Herb garden

Moms View Message Board: General Discussion: Archive March 2004: Herb garden

Who has an herb garden (indoor/outdoor) I am going to plant some herbs outside of my living room window and am wanting to grow some very fragrant plants. Any suggestions? Also, kitchen herb garden, I think I will grow some chives and am not quite sure what else yet. I am getting that SPRING feeling. I must be feeeeeling better

By Fionadeassis on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 11:49 pm:

An herb garden is my DREAM!!!! Especially whenever I read my Naked Chef cook books. He uses tons of fresh herbs. Sometimes I pick up one of those packages of mixed herbs in the produce section at Safeway. It's usually for chicken so it has rosemary,thyme,sage, and parsley. I rarely use it for chicken though...I put it in everything else I can think of.

I would love to have an indoor herb garden(summers in Calgary are so short). I would grow basil,thyme,rosemary,and oregano.

By Dawnk777 on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 12:23 am:

I have a HUGE sage bush! It took over. I cut it way back last year. I also have oregano. They just come back year after year. I want to plant some basil this year. I never got to it last year. I have to put it in a different place, though, since there isn't any room by the sage and oregano. It is fun to go out and pick your own fresh herbs in the summer!

By Momaroze on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 08:40 am:

Fiona, you could buy one of those indoor "grow" lights. I'm not sure exactly what it's called, maybe just as I said. You can't beat fresh herbs...chives you can add to just about any dish. At our local grocery stores herbs are soooo expensive this time of year. If I can find the space in my kitchen, I am going to have an all year round little herb garden! I know what my dh will say "it isn't any cheaper to grow your own because of the cost of using a grow light" something like that anyway LOL. That is not the point though...Ummm it's called an enjoyable HOBBY dh, LOL My dh is always thinking $$ ugh.
Sage will be one of my outdoor plants if it grows BIG (I will like that) Some pretty herbs would look good under the window too!

By Janet on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 09:14 am:

I have a large herb garden, and the funny thing is, most of the plants I don't really USE for anything...I just love the smell of the plants! There's nothing like going out and messing around in the dirt to clear your mind.

By Dawnk777 on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 09:34 am:

I love how they smell, too! It doesn't take you disturbing the plant all that much to get the wonderful smell, either!

By Bea on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 05:16 pm:

Every year I plant Flat Leaf and Curly Leaf Parsley, Sweet Basil, Dill, and Chives in pots on my deck. Oregano and Mint come back every year. We eat a lot of fresh fish, and the dill and chives are so good with that. I make pesto for pasta with the basil, oregano and parsley. The mint flavors and garnishes tall glasses of iced tea, and chocolate mint pies.

By Momaroze on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 07:04 pm:

Thank-you for that Bea! I think I will add some dill to my garden this year too. Oregano is a must and parsley for sure. I like the mint idea too.

By Janet on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 10:03 am:

MINT WARNING!!! If you plant mint in a garden, you will be fighting an un-winnable battle for the rest of your life, unless you put barriers around it! That stuff is wonderful, but very opinionated! It's great for pots, though, which is what I'd recommend (can you tell I've BTDT and am still there, doing that? LOL)

By Dawnk777 on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 11:18 am:

Yes, my mom had mint taking over her garden, too! LOL!

By Bea on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 02:40 pm:

I took my mint from where a previous owner had it on the side of my house and put it into a big pot. One pot is plenty of mint for my usage. A rosemary bush is fun to grow and smells so good.

By Dawnk777 on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:38 pm:

I want to grow rosemary! Will have to find a place for that!

By Momaroze on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 05:14 pm:

I'm going to start today, planting an indoor herb garden. The sun is out and I want to get my hands in some dirt! I will start the outdoor garden when the weather is warmer.

By Ginny~moderator on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 07:29 pm:

When I planted mint I took a 5 gallon paint bucket, cut the bottom out and sank it into the ground with about 3 inches above ground, and planted the mint inside it. It didn't spread outside the bucket.

When my mom was alive we had a herb (an herb?) garden - dill, a couple of different kinds of basil (which gets to be quite large, by the way), a couple of different kinds of parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, bay laurel (bay leaves) and I forget what else. When we picked the herbs if we had more than we could use Mom would dry them in the microwave (it's easy). I remember the sage was so potent that we only needed a third of what we'd ordinarily use for sage-onion stuffing. The basil was great to cut what I wanted for fresh pesto.

Many herbs are perrenials if you mulch them properly for cold weather. And, many will spread, so be cautious. I'd do some checking on the web on herb gardens, and then if you have a good local garden shop (not Franks, but an owner operated garden shop that's been there for some time) consult with them on a weekday when they're not so busy. One thing I know, when planning a herb garden it is a good idea to do some research and then do a plan on paper of what you'll put where. You can throw some flowers in for color - for instance, there are a number of different kinds of fragrant geraniums that would do well in a herb garden, and putting the really short marigolds around the borders will help keep a lot of insects away. You certainly don't want to use insecticides on your herbs, so check into organic pest control methods.

One thing I recommend for almost all gardening is to cover the ground with the plastic mesh ground cover - it really keeps down the weeds. You just cut an x wherever you want to put a plant, pop the plant in the dirt, and smooth the ground cover back around it. Not only does it keep down the weeds, it helps keep the ground water from evaporating. Another think I like is to use soaker hoses (which I put in place for the summer, and just move the main hose around to connect to different sections of soaker hose). They also conserve water because they put it right in the ground, the water flow is slow so it soaks in better, and it doesn't get water on the leaves of your plants.

By Momaroze on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 07:43 pm:

Great idea, I like the mesh ground cover to keep down the weeds. Thanks. I will have to give the outdoor garden some thought before planting, thanx.

By Coopaveryben on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 09:21 pm:

The 5 gallon bucket for mint is a great idea! My DH and I were talking about planting some today, I always run to my parents to pick it. I had just told him to be careful were he plants it, I don't want it everywhere.

I Like the mesh idea, is it in the gardening dept.? I thought about using poly but I bet the mesh would work better.

By Ginny~moderator on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 05:52 am:

I got it at Home Depot, and also at a good gardening shop. It is a black plastic, dull in finish, like a fairly fine mesh, very flexible (like cloth), and usually comes in a roll about 3 feet long. What I did (my Mom's idea) was buy those packs of cheap plastic coated wire hangers at a dollar store and cut them so that I had two V shaped pieces (as much length as possible) to use to anchor the mesh (much cheaper than what you pay for this sort of thing at a store). I'd lay the mesh with a 4-5 inch overlap and push the anchors through the overlapped edges, about 18-24 inches apart, so that the mesh would stay flat to the ground. Then just cut an X where you want to put a plant, and I'd lay the soaker hoses when I was done planting.

A neighbor puts all his grass clippings and yard waste on his vegetable garden as mulch. I found when I did that, I had a bad attack of white fly on my tomatoes, so I never did it again. When I was actively gardening I maintained a couple of mulch piles and would put the yard waste & grass clippings there, doing the usual mulch thing. Next Spring when I began getting the garden ready I'd till in the mulch and it was great. (Mom bought a roto-tiller, one of the best investments she made.)

I used nothing but organic pesticides for the vegetable garden - soap sprays and similar kinds of things I buy from my local garden store. And put collars around the squash plants to keep out squash borers (horrible things). And planted marigolds around the borders of the vegetable garden. Beyond that, I did no pesticide control, and other than the white fly that one year had no real problems. Rabbits, now, were a different story. A rabbit family nested under a neighbor's storage shed, and one morning I saw one going down the row neatly eating the tops of mom's beets, so I finally had to do the thing of digging a trench and surrounding the vegetable garden with 3 foot chicken wire, with the bottom foot buried in the trench. That worked pretty well.

By Momaroze on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 08:57 am:

What do you do with the 5gal bucket of mint in the winter? Do you bring it indoors? Or do you just let it die off. Well, I guess it depends on your climate. We have harsh cold winters here. Marigolds, I am going to add to the garden as well. Takes some planning that's for sure.

By Fionadeassis on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 09:42 am:

Mamaroze-I know what you mean about the harsh climate(living in Calgary)-we have a pretty short season here and often get late and early frosts..so when I do finally get in a garden- I will be trying for a lot of perennials and things that everyone grows in Calgary. But if you go back to that square foot gardening site- he talks about winter gardening-I think it was putting plastic onto the container(although I think it might be in the book that I am too cheap to order LOL).......

By Momaroze on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 09:53 am:

Yes. Cold climates urrr yuck. If you like the outdoors and playing in the dirt, I would prefer to live around Vernon, Peachland etc....Awesome gardening, fruit trees, etc or Van. Island - good gardening and the ocean oooooohhhhh! Anyways, I will check that gardening site out again for sure.

By Dawnk777 on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 10:48 am:

Don't worry. We get to play with the dirt soon enough. If you can't wait, then it's time to start some seeds in the house, like the marigolds or something! Those warm places get TOO warm in the summer and I wouldn't like that at all. I like living in WI, even if it takes a long time to get warm after winter is over.

By Janet on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 11:10 am:

It takes an awful lot to kill mint! LOL I have never taken mine indoors in the winter, we live in zone 5 (Illinois), so I wouldn't say we have really harsh winters, but it does get pretty freezing. Compared to Calgary, though, it's probably tropical! I would bet covering your plants with branches or mulch for the winter would be fine, but I don't know if you'd even need to do that. It would be interesting to let a plant or two fend for itself one winter and see what happens. I used to bring my more delicate plants in (especially lavender), but lately I'm too lazy. Now, it's up to them!