How to Plant a Kitchen Herb Garden

Transform your cooking with herbs fresh from the garden. They're not
difficult to grow, and creating a garden exclusively for herbs ensures
convenient care and easy harvesting.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Pick a sunny site near the kitchen with well-drained soil. Herbs grown in six to eight hours of sun per day have denser, healthier foliage and more intense flavor. Planting herbs in containers works well, too. Work a 4-inch (10 cm) layer of compost into the soil before planting.

2. Choose the herbs you like to use when cooking. In the garden, separate the perennial types from the annuals. This makes maintaining and replanting easier in coming years.

3. Sow anise, coriander, dill and fennel seeds in the garden, as they do not transplant well. Most perennial herbs, including thyme, oregano, chives, French tarragon, sage and rosemary, can be bought as seedlings and transplanted at least 18 inches (46 cm) apart in the garden. Plant others, such as basil, either way.

4. Harvest herb leaves and shoots regularly to encourage dense, fresh growth. For best flavor, cut in the early morning from plants with flower buds just beginning to open.

Tips & Warnings

• Herbs are best divided--and healthy sections replanted-- in early spring as new growth begins.
• Mint is invasive and will overtake other plants. Plant it in a bottomless container sunk into the ground. Better still, plant mint in a standard above-ground container.