Growing Your Own Herbs

If you’re not the type of person wants to spend their time managing an elaborate fruit or vegetable garden. You might consider maintaining and planting an herb garden. While the product might not seem as important, you’ll still enjoy the constant availability of fresh, delectable herbs to taste your meals.

First you’ll want to select the herbs that you’ll plant. You might have a solid time doing this because of the enormous scope of herbs available. Just look at what you have in your kitchen. This is the best way to select the herbs. You can save money on buying them from the grocery store while having the added benefit of freshness, when planting your own collection of these herbs. Some of the herbs you might begin with comprise chives, basil, dill, rosemary, sage, mint, and parsley among others.

Soil and drainage is very important for herbs

When choosing an area to put your herb garden, you should memorize that the soil should have very good drainage. You have no chance of ever growing a healthy plant, if the dirt gets watered and stays entirely saturated. One of the best ways to fix the drainage problem is to dig a foot deep in the soil, and put a layer of compressed 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 costly 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 lot of money by sticking with seed packets. Some herbs grow at a dangerously fast rate. For example, if your plant is 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.

When it comes time to crop the herbs you have labored so hard over, it can be deadly to your plant to take off too much. If your plant isn’t well established, isn’t vigorous 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 tasty home grown herbs, you’ll want to use them in cooking. Why else would you have grown them? The first process begins with drying them out. This is easily achieved by placing them on a cookie sheet and baking them in 170 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 to 4 hours. After they’re adequately dried to be used in cooking, you can consult the nearest cookbook for instructions on using them to effectively flavor a dish.

You should keep them in a plastic or glass container, if you want to store your herbs for later usage. Cardboard or Paper will not work, because it will soak-up 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 the moisture is left from the first drying process, it will encourage mildew while you store your herbs. Nobody likes mildew.

So if you enjoy gardening or herbs, or both, then you should probably consider setting up an herb garden. It might require a little bit of worth 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.