A Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Herb Garden

Would you love a fragrant herb garden outside your back door but are not sure where to start?

Never fear!

Starting a herb garden is one of the easiest ways to introduce yourself and your family into gardening and growing your own food.

So, Where To Start?

Growing a herb garden is super easy! You need 2 main things,

• Lots of sunshine
• Very well-drained soil.

So, when planning out your herb garden, make sure you choose a site that has at least 6 hours of sunshine each day.

If you find garden space is tight, you can plant herbs in containers. They do really well in pots as this helps the drainage stay really sharp and it’s also easier position them in a sunny area.

A very modern way to grow herbs is part of a living wall. Hang planting pockets all over a vertical fence or wall, and you can easily cover an ugly area with beautiful plants. Creeping thyme, and camomile are fantastic for this idea.

Ideally, when planning your herb garden, remember it is something you want near to the kitchen, so you can nip out in your slippers and snip a few springs off when your cooking dinner.

Having your herb garden close by is also a good way to encourage your kids to take on some responsibility. Let them water your herb garden, care for it, then pick leaves to eat and bring into the kitchen for cooking.

Preparing the Soil Before You Plant a Herb Garden

Once you have decided between growing your herbs in pots or growing them in the ground, the next thing you need to do is prepare the soil.

Herbs like to grow in free draining soil, they hate sitting in soggy damp soil so if the soil is sand or clay heavy, the preparation is the same. Start by adding lots of sand or grit to open the soil and let the water run through.

Then add plenty of garden compost. Even if your soil is in pretty good condition, working some compost into the soil will help provide nutrients to the herbs while they are growing.

However, when growing herbs, do not use manure in the herb garden.To much feed can reduce the plant’s growth as they prefer poor soil.

Need more help starting a vegetable garden? Check out our ‘How to grow a vegetable garden’ course for all the help you need.

Planting Your Herbs Outdoors.

Harvesting Herbs Is So Easy!

• Some herbs go to seed very quickly, so for herbs like coriander, sow just a few seeds at a time but do it more often. Once a week for example, this way as one set of seeds is finishing the next is almost at its best.
• So more than one type of each seed to stretch out the growing season. Some may be best harvested august and september but you may find an early variety that is good to go for a few weeks before it too.
• Pot up herbs such as chives, mint, parsley, or tarragon grown outdoors and bring them inside for the winter. Just standing them on a south-facing windowsill.
• Contain stronger-growing herbs such as mint, lemon balm and sage to stop them spreading all over the place.
• Start early in the spring by sowing herbs under cloches and frames. Another trick to extend the season.
  

They like light soil that is watered often. Mint can often be refered to as a thug due to its habit of spreading far and wide using underground runners. So unless your happy for it to spread, it’s a good idea to keep this one in a pot.

There are so many varieties of mint, each with very different smells and tastes, ie apple mint, spearmint, and pineapple mint to name few but you can always tell a member of the mint family as it has a square stem.

Coriander likes a sunny position but also appreciates a little shade during the day.

Plants will run to seed quickly in hot weather so this is important for leaf varieties.

To achieve a constant supply of leaves through the Summer, sow small amounts all through the summer.

Coriander is will grow best sown directly rather than grown in seed trays and transplanting. This is because transplanting disturbance will also cause then to run to seed.