Ah, the flavor and aroma of garden fresh herbs. sinking your teeth into your meal and experiencing your taste buds coming alive with flavor is an event to be delight in. Certainly, dried herbs may be more convenient at times, however they don’t have the essential oils of fresh herbs that make flavors come alive. If you want to keep your taste buds happy, why not plant a kitchen herb garden. Even if you don’t have a green thumb and don’t have a vegetable garden, herbs are effortless to cultivate in the house and all you need to get started are some containers, soil, plant food and a little moisture, natural light and nurturing.

When creating a kitchen herb garden, you need to take note that there are basically two kinds of herbs - perennial and annual. Both of these are excellent for indoor herb gardening and a flavorful supplement to any dish.

Annual herbs such as dill, cilantro, chervil, basil, marjoram, chamomile and savory will grow for one season only before dying, however growing them indoors will quite possibly stretch out that schedule just a bit. Perennials that are appropriate for a kitchen herb garden consist of rosemary, sage, thyme, mint, lavender, chives and tarragon. These sorts of plants create fresh growth every season and the more you snip off to use for cooking, the bigger and healthier these plants will get.

Because perennials and annuals have dissimilar growing schedules, it may be smart to make use of different pots for each variety. That way, after an annual plant eventually dies off or has to be replaced, you will not be interrupting the health and development of a perennial that could grow for quite a few more years.

For the beginner, it’s a smart move to use seedlings rather than starting your herbs from seed. Some people find it rather difficult to start from seed and get discouraged. Nevertheless when they turn into young plants or seedlings, they are incredibly effortless to take care of. You can use a variety of different herbs in one large pot or use smaller separate containers and cultivate the herbs singly. It’s entirely up to your own preferences, however you should bear in mind that annuals have to be planted with other annuals and perennials must be grown separately.

The sort of container is unimportant as long as there is a drainage hole at the base to prevent the soil from becoming saturated. The position of the containers, in contrast, does make a difference, and you must have a window ledge or some other spot to locate your kitchen herb garden where it can get adequate quantities of sunshine. If you can provide the sunlight and a bit of upkeep, you will quickly be cooking with fresh herbs and making your taste buds sing.

Tags: herb gardening, herb gardens, kitchen herb garden