Herb Gardening

Do you want to have your own herb garden?

Herb gardening has been around for centuries and has served many different purposes. Herbs can be used for your health, to treat illnesses and injuries. They are mostly used to flavor meats and vegetable dishes. Some people even believe they have magical powers. Most herbs are easy to grow and the ones right out of your organic garden are the best.

In the gardening zone where I live many herbs will over winter in the garden with no protection from the weather. With the many types of herbs available I'm sure there are a few that you will be able to grow in your herb garden.

A few ideas on herb gardening will be presented here.

A formal herb garden using organic gardening practices is a garden specifically designed and used for the cultivation of cooking and/or medicinal herbs. It is not my purpose to help you grow a formal herb garden, rather ways you can do herb gardening with what space you have available.

Plan your herb garden.

You will need to determine the herbs you want to plant. What are the types? Would you like annuals, biennials or perennials, maybe some of each?

How much space they will occupy in your garden must be considered. You can purchase a book that can give you the right information on what specific plants you are planning to grow. There are many good herb gardening books and if you have no experience in growing herbs a good book will help. Burpee offers an excellent book: The Complete Vegetable and Herb Gardener : A Guide To Growing Your Garden Organically. Personally we plant most of our herbs in our organic vegetable garden. They not only grow well, but when they go to bloom they attract beneficial insects that protect our vegetables from the bad insects.

You will need to separate the annuals from the perennials. In the fall when its time to remove the spent annuals, and cleaning up the garden, you won't be disturbing the perennials. It is best to plant the perennials on the edge of your garden so you will not disturb them when it is time to till your garden.

Be sure to provide your plants with enough space to grow. Many herbs will need a lot of room to grow so plan for this when selecting them for herb gardening.

Some herbs are very invasive, such as mints. You should keep these out of your garden. It usually best to plant the invasive herbs in pots or containers of some type. There are herb pots available for herb gardening which has holes along the sides of the pot. You can mix different herb plants in these type pots. Plant the herbs that require the most water in the bottom holes and plants requiring the least water at the top. This will insure proper growth.
If you are planting in an herb bed, the design of the bed is only limited by your imagination. You can use old ladders, wagon wheels and so on. When herb gardening don't use old car or truck tires, the chemicals in the tires leach into the soil and then into your body.

Get Your Plants Growing

Of course, different plants have different needs, but many of them require alkaline soil. This is the reason why you have to determine the herbs you want to plant in the planning stage. When herb gardening, planning is the key. This will help you find out how you should care for your plants.

If you germinate your herbs from seeds, remember to follow the directions on the packet for soil, watering and temperature. Herbs are some of the easiest plants to grow. If the soil ph is right, just make sure the soil doesn't retain too much water. Make sure they have adequate sunlight, enough humidity or moisture and fertile soil.

The best way to meet all of the needs is to work at lot of compost and organic matter into the soil. Even with just minimally meeting these requirements they are bound to produce a good harvest.

Bee Balm photo provided by www.freeherbpictures.com Karen Shelton copywrite