Health News and Information

GENERAL INFORMATION ON GROWING HERBS: WHERE IS IT BEST TO GROW HERBS

In answering questions put to me by those wishing to grow herbs in their garden, I have found the commonest problems come under the headings below:

Where is it best to grow herbs?

What special conditions do they require?

How can herbs best be raised from seed?

How else can I propagate them?

What are the best herbs to grow, and how can I use them? How are fresh herbs different from the dried ones, and how can I dry my own? Can herbs be grown indoors?

What is the best way to control insect pests and disease?

Each of these questions has a different answer, depending on your soil and climatic conditions and the seasonal conditions in your part of the world. So I have tried to make the information as general as possible, leaving some adjustment to be made to your own particular circumstances.

Where Is It Best to Grow Herbs

“Where to grow” of course depends entirely on the size and type of your garden, and whether you wish to grow the plants for horticultural interest or for health or culinary use.

My own garden has herbs in the most unlikely places— under the rose bushes, spreading wild in my gravel driveway and creeping right up to the bricks of the barbecue where they get singed every so often. Let me hasten to say (lest you think I’m a “plant and pray” gardener) that they also grow in a series of formal circular beds, some with brick stepping-stones so I can move easily amongst them; many more in a long, thin, crescent-shaped bed; and a few, especially the mints, confined to large containers (14- to 18-inch pots or tubs). I have in my kitchen courtyard a strawberry pot with some culinary standbys, marjoram, sage, lemon-scented and garden thyme, and a small basil; and on a wide sunny shelf in my laundry I have most of the year small punnets or seed-boxes with young seedlings or newly sown seeds, or some quick-growing mustard and cress sprouts for salads.

So the questions seems best answered “Herbs will grow wherever you*want them to!” But the plants have their individual likes and dislikes, as set out in the chapters on each particular herb, and it would be best to find out what these are before choosing plants for a special place in your garden.

Here are a few suggestions for formal beds. THE LADDER. This should be a long rectangular bed with narrow pathways across for “rungs”, to enable you to tend and pick the plants. This pattern is best used for small-growing herbs such as marjoram, oregano, salad burnet, winter savory and all the varieties of thyme. It is also best if planted only with perennial evergreen herbs, so your “ladder” does not have a step missing for several months of the year.