Growing Your Own Herbs
If you’re not the type of person that wants to spend their 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.
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.
But the best way to choose is to do what I did; just look at what you
have in your kitchen.
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 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.
For example, if you plant a mint plant in an open space then it will
take over your entire garden in a matter of days. The best way to
prevent this problem is to plant the more aggressive plants in pots
(with holes in the bottom to allow drainage, of course).
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 its 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 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.
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.
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