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Almost any meal can benefit from the addition of fresh or dried herbs. You can buy parsley, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, mint, tarragon and sage from the grocery store already dried, in small jars. In some larger cities it is even possible to find these herbs fresh in the produce department. However, nothing is nicer than collecting fresh snippets of home-grown culinary herbs to use in your kitchen.
It does not take a lot of space to grow herbs. If you are limited to a small yard or just a balcony, do not despair, a herb garden is still in your future. And, it will enhance your life in ways you never dreamed a simple pot of weeds could do.
STARTING OFF SIMPLE
Take a trip to your local garden shop or monster mega-store and acquire the following items: A large container for the soil (plastic pots and tubs are good as they cut down on the watering chores), enough potting soil to fill the container (Sunshine Growing Mix is VERY good and inexpensive), and an assortment of herb plants. Your total expenditure should be small, depending on how elaborate your container and how big. The plants should not cost more than a dollar or two each.
Look for healthy plants in four-inch pots or six-packs. Try to get varieties you are familiar with: parsley, sage, thyme, rosemary, chives, basil, mint, oregano, and tarragon. Some of these herbs can be started from seed easily and others are perennial and easier purchased as plants. Parsley, chives, and basil, as well as dill and coriander are very easy to start from seed.
TEN MINUTES LATER, VOILA!
Take all your new purchases to the sunny location you selected for your herb garden. With most herbs, the more sun the better, so do try to find a good sunny site. Fill the container with soil, set the plants in place (tall to the back or center, small or trailing in front or around the edges), water, and watch it grow!
You have just planted the most basic sort of herb garden. It will probably contain your favorite culinary herbs, plants like chives, rosemary, parsley, thyme, oregano, sage, and basil. Most of these are perennial (will return every year, bigger and better), basil is an annual and easy to grow from seed, and parsley is biennial (flowers and seeds the second year - treat it as an annual and plant every year).
The only care your garden will require is regular watering and a touch of half-strength fertilizer once a month. Peters or Miracle Grow are easy to use, mix with water and use half a scoop per gallon of water. Fish emulsion is also good, follow the label directions. Very few pests will attack your herbs, try not to use poison sprays unless you want to rid yourself of annoying family members.
FOR THE MORE AMBITIOUS
Buy more varieties or three of each of your favorites. You can still do this in containers, but you will want to have several of different sizes. If you get some of the more aggressive plants, like mint, be prepared to spend the rest of your life hacking it out of the lawn or rose garden. Start basil and parsley from seed and you can grow several different kinds that are not easily available in pots at the garden center.
If you do a bed, select a spot that gets full sun and allow about one square foot or more for each plant. Some perennial herbs will become very large, like small shrubs, unless they are cut back. Of course, you will be doing this whenever you harvest for the kitchen. Sage and rosemary are small woody shrubs. Chives and parsley will happily fill their allotted square foot and try to invade a neighbor. Thyme, the creeping variety, is quite low-growing, but can cover a lot of space in a season. A better kitchen variety is more up-right in habit, has better flavor, and can be kept within its space easily. Oregano is upright, but can grow large. Basil is fairly tall and bushy and is better planted in rows from seed.
As you shop for plants, you will discover that there are many different flavors and growth habits to choose from. Thyme comes in lemon, orange, caraway, and spice, not to mention upright and creeping, wooly and variegated. There is cinnamon basil, lemon basil, purple basil, and mammoth leaf basil. There are two kinds of chives, garlic and regular, Two basic sorts of parsley, Italian flat leaf (better flavor) and curly (more decorative) and many different choices of each. I have discovered at least 3 dozen kinds of mint, apple, pineapple, lemon, lime, chocolate, spearmint, curly, variegated, perfumed.... Well, you get the idea. Once you start growing herbs, you will find a whole new world of different plants and I have not even mentioned the non-culinary ones, like lavender and soapwort.
Start small and grow the things you really enjoy using in the kitchen. Harvest your crop as it grows and dry or freeze the extras for winter. Check out a few sources (Richters is excellent and online at www.richters.com) for old stand-bys and unusual varieties. Come next spring, you will be ready to take the plunge into a new and exciting world of flavors and fragrances
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