craftygal fridge - Grow a Potted Herb Garden

Resources:

Common Herbs:

The Potted Herb Garden

To add some pizzazz to any meal, grow your own herbs. Even though it’s late summer, it isn’t too late to get your own herbs growing in pots on your patio, deck, or windowsill.

Some pretty common herbs that are also easy to care for are chives, basil, rosemary and parsley. A great resource is the Garden.com web site. There are many different kinds of each herb, so I suggest you try to narrow down which variety you want before making a purchase, as some varieties of the herbs are stronger than others. Chives and rosemary are both perennials. Parsley is a biennial, which means it lasts over two growing seasons, but the latter part of the second year, the plant is blooming out and slowly dying. Basil is an annual. If you live very far north and receive heavy frosts or snow throughout the winter, it’s recommended that you bring your less hearty herbs in pots indoors for the harshest part of the season.

A good place to buy herbs is at your local green house. Craftygal recommends going to a locally owned nursery since they tend to have better quality plants that are well cared for. Your local nursery can also tell you the best way to care for the herbs in your particular region or climate.

To get started on this project, you’ll need the following items:

3 or 4 herb plants (or seeds if it’s early in the spring)

pots with draining bases (a variety of colors and sizes lends nicely to this project)

potting soil

plant food

gravel or recycled, broken-up pots

small dowel or stick

string

Before you fill your pots with soil, put about 1 inch of gravel or old broken-up terracotta pots in the bottom of the pots. This will aid in drainage. A well-drained plant is a happy, healthy, non-moldy plant.

Fill the pots half full with soil. Now, remove the herbs from their containers, and lightly score the root ball with a trowel. This will help the plant send roots out beyond its current cluster of roots. Set the plant in the pot, adjust the dirt level to the plant is about one inch below the pot rim, and fill the rest of the pot with soil to within one inch of the rim. Water well to compact the soil around the plant.

Some herbs, like basil, shoot up quite tall. It might be a good idea to put a stake into the soil a few inches, and tie the plant to the stake for support. If you place your herbs in a windy spot, this would be particularly helpful.

As far as upkeep goes, all you need to do to keep your herbs happy is use them, and use them often. Get a nice pair of scissors to clip off the leaves or sprigs you want to use, and to prune off any yellow or dead leaves. If your plant is yellowing from the bottom up, that may be a sign of too much water, so adjust accordingly.

Make sure you place your herbs where they can get a lot of sunlight. Since your plants are in pots, remember that the soil will dry out more quickly than if they were in the ground, so water them whenever the soil is dry to the touch. Some gardeners I know use Miracle Grow or some comparable food, and have been very pleased with the results. If you want to beef up your herbs, try adding the recommended amount of Miracle Grow to your herbs.