Preparing Your Herb Garden
Choosing a plant from a catalogue can be overwhelming. You would want most of those plants in your garden, since they all look so good! Mostly, people won’t have the energy to tend to a garden that large, or even have a space that big.
Herbs have three main types herbaceous, evergreen, and annual. The type of herb will depend on how it grows, what type of plant it is, and its habits. The herbaceous herbs grow constantly. They die back during the winter, but some back again in the spring.
Herbs like bee balm, oregano, tarragon, mint, chives, sweet fennel, and winter savoury, to name a few. They don’t need to be pruned; you just clip them off at ground level at the end of the season.
You can even mow them. Always be careful with mint. It spreads quickly, and can take over an entire garden if you let it. Evergreen herbs grow for about two years, so you need to prune them if you don’t harvest them often.
Pruning should be done every fall or early spring. Evergreen herbs include sage, rosemary, and thyme. Only the old branches should be pruned off. Any that are broken or lying on other branches should also be pruned.
When you harvest evergreen herbs, you should be careful to cut only one section of leaves at a time, and only cut it back to where new growth is still showing. You should avoid excessive cutting since this can daunt new growth.
Annual herbs include basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, and chervil. They can only live for a year, so you’d need to replant them every year. If you want a continual harvest of annual herbs, you have to keep planting them every four to six weeks during the season.
Your annual herb will stop producing leaves after it flowers, so you should trim off any flower buds that develop. Plants cease to produce leaves when they flower and go to seed.
When planning which types of herbs you wish to plant, you should choose only those varieties which you believe you’ll actually use in cooking. You might want to try growing every kind of herb, but it’s not very practical.
You should only grow those herbs that are useful to you. Don’t forget that some herbs are best when dried. Dried sage is preferred to its fresh counterpart.
You’d do better to only have those herbs which you prefer fresh, and try one or two that you’ve never had before. Be careful not to plant too many types that you can’t take care of them all.
You still need to tend your garden even if herbs don’t need much care. Remember not too plant too much!
Finally, be sure to check the zones that various herbs do well in. Maybe your favourite herb won’t grow well in your zone, so you should probably skip it or try growing it in containers. Planting herbs that will die before it is harvested is quite useless.
Author bio: Faye Sparks is a freelance writer and researcher. Read her latest articles relationship articles on the ins and outs of Free chat rooms. Free chat rooms~Chat rooms~Dating chat provide a gateway to share interests and meet people, but free chat rooms should always be used with caution.