There’s really no substitute for fresh herbs in cooking. But have you priced them in the produce section lately? It seems all you can find are these little clamshell packs with a few stems of limp-looking herbs, maybe a quarter of an ounce, and they cost over $2 each!!! I figured there had to be a better way.
So I found this big ol’ flowerpot in the back yard, probably used to contain some sort of house plant that had died out. I ran down to the local Wal-Mart (you could go anyplace that has a garden center: Lowe’s, Home Depot, or whatever your local options may be) and I bought some herbs in what they call “peat pots”. Those let me just bury the whole pot in the soil and the plant is ready to go. The pot is biodegradable.
The flowerpot I was working with was a little less than 2 feet wide, round, and maybe the same depth. I chose herbs that I tend to use often: Italian Parsley, Thyme, Oregano, and Sage. These have come along very nicely and whenever I need some herbs for cooking, I just take my kitchen shears out there and cut a few leaves off.
Being in a flowerpot, they tend to need more watering than they might if they were in the ground. Depends on how much rain you get. I found that the plants would tell me if they needed water. The parsley and oregano in particular are good about this. When they “bow their heads”, they want water. I have a spray attachment on the garden hose and I just stand back and let it “rain” on them. I try not to spray directly at the plants because it tends to beat them down. Instead I direct the spray upwards and let gravity bring it down on the plants just like natural rain. I water until the pot looks a little bit flooded and then let it percolate into the soil.
So far, I’ve not had to use any fertilizers and I am not sure that herbs even need any. These things are so tough tha
t they survived winter temperatures of 20 degrees farenheit for a few days and still they bounced back. Your mileage may vary. I live in Alabama so those days are the exception rather than the rule. Good thing about that is they are in a big pot! Pick it up and bring it inside when it’s cold out.
Oregano does tend to take over where ever it’s planted. It tries to crowd out my thyme, which has compensated by growing over the side of the pot and hanging out there. The sage flowers very beautifully in April, which I wasn’t even aware it would do. The parsley tends to want to flower too, and tends to get very leggy when it does so.
Some other herbs I’ve successfully grown in containers include spearmint (which also survived the winter and is bouncing back), and basil. Basil is an annual, so it won’t bounce back. It also becomes very woody in the stems once it flowers and goes to seed. That’s ok though because the seeds will germinate readily and new basil plants will constantly be coming back up (even where you didn’t want them!) I’m planning to try out some new herb varieties this season. I’ve got another big ol’ pot just sitting there doing nothing….
