There's no better choice for container plantings than flavorful herbs such as basil, rosemary, thyme and parsley.
With pots, you can have your herbs close to the kitchen--on the patio, on the back-porch steps
or even on the kitchen windowsill, if you're lucky enough to have a very sunny one.
Herbs will add greenery and fragrance to your living space. And it will be so easy to snip a
few stalks that you may find yourself cooking with herbs in new and adventurous ways.
If you're new to gardening, or new to growing food, herbs in
containers are a marvelously satisfying way to start. Imagine the first time you serve
guests tomatoes garnished with basil you grew yourself.
Here are a few things to think about as you plan an herb garden:
Sun is essential. Most of our culinary herbs come from the Mediterranean and other sun-drenched
regions, so they will need a place where the sun shines at least eight hours a day. Growing
herbs indoors requires a very sunny south-facing windowsill, and even so, you likely won't get
as lush a harvest as you would outdoors.
Seeds or plants? You can buy herb seeds or herb plants. Small herb plants, ready to go outside,
are available in garden centers or by mail order. Beginners may find it easiest to start with
plants. If you order from a catalog or Web site, the plants should not be shipped until the
time that it is normally warm enough to plant them in your part of the country. Seeds are much
less expensive and offer a far wider range of varieties and flavors, but in most parts of the
country seeds will need to be started indoors one to two months before it is warm enough in
spring to move them outside. You can start seeds indoors in small pots in a sunny window or
under lights and transplant them. Or, if the container in which you plan to grow them is light
enough to carry (when it is full of moist potting mix) and you have well-lit space, you can
start the seeds right in the pot and move the whole shebang outside after the last frost.
Good drainage, good size. Make sure your container has a nice-sized hole so that surplus water
can drain away; herbs can't stand to have their roots sitting in too-wet soil. The shape of the
container doesn't matter to a plant, but size does: A larger volume of potting mix dries out
more slowly, so use the largest pot you can. It's better to combine two or more plants in a
large pot than to use several little pots.
Good soil. Gardeners talk about "soil," but for containers, it's actually better to use
something labeled "potting mix," rather than anything labeled "potting soil." What is sold as
"potting soil" is likely to be poor-quality and sticky with poor drainage. "Potting mix" is
lighter, made mostly from organic matter such as peat or composted plant matter, and designed
to give container plants the texture and drainage they need.
Slow start. Herb seedlings may not look like much in their first weeks, but once they get going
in warm weather they will thrive.
Plan to water: Because the potting mix in a pot dries out quickly, you will need to water
frequently. (Check by sticking your finger into the soil. If it feels dry an inch beneath the
surface, it's time to water.)
Plan to fertilize: That frequent watering tends to wash nutrients from the pots' soil, so you
will need to replenish them with fertilizer. Use a regular houseplant fertilizer at one-half
the strength recommended on the label every three weeks or so. Or add a slow-release or organic
fertilizer when you plant. Some potting mixes come with slow-release fertilizer pellets already
mixed in.
Herbs are all about leaves. It's the leaves we eat in most cases, not the flowers. So avoid
using a fertilizer made to encourage flowers. And keep up with the harvesting to keep plants
bushy and discourage them from blooming; often, blooming will change the flavor of the leaves.
Harvest the oldest stems individually with scissors rather than mowing the whole plant to keep
a steady stream of leaves coming.
Like with like. Herbs, like all plants, vary in their needs. So make sure the plants you use
together need the same conditions. Rosemary, which likes its soil drier and leaner, won't mix
well with basil, which likes more water and fertilizer. Planting in pots makes it easy to give
each plant the kind of soil, fertilizer and watering it needs.
Mix it up. In addition to combining well-matched herbs in the same pot, you can mix them with
compatible flowers. In fact, many flowers--such as pansies, nasturtiums and marigolds--are
edible.
