If you’re not the type of person that wants to spend their time
managing an elaborate fruit or vegetable garden, you might
consider planting and maintaining an herb garden. While the
product might not seem as significant, you’ll still enjoy the
constant availability of fresh, delicious herbs to flavor your
meals with.
First you’ll want to choose the herbs that you’ll plant. You
might have a hard time doing this because of the huge scope of
herbs available. But the best way to choose is to do what I did;
just look at what you have in your
kitchen. By planting your own collection of these herbs, you can
save money on buying them from the grocery store while having
the added benefit of freshness. Some of the herbs you might
start with include rosemary,
sage, basil, dill, mint, chives, and parsley among others.
When choosing an area to put your herb garden, you should
remember that the soil should have extremely good drainage. If
the dirt gets watered and stays completely saturated, you have
no chance of ever growing a healthy
plant. One of the best ways to fix the drainage problem is to
dig a foot deep in the soil, and put a layer of crushed rocks
down before replacing all the soil. This will allow all that
water to escape, thus saving your plants.
When you are ready to begin planting herbs, you might be tempted
to buy the more expensive plants from the store. However, with
herbs it is much easier to grow them from seed than it is with
other plants. Therefore you
can save a bundle of money by sticking with seed packets. Some
herbs grow at a dangerously fast rate. For example, if you plant
a mint plant in an open space then it will take over your entire
garden in a matter of days.
The best way to prevent this problem is to plant the more
aggressive plants in pots (with holes in the bottom to allow
drainage, of course).
When it comes time to harvest the herbs you have labored so hard
over, it can be fatal to your plant to take off too much. If
your plant isn’t well established, it isn’t healthy to take any
leaves at all, even if it looks like its not using them. You
should wait until your plant has been well established for at
least several months before taking off any leaves. This wait
will definitely be worth it, because by growing unabated your
plant will produce healthily for years to come.
Once you’ve harvested your delicious home grown herbs, you’ll
want to use them in cooking. Why else would you have grown them?
Well first the process begins with drying them out. This is
easily achieved by placing
them on a cookie sheet and baking them 170 degrees Fahrenheit
for 2 to 4 hours. After they’re sufficiently dried to be used in
cooking, you can consult the nearest cookbook for instructions
on using them to effectively
flavor a dish.
If you want to store your herbs for later usage, you should keep
them in a plastic or glass container. Paper or cardboard will
not work, because it will absorb the taste of the herbs. During
the first few days of storage,
you should regularly check the container and see if any moisture
has accumulated. If it has, you must remove all the herbs and
re-dry them. If moisture is left from the first drying process,
it will encourage mildew while you store your herbs. Nobody
likes mildew.
So if you enjoy herbs or gardening, or both, then you should
probably consider setting up an herb garden. It might require a
little bit of work at first to set it up for optimal drainage,
and pick what herbs you want to grow. But after the initial
hassle, it’s just a matter of harvesting and drying all your
favorite herbs.
