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Starting a herb garden
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I'd cheat, & hit the supermarkets - Asda are doing a nice mix at 3 plants for a fiver at the moment and see how you go with plenty of drainage under a couple of growbags emptied into the sinks.
Meanwhile you can ask for a few seeds of whatever catches your eye off most gardeners & see if you can get them to germinate indoors and survive migration to a tub outdoors. It may not be the cold nights but the slugs that get them.
Says she with her supermarket basil relatively coddled in the kitchen - it isn't slugs that thing fears but the cries of "oooh bolognese!" which translates to plant will loose at least 10 good leaves...
Chives are almost as idiot proof & self perpetuating as mint but used a little less - they are bee magnets though & thus help Anything growing in a 100 yard radius.
Oregano & marjoram & sage - pick as many variants as you want - they all make lovely Italian food, and are pleasant to look out on.
Rosemary is a bossy plant - a long term survivor & somewhat prickly to eat - only if you seriously use it a lot cooking is it worth growing other than for its beauty.
Cheat like a card sharp to start with, & see how you go.0 -
Thanks all.
The more I read about this the more it seems important to bring herbs indoors during winter months to keep them from dieing. Shlepping a belfast sink inside once a year will be back-breaking. Could I plant the herbs within their own containers in the belfast sink and then - in late autumn - dig out the pots and bring them inside? Is that an idea?0 -
I’ve found my Belfast sink is good for things like mint and chives but probably not so great for the herbs that thrive in a rocky dry environment, like rosemary, oregano, thyme etc. Or things that like deep soil and grow a big tap-root like rocket.0
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As somebody earlier mentioned, have a look at perennial and annual herbs. Unless you can find a good deal, buy some seeds of perennial herbs and sow them yourself, they will come up every year.0
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Thanks all.
The more I read about this the more it seems important to bring herbs indoors during winter months to keep them from dieing. Shlepping a belfast sink inside once a year will be back-breaking. Could I plant the herbs within their own containers in the belfast sink and then - in late autumn - dig out the pots and bring them inside? Is that an idea?0 -
Not really. The restriction of the pot won't help the plant grow in the long term, and some herbs have a naturally short life-cycle. There are relatively few herbs that die simply because of winter cold and/or wet. Something like coriander or basil is going to die anyway.
Thinking on from this you could have one sink with tender annuals/biennials in pots (like parsley, corriander etc) but fill the sink with pea gravel or bark mulch and seat the potted herbs within that for (IMHO) a pleasing effect. Then just hoik the pots out when the season is over. Use the same stuff as a surface mulch on the other sink containing hardy perennials - just a thought
Why am I in this handcart and where are we going ?0 -
unrecordings wrote: »Thinking on from this you could have one sink with tender annuals/biennials in pots (like parsley, corriander etc) but fill the sink with pea gravel or bark mulch and seat the potted herbs within that for (IMHO) a pleasing effect. Then just hoik the pots out when the season is over. Use the same stuff as a surface mulch on the other sink containing hardy perennials - just a thought
Good thinking batman!0 -
And it may seem obvious - but only grow herbs that you're actually going to use!!
I bought a nice healthy looking basil plant at Aldi today for 48p.No longer a spouse, or trailing, but MSE won't allow me to change my username...0 -
trailingspouse wrote: »I bought a nice healthy looking basil plant at Aldi today for 48p.
Some of the best basil I ever grew came from Aldi (or Lidl, it was one of the discounters). I bought one pot, split it into six, stuck them on a sunny windowsill and ended up with far more basil than I was able to use.0 -
Parsley, rosemary and chives i leave mine out all year on my kitchen window box and they always come back even after frost and ice.0
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