Growing garden herbs

Growing garden herbs can be a wonderful and relaxing hobby. You can literally get lost in your own world when you are concentrating on the tasks at hand with an herb garden, and even if only just for a little while, you can forget everything else around you!

Easy to Start

Growing garden herbs is easy enough to get started. If you’ve never been a gardener, you can simply start with one of the many available kits that are available at your local garden center such as an Italian herbs kit or an herb kit containing everything you need to brew herbal teas.

For the gardener with experience, perhaps you will want to take care of everything yourself such as choosing the seed of the varieties you wish to grow. The most popular choices are generally the herbs that are used for cooking. Many would-be gourmet cooks like to have access to the very freshest ingredients, and when it comes to herbs, there are none fresher than those pulled from your own garden.

Where to Plant

Growing garden herbs can quite literally be done just about anywhere. While there are some herbs that can grow only outdoors, there are many that can be easily grown indoors. As a matter of fact, most herb gardeners that use the herbs for cooking actually do grow their herbs indoors, right in the very kitchen in which they’ll be used.

What it boils down to, is a matter of preference, and the overall size of the garden that you wish to plant of course.

When to plant

Herbs are planted in the spring season, after the last frost. There are several that can be planted before the last frost as well, but to be on the safe side of things, we’ll use the last frost as our time to sow.

Most herbs are annuals, meaning they will grow generally during the warm months. This is primarily because the frost, once it hits, will kill them off. There are some that are perennials and will grow year round. One such example is rosemary which grows as bushes.

If you want to have access to certain herbs year round, then they must be planted in a location in which frost will not get to them. For instance, if your garden is located outdoors, then before the first frost comes, you will want to transplant the herbs and bring them inside until the spring, at which time you can replant them.

Other Alternatives

If you wish to grow your herbs year-round without the hassle of planting, and replanting, then you are better off to plant them within a shelter, such as a shed, an enclosed porch or deck, or even within your own greenhouse.

In any case, for most of the herbs, sunlight, and plenty of it is required. There are some varieties that prefer shady areas, but that is easily overcome with the use of covers or other means of blocking the sun from them.

There is virtually no limit to the possibilities of growing garden herbs. Go as far as your imagination allows you to, because as long as they get the basic requirements such as water, sun, etc, everything else is fair game in the herb gardening arena.