Pretty Garden Tips

Cultivating herb plants inside is not always the best way to do it, but when the days grow short and the frost covers the rest of your outdoor herbs, you will be happy you have some inside herbs. And your kitchen is the ideal place to grow your herbs, simply because that is where you are more likely to use them.

I have a big, south-facing window in my kitchen that provides full, rich sunlight to pour out onto my kitchen table on sunny days. That is where I keep my herbs over the winter months, for ease and because south-facing windows give better light. Certain sunlight is still better than none at all, so don’t fret if the window does not face southward.

Because it is not simple to take your herbs from outdoors to inside for the winter months and then back out for the summer, I recommend that you let your outside annuals to die with the first frost and just buy new potted plants from the market, home improvement store, nursery or greenhouse .

Because I purchase young annual herbs for inside just before the first frost, I don’t have to endure all the hassle with trying to over-winter a plant and having it go a little leggy.

Here are a few of my favorite herbs that I can’t make it through the winter months without:

• Garlic: You can simply cultivate garlic in your kitchen herb garden. Garlic flowers have pink or white blooms and sprout shoots that can be at least a foot tall. Let the buds grow and thrive because they can deter any other pesky bugs from your kitchen (what a bonus!). You can clip off the stems and add them to your bouquets—they’re that pretty. You will know that they’re ready to toss when they reek of garlic. You can add the flowers into a salad or use them as a garnish on your other dishes.

• Rosemary: When you use rosemary, you’re adding one the most uniquely flavored plants around. You can pull off a couple of sprigs and sprinkle in with your other ingredients. I take out the rosemary before I serve the dish, easy because I cannot take the rough pine-like leaves and I’m a little too lazy to pulverize them. Please don’t let that prevent you from crushing it with a mortar and pestle or in a food processor.

• Basil: I can’t say enough about this amazing herb, which I use in almost every Italian meal I cook. Basil will grow fast and prosper in your kitchen. Soon you can start cutting off the leaves to use in your next spaghetti. If you only have room for one basil plant, I suggest you buy the sweet basil kind because of its smell and taste.

• Parsley: Purchase your parsley full-grown rather than by starting from seeds. You will be happy with the results, because starting with parsley seeds can take a long time. Add your parsley in just about any dish. Just do not limit this great herb to the supporting role of a decoration. Its ability to enhance the taste of other dishes make pasrlsy a wonderful herb to have around all winter long.

Once you get your kitchen garden started and going well, you can plant herbs in other rooms too. Try the living room, bedroom or bathroom. Using a potted aloe vera plant to your bedroom will add a ornamental quality you’ll appreciate, just as a pot of lemongrass will make your bathroom smell fresh and clean.

Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.

Here is more information on Home Herb Garden. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.

Tags: gardening, growing herbs in kitchen, herbs, home herb garden, indoor garden, kitchen

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