From Zero to Herbaceous
In my thirty-five years on this earth, no one has ever accused me of having a green thumb. Past attempts at keeping plants alive ended in grief, including three succulents that I was promised I couldn’t kill if I tried. I proved them wrong with little effort. For a long time the gardening gods were not on my side.
Until now.
With a little dedication and a lot of research, I have successfully started an herb garden (and kept it very much alive). And I’m here to tell you that if I can do it, anyone can.
Bitten by the Gardening Bug
The older I get, the more I long to strip life down to its most basic. I think it might be something that happens in one’s thirties. We sort of chew away at the once-appealing chaos of corporatism and its many gilded facades. Wholeness and meaning should be held in ones hands, embraced and worked at. Plunging fingers into the dirt to create something alive: that feels true.
Gardening gets under the skin and lives there until drawn out through implementation. It’s charming in the same way as cooking a meal from scratch, going to the farmer’s market, and decorating with heirlooms. There’s tradition in it.
All of my grandparents grew up on farms in the rural south and knew how to grow crops, the art of using one’s hands to produce nourishment. One set of grandparents had a vast vegetable garden the size of a swimming pool. As a kid, I’d follow them around picking squash and tomatoes, spending a week in the summers shelling peas, while listening to their stories from rocking chairs on the screened back porch. Eventually complaining that I’d become bored, they’d release me to play around the pond and swing set.
Despite my time in theirs, gardening did not take then, but I found my way back.
How we Potted our Herbs
Our backyard is mostly artificial turf and stone with a small border garden, but otherwise not ideal for planting in the ground. Thus, my boyfriend and I bought two large pots between 16 and 18 inches. We’ve elevated them on wooden stands for aesthetics and to give them a slightly better chance at sunlight in the one corner of our yard that gets full sun.
We chose basil, flat Italian parsley, Italian oregano, thyme, lemon thyme, and rosemary, buying two small plants of each and transplanting them into the pots. The basil and parsley plants are growing together in the smaller container, while the oregano, thyme, and rosemary are in the larger one. I planted the companions based on which herbs get along best together.
Here are some helpful potted herb gardening tips I picked up:
- Know your hardiness zone. I live in Jersey City, which is zone 7b. Hardiness zones give a general idea of which plants will grow successfully in your area based on temperature.
- Know the last frost date in your area. Guides for each hardiness zone can be found online to give an idea of when various plants can safely be planted outside in each region without being killed off by frost prematurely. Also, your local plant store will provide clues as to when it’s late enough into spring to plant. If the nursery has a bunch of thriving herbs outdoors, then you’re probably good. I potted my transplants outside in mid-April. They did well, but I probably could have waited another week or two to be safer.
- I only used an organic potting mix in the container, which I filled about two inches from the rim of the pot. I bought some fish food liquid fertilizer, which I’ve used once so far. I will probably use this fertilizer about once a month.
- Spacing: I planted the herbs about six inches apart. I gave the basil and parsley a little more space. It really depends on how bushy you want each herb to grow, though, and how often you will prune or harvest.
- Use (or at least keep) the little labeled markers that come with the plants! Thank me later.
- Water about every other day or when soil is dry. When it rains several times in a week, you can probably get away with 2-3 waterings that week. All the herbs I planted are Mediterranean and don’t need a lot of water.
- Make sure your pots have good drainage. On the topic of water, these herbs thrive in well drained soil. They can be susceptible to root rot. The containers need holes in the bottom and to be elevated so that water can escape.
- Don’t let them go to flower. If any of your herbs start to bud and produce flowers, remove the flower as this will change the taste of the herbs. Unless you’re going for a more aesthetic herb garden as opposed to one for the kitchen.
- Enjoy your herbs! Give the plants time to grow and produce for a month or so. Then, begin harvesting and maintaining the herbs, which will keep them healthy and produce even more.