You can also steep it in vinegar for year-round use. Tarragon can also be dried in paper bags for winter use, or frozen in freezer bags or ice-cubes. Freezing it is probably the easiest method. It keeps its flavour quite well that way. There are two common varieties: French and Russian. French is far better for culinary use.

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

Thyme is a pretty little miniature shrub, a bit like heather in size and shape. There are creeping varieties, too. The flowers are a beautiful lilac-blue and attract the bees. The leaves are available all year round, though there are more fresh green ones available in summer. It has a strong slightly medicinal scent as it contains thymol, an antiseptic much used in medicine.

You can grow thyme in spring or you can grow it from seed. There are also other varieties available. Golden thyme is a pretty, variegated variety and lemon-scented thyme is a good choice.

Mints (Mentha)

There are many different mints available, so it’s nice to experiment with a few of the less common ones, such as pineapple mint or ginger mint. Mint is a hardy perennial, so you need to buy or be given a plant to start you off.

Once in the soil, this herb is an absolute thug, so you may want to pen it in by planting it in a large planter, or in a bed dedicated to it. Another way is to sink a large plant pot into the soil and plant it in there. It can escape even this if you’re not watching it carefully!

Mint has such a wonderful smell and so many culinary uses that I don’t mind its predatory behaviour as long as it stays in just a couple of sectors of the garden. Use it in salads and to make cordials, tea, mint sauce … the list goes on. It is very easy to grow – just try stopping it! It likes moist fertile soil but will manage practically anywhere. You can grow it quite easily in pots provided that you water frequently; you can bring a pot or two inside to extend the growing season into winter. It's also quite easy to dry for winter use.

If you have room for only one mint, peppermint (Mintha piperita) is probably the way to go.

Marjoram (Origanum)

Marjoram, or Oregano, is another Mediterranean herb that grows quite well in more northerly climates. It can be sensitive to cold, so you may need to cultivate it as an annual, depending on where you live. Here, in the south of England, it has taken on the status of a weed in my garden!

It is a great herb, with many uses, and in the garden the bees find it irresistible. Sweet marjoram (Origanum majorana) can be sown indoors and planted out after any frosts have finished.

Lovage (Levisticum officinale)

If you have room, try this dramatic plant. It is excellent for flavouring soups and stews. The taste is quite strong, so it is well to be stingy with it. It can grow to more than two metres tall in the right conditions. Once established, it should return year after year.

Establish new plants from seed, or by dividing the root in spring.

Basil (Ocimum basilicum)

If you like tomatoes you will want to grow basil. It is not quite as easy as most of the other common herbs, (at least here, in northern Europe) but it is just so wonderful it’s worth the effort. It is a soft and tender annual plant which may become a little shrubby in hot, dry summers.

Sow it on a windowsill once the day time temperature is reliable, say in May or the end of April. Keep the seeds moist and covered until the first seedlings appear. Prick out and grow on in roomier quarters as soon as you can. Small pots or a deeper tray will do for this. Punnets from supermarket fruit also make good seedling nurseries. Be careful to hold these tender plants by the leaves when transplanting them, never the stem.

Make sure that there is no danger of frost before you put them out into their beds. They grow well with tomatoes and may help deter some insects as they are quite aromatic. Although basil is not such an easy to grow herb, its suberb flavour and role as a companion plant make it a must!

Growing Herbs Indoors and Out:

This is not a complete list of herbs at all. It is simply a small common selection to introduce you to the pleasures and benefits of growing culinary herbs. There are many more fabulous herbs that you can grow which will enhance your garden and your kitchen.

I'm sure you'll agree that growing your own herbs has huge benefits for your health, well-being and enjoyment of foods and your garden!

So growing herbs indoors and out is good for your health and for the environment. You can also grow herbs for their powers as natural dyes and you could also grow them as companion plants.

You can also grow herbs just for their scent... or even, grow herbs just because they look nice!

	Enter your search termsSubmit search form
	Web www.greenfootsteps.com

From Growing Herbs Indoors and Out back to Organic Gardening

Greenfootsteps Home - for more easy green living ideas