Your Herb Garden:  Go Easy on The Patchouli

All joking aside, an herb garden can be a wonderful way to improve your home’s landscaping while introducing new flavors to your kitchen or crafts to your family and friends.

Use

Before you start digging, however, you’re going to want to know why you’re choosing each plant. If you want to use culinary herbs and spices you may want to plant it near your kitchen and plan for what you cook. Do you enjoy baking? The mint family may be perfect for you. Enjoy making pizza and barbeque? Herbs like tarragon, basil, and oregano could be great additions to your outdoor living area.

If you want to use herbs in crafts such as soap, salves, or sachets you may want to plant herbs like lavender, rose, calendula, and sage. These are aromatic plants that can be used in crafts for their smell and supposedly healing properties.

Tending

Once you’ve decided what you will plant, you need to tend to your garden properly.

You should weed your herb garden at least three times a week. While herbs do not need a lot of attention, making sure they have plenty of room to grow will help ensure tasty or aromatic additions to your home.

If possible water your pants every day or every other day. This will give them a steady amount of water and nutrients to help them grow. If it rains during the night or throughout the day, however, they won’t need a drink right away.

When it comes to the soil rototilling may be the best. If not you can water and aerate the soil right before planting. After planting your herbs you may want to invest in some good, local mulch to keep the soil and plants warm and feed your herbs.

Enjoy!

Now that you have harvested your herbs you can use them! Storing herbs is an incredibly beneficial way to use herbs throughout the winter.

Drying herbs can be perfect to make potpourris, teas, or just as a preservation method. This can take some investment in time as well as money. You will need amber glass jars, screens, and a dry dark place to store the herbs while drying. Depending on the herb you may need to give it three to six weeks drying time before storing.

Vinegars are a great way to store culinary herbs and use them in your cooking relatively quickly. By infusing the vinegar with the herb you can substitute flavorful vinegars where you would have originally used store bought alternatives.

Balms and salves can also be a great way to use and preserve herbs. By taking oil (olive, jojoba, or soy), beeswax, and the herb you can create a phenomenal moisturizer. These balms and salves can be used on scrapes and bumps (depending on the herbs) or as a treatment for severely dry skin.

Now that you know how to grow, store, and use a few herbs you can begin designing and planning the perfect herb garden for you home.