3 Tips For Successful Herb Gardening For Beginners

If you’ve decided to start a herb garden you’re in for a wonderful growing experience – personal and plantwise! It’s great to wake up in the morning and walk on your deck, terrace or backyard, and experience the beauty and fragrance of your herbs.

Whatever your reasons for entering the enchanting world of herb gardening, you’ll need to make some decisions along the way, and better, before you start planting! In this article I give you 3 useful tips on successful herb gardening for beginners.

1. Reasons for growing your own herbs

Why do you want to grow your beautiful herb garden: is it for your health, for cooking, for medicinal teas, fragrant potpourris, or just plain the visual enjoyment of the plants and their delicious fragrances? Your answers reveal not only the type of garden you might like, but the various kinds of herbs you’ll want to include in it to get off on a successful herb gardening beginning.

Herbs may be used to flavor food, for sweet-smelling potpourris, to make tea, health or healing purposes, or even to control pests in the garden.  Books or articles on herb gardening for beginners make it clear that you can specialize in one of these specific areas or a mixture of a few different purposes. You’ll soon discover that strict classification of herbs is nearly impossible as many of them are useful in more than one category. Take basil for example.  Typically, people think of basil as a culinary delight, but the bonus for growing this plant is its ability to work wonders as an anti-inflammatory remedy.  If you decide to grow basil for its flavor, you may end up using it for your health as well!

Herbs can also be grown in a garden with other species of plants or mixed with other plants in containers indoors purely for your enjoyment. Or they can be used to add different colors and textures to an otherwise dreary patch of your flower garden.  Many gardeners use herbs to separate flowers whose colors may clash or place them where no flower would succeed in growing. If you’ve got a damp, shady spot in your garden where nothing else grows, try a herb.

And if you’re a beginner gardener then herbs are must-grow plants because of the fact that they’re easy to grow, which is great for confidence should you desire to go on to more difficult plants.

2. Which herbs to grow?

Once you’ve thought about this and examined why you want to grow herbs, then you can decide which herbs you want to grow.

You might have a hard time doing this because of the big variety of herbs available.

A good way to choose the herbs you want to start your herb garden with is to have a look around your kitchen to see which herbs you use. By planting your own collection of these herbs, you can save money on buying them from the grocery store while having the added benefit of freshness. Some useful starter herbs include basil, sage, rosemary, dill, mint chives and parsley.

Once you start learning about herbs, you really won’t want to stop.  By the end of your initial growing season, you’ll have another list of a half dozen or more herbs, you want to include in your next venture.  What a delight!

3. Where to grow your herbs?

Herb gardens can be grown in different spaces, indoors in the kitchen, a small plot in the garden, or any other space available. You can go as large or small as you want.

Explore your options and think about what would work best for your lifestyle, personal culinary and health needs. A small plot of four feet by six feet is a large enough area to support a small family. Although a popular use for herbs is for cooking known as culinary herbs, they are also grown for their aromatic foliage and some for the beauty of their flowers. They can be used fresh or dried. Some herbs are used as garnish for plates or salads while other types of herbs can be used to perk up the flavor of a dish.

Beginners in herb gardening might just be interested in a few herbs in a couple containers to start off with. No problem! You may want to keep several herbs potted on your back porch, or indoors, for a couple of the culinary herbs. For really small spaces there are special, attractive large plant containers with four or more outlets for the plants. This way you can enjoy more than one type of herb in one place.

Like all other plants herbs grow as annuals, perennials, shrubs, and trees. For example, you’ll want to plant the perennials separate from the annuals so you won’t disturb the perennials when you pull out the annuals. Herbs prefer well-drained soil. If  you find that your soil is heavy or compacted, you can add organic matter to it.  Fertilizers are not necessary.  Most herbs prefer a sunny location although a few prefer shade.

Having a herb garden adds enjoyment to your life, and with a little maintenance, many benefits.