Add a Little Spice to Your Life with a Culinary Herb Garden

If you're ready to start a culinary herb garden, here are some things to keep in mind:

Photo:herbsguide.org

Location.Herbs do best in full sun. Give them a garden location that gets 8 hours of direct sun a day. You also want convenience, so a spot easily accessible from the kitchen is ideal. You can plant your herbs together, amongst other vegetables, or even throughout your landscape.

Soil.Herbs like fertile, well-drained soil, though many will tolerate less ideal conditions. Enrich your soil with compost or other organic materials, like mulch. Most herbs thrive in neutral to slightly alkaline soil. If you don't know your soil's pH, you can pick up a kit inexpensively from a home improvement or hardware store. Then you can amend it with something like lime or wood ash (for more alkalinity) or peat moss (for more acidity).

Pruning.As with other plants, pruning stimulates growth in herbs, so feel free to harvest regularlyeven if you do not need it for your cooking. It will benefit your plants long-term. Herbaceous herbs, like chive, oregano and mint, will die over winter, but return the following season. You can cut them to the ground then, but feel free to harvest up to 1/3 of the plant at a time during the growing season. Annuals, like basil, dill and cilantro will seed themselves for the following year.

Once an herb starts to flower, however, it stops sending energy to its leaves. Try to prevent flowering as best you can by pinching off buds as you see them come on. You can also plant these herbs in succession, every 4 weeks or so, to ensure a constant supply. Evergreen herbs, like rosemary, sage and thyme, will get woody as their stems mature, and will stop producing growth. Prune out the tall, woody branches to let light and air get in to the more tender shoots. When you cut any branch or stem, prune back to an area that is showing new growth.