A Beginner’s Guide to a Kitchen Herb Garden
Ah, the flavor and aroma of garden fresh herbs. Biting into your food and having your taste buds tingling with enjoyment is an event to be savored. Sure, dried herbs might be more convenient on occasion, but they are lacking the oils contained in fresh herbs that add unmatched flavor to anything you prepare. For the sake of your taste buds, why not plant a kitchen herb garden. Even if you have a notorious black thumb, herbs are trouble-free to cultivate inside and all you need to get going are a few containers, soil, fertilizer and a little water, daylight and maintenance.
When making a kitchen herb garden, you must take note that there are mainly two types of herbs - annual and perennial. Both of these are excellent for indoor herb gardening and a delicious addition to any meal.
Annual herbs including basil, chamomile, chervil, cilantro, dill, marjoram and savory will last a season and then they're done, though cultivating them indoors will quite possibly prolong that schedule just a bit. Perennials that are well suited to a kitchen herb garden comprise chives, lavender, mint, rosemary, sage, tarragon and thyme. These types of plants create new growth every season and the more you snip off to use for cooking, the bigger and healthier these plants will get.
Since perennials and annuals have dissimilar growing schedules, it might be prudent to make use of different containers for each variety. This way, once an annual plant eventually dies off or needs to be replaced, you will not be disturbing the health and progress of a perennial that will thrive for many more seasons.
For the beginner, it's a smart idea to make use of seedlings instead of starting your plants from seed. Some folks find it rather difficult to start from scratch and become discouraged. Nevertheless after they develop into seedlings or young plants, they are really easy to keep up. You can mix and match several herbs in a single big container or use smaller separate containers and grow the herbs separately. It's entirely up to your own inclinations, however you have to remember that annuals need to be planted with other annuals and perennials must be planted separately.
The style of pot doesn't matter provided that there is a drainage hole at the base to prevent the soil from becoming saturated. The location of the containers, conversely, does matter, and you need to have a window ledge or some other area to situate your kitchen herb garden where it will receive adequate quantities of sunshine. As long as you can supply the light and a bit of care, you could soon be cooking with fresh herbs and making your taste buds sing.
