I love my herb garden, just being able to go outside and pick herbs to use in our cooking. There are sooo many different herbs to choose from, so I am picking my favourites… that I grow in pots and planters.

Decide what herbs you want to grow…see what grows best for you and then experiment and choose the herbs you want to grow.

Beautiful Basil

You can buy pesto from a jar in supermarkets, but nothing is as good as homemade pesto made with fresh basil leaves. But you can grow basil pretty easily if you have a hot sunny corner in your garden and it’s so much cheaper than buying it in the supermarket.

Sow seeds in April and either let them germinate either on your windowsill or in a greenhouse if you have one.

When the seedlings are large enough you can transplant them into pots or into trays and let them grow bigger, but keep the plants in a warm area.

When the plants are around 15 to 18 inches tall they are fully mature and they are ready for picking. I plant one or two plants per pot depending on the size of the pot. As I said basil likes warmth and they need protecting from wind and cold. Frost will kill the plant.

 

Outstanding Coriander 

If you are like me and love coriander than you may not realise that it’s far easier to grow than you may think.

Coriander seedlings look very similar to parsley but touch its leaves and you will smell the very distinctive and pungent coriander.

I personally grow it in a planter and sow the seeds very thinly in the compost, water regularly as you wait for the seeds to germinate. After that just wait until they are big enough to start cutting it. I sow it from March as mine grows outside, you can sow it in pots inside from January which means you can eat it earlier.

One thing is that coriander bolts very quickly as the weather warms up, and you have to start again with sowing the seeds again, but put them in a shadier spot to stop them from going to seed.

Marvellous Mint

Mint is a beautiful plant and I love making mint tea, but also add it to flavour many of my dishes.

There are many different types of mint, but I would recommend just growing mint in pots as the roots are very invasive and the mint will spread around the garden very quickly.

Mint likes to grow in good soil that is well-drained, and it also loves full sunshine.

Peppermint makes delicious tea, Spearmint can be used for almost anything, and Apple mint which has beautiful downy looking leaves has a lovely delicate flavour so can be used on new potatoes.

Perfect Parsley

Parsley is one of those herbs that goes with everything. I sow the seeds in pots and lots of seedlings come up in the pot. The seeds prefer to germinate with some heat or you can sow the seeds when the weather and the soil is warmer.

You can either transplant the seedlings so the plants get bigger before planting out or let the seedlings grow big enough in the pot and transplant straight into a planter.

Parsley loves well-drained soil and doesn’t mind some shade – but you do need to water it well.

Tremendous Rosemary

Every garden needs a rosemary plant, my mother-in-law used to say that if you could grow a strong rosemary plant the lady of the house ruled it. I don’t know if that is true…!!

Rosemary is a wonderful herb that can be used with lamb and is also delicious when using it I when cooking roast potatoes.

Rosemary is a pretty hardy plant and will withstand most weather, it loves fast-draining poor soil, and it does hate standing in cold, wet soil.

You can grow a rosemary plant in a large pot or container, mix compost with some topsoil or garden soil and mix in some horticultural grit and your rosemary plant will be very happy.

You can sow rosemary in March and transplant them when the plants are big enough to handle, which will take several months.

Rosemary grows well from seed sown in spring, pricked out into individual pots and planted out the following spring.

Or you can take a rosemary cutting and put this cutting in a small pot of compost and wait until it starts growing a root. Once the root has taken hold then you can repot the plant.

Sensational Sage

I love adding sage to my cooking and it works really well with potatoes and pork.

Personally I like the purple variety of sage, one reason is that it’s less vigorous than the other varieties, but it’s also very flavoursome.

Sage likes good drainage and can be grown in pots and containers, it can live for many, many years. You can sow seeds or you can take a cutting and grow a plant from this.

To stop sage from going woody you need to cut it back every spring.

Tremendous Thyme

There are so many different types of thyme and I love growing the plant, adding it to the Italian dishes I cook.

Thyme grows really well in pots. Containers or herb planters. Bees absolutely love the flowers on a thyme plant.

You can sow thyme seeds in the spring and plant them out when they are big enough to handle. But I do like to have different thyme’s so I go to the garden centre and buy different varieties.

Even though thyme is a perennial, you usually have to replace the plants every 3 years or so, mainly because the plant can become very woody. One way to stop woodiness is to cut the plant back after flowering, which should encourage new growth.