Smart Gardening Tips

Have you ever tried to grow anything in a garden? If you’re not the type of person that wants to spend 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. I like to offer you a few herb garden tips that you can use to start your own herb garden.

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. When I got ready to start my herb garden, I took a look at the spices in my kitchen cabinet and decide which ones I enjoy the most. I made a list of all the herbs my family and I enjoy and those are the ones I planted in my herb garden. 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 your 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. Be very careful if you plan to grow mint plants. Mint plants will take over an area very quickly, and before you know it, the mint plants have occupied your whole herb garden area.

The best way to prevent this problem is to plant the more aggressive plants in pots, but make sure you get the pots with holes in the bottom to allow drainage.

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 it’s 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 at 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.

There is nothing like fresh herbs and especially, if you are the one that grew the herbs. 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. Did you find these herb garden tips useful? You can learn a lot more about how to grow herbs at the link below.



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Growing your own herbs is easy once you know how, and can add colour and scent to your garden or windowsill all year round. Ceri Thomas, editor of Which? Gardening gives advice on stockists and suppliers, and all you need to grow three of the most popular herbs basil, coriander and rosemary.

Supermarket herbs

Many common kitchen herbs are now available from supermarkets as potted plants, but they can be tricky to keep going. However, the majority of these, such as basil, coriander and parsley, are actually a collection of seedlings crammed into the pot rather than a single established plant. You can use this to your advantage and it can be an easy, convenient way to get a lot of herb plants. Just separate the individual seedlings, and re-pot separately.

Growing from seed is the cheapest method for annual herbs. Cut parsley, coriander and chives to within 5cm of the base before re-potting, and separate the individual plantlets and re-pot each one in its own container. Take care when dividing coriander, parsley and basil, as they all resent having their roots disturbed. If basil has become leggy, you can re-plant it more deeply to encourage stronger growth.

How to grow basil

You can start sowing basil towards the end of March in a greenhouse or on a sunny windowsill. It’s very sensitive to cold and will blacken at the slightest hint of frost, so make sure your early sowings are protected. Once the young plants reach about 15cm tall, remove the shoot tip to encourage more leafy growth and a bushier plant. When the warmth of June arrives, you can sow another batch outside and move any indoor plants outside to the patio. Make a final sowing in August to give you fresh basil into autumn.

Alternatively, you can buy basil in posts from the supermarket or garden centre. Look for bushy plants with lots of side-shoots and no sign of flowering. You can then make more plants by taking cuttings.

Keep your basil in the sunniest spot that you can find – preferably a south-facing windowsill or patio, once there’s no risk of frost. Water sparingly and remove flower spikes – if these are allowed to mature, your plants will stop growing new leaves.

Pick individual leaves from the top of the plant and feed with a liquid fertiliser afterwards. Then leave it to grow again. If you find that you have a bumper crop at the end of summer, pick the lot and make it into pesto. It freezes really well if you leave out the parmesan, which can be added before use.

Recommended varieties of basil

Sweet basil, often sold as ‘Sweet Genovese’ has the classic basil taste. Greek basil is compact and bushy with tiny leaves, so there’s no need to chop them before cooking. ‘Green Ruffles’ has the classic basil flavour with a crinkly leaf texture, while ‘Thai basil’ is spicy and hot.

‘Cinnamon basil’ has a flavour rather like aniseed sweets, or for a fresh lemony tang try ‘Mrs Burns’ Lemon’. For ornamental use in window boxes or edging beds, try ‘Purple Ruffles’ for its crinkly purple leaves.

How to grow coriander

Coriander doesn’t like being moved, so it’s best sown where you want it to grow, either in the ground or in large pots. Sow in late spring or early summer, and in August sow some more in pots on the windowsill for a supply during autumn and winter. Well-drained soil in a sunny spot is essential for growing coriander, and if you’re growing it indoors on a windowsill, give it plenty of light and don’t over water.

Coriander is annoyingly quick to flower and set seed before it has produced much leaf, so it’s best to sow little and often. Watch out for fine, feathery leaves – a sure sign the plants are about to flower.

Keep picking mature leaves as and when you need them. Regular cropping should delay flowering, but once the plants do flower, allow them to set seed. The seed is ripe when it stops smelling unpleasant. Collect it and use in cooking, keeping some to sow for another crop.

Recommended varieties of coriander

If you want the leaves choose ‘Cilantro’ and ‘Leisure’, which are slow to form seeds. If it’s seed you’re after, go for Moroccan coriander.

How to grow rosemary

Rosemary is widely available as established plants in garden centres for planting in spring. For more plants, take cuttings from young shoots in spring or summer. Rosemary is slightly tender and needs a sunny, sheltered position in well-drained soil; it does well in chalky soils. If you are growing it in a container, add some grit to the compost to aid drainage and don’t over water. After flowering in March, trim into shape and feed.

You can pick leaves from this evergreen all year round. It’s a good idea to dry some leaves at the end of summer if you want to use lots of rosemary over the winter, or add a sprig to olive oil for salad dressings.

Recommended varieties of rosemary

The Common rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is the hardiest form and most used in cooking. ‘Miss Jessopp’s Upright’ is a more vigorous and upright variety and makes a good focal point in a herb bed.

The Prostratus Group are low-growing forms ideal for the top of a wall or rock garden. Corsican rosemary has a more pungent scent.



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