I really enjoy growing herbs for a few reasons. I like to cook, and no matter how you slice it fresh herbs generally knock the pants off of store varieties. I like to save money, and herbs are pretty expensive in the store, especially fresh ones. They also make unique and interesting plants, at home in the vegetable garden or the ornamental garden. If you only grow four herbs, these are the four I recommend.

1. Mint

Mint is awesome, I personally love mint flavored deserts, shakes, chocolate, etc. In the summer I like to make a cool cucumber salad with a little mint and cukes from the garden. Mint also comes in a wide variety of flavors. Spearmint and peppermint are standard, but gardeners have hybridized a whole variety of other cultivars with hints of various flavors like pineapple, apple, even chocolate. Plant them all.

Kids like mint too. My son, who is almost three now, spent all last summer eating mint out of hand when he was outside. He would take a little chair over to the mint container, put it right in front, sit down, and spend 20 minutes picking and eating leaves. He really likes it, and like most herbs it is healthy for you.

Mint is versatile and very easy to use in the kitchen, it is also really easy to grow in the garden. It is hardy in most places and so you only need to buy it once and it will keep coming back. It is such a good grower is can be invasive, so most people plant it in large containers. Dig and divide your plants as the containers will up, using the divisions to start new pots, or give to friends and family so they can enjoy fresh mint too. Like most herbs, mint likes sun, and well drained soil.

More on how to grow mint.

2. Thyme

Thyme also comes in many varieties and flavors, and just to confuse you more, there are many non-culinary varieties as well, though I’m not sure eating them would hurt you, they’re just not typically eaten.

Thyme, like mint, is also a perennial ground cover that spreads, however, it isn’t as vigorous and is not invasive, so you can safely plant it in and among your garden. It does like well drained soil, and seems to do well in rocky areas, between cracks and crevices. It can even take some foot traffic.

My favorite is lemon thyme, which is hardier than some of the others and has a nice lemony hint to it. I use it in the kitchen either by chopping it up fine and adding it to dishes, or sometimes I’ll just tie a bundle of sprigs and let it simmer in a pot (soup usually), removing it as I would a bay leaf prior to serving.

Thyme, in my opinion, does not provide as much bang for the buck as other herbs. Dried time is still pretty expensive at the store, on a per pound basis, but it at least works decently well. Thyme is one of the few herbs that doesn’t lose too much flavor from drying or aging. Recipes also rarely specifically call for fresh thyme, though I enjoy having it on hand. I also enjoy the ability to grow more varieties than can be bought at your local super market.

Even if you do not plan to use it in the kitchen, it makes a durable and attractive ground cover, and some variety of thyme should exist in almost every garden.

More on how to grow thyme.

3. Basil

Basil is perhaps the ultimate chameleon in the garden. Mint varieties still taste minty, thyme varieties still taste, well, thymey, but basil varieties can taste like almost anything. There are almost too many types to mention, but I find pineapple basil particularly good, as is cinnamon basil. The most common basil is usually labeled just basil or Italian basil. When a recipe calls for it, this is the one they mean.

Basil is an herbaceous annual with small leaves the consistency of young spinach. It likes moist well drained soil and full sun. Basil is not bothered by many pests, and indeed supposedly wards off some insects. It can get leggy and so you should pinch, cut, or eat terminal growth regularly to promote a more bushy plant.

It is an annual, so you do need to plant it every year. However it can grow well inside. It is what I grow in my aerogarden, and when I have a greenhouse some day I plan to make big use of it. When grown outside it will last until cold sets in, when grown inside it can last much much longer so long as you keep it fertilized and give it lots of sun. I’ve had it last almost a full year before, and I think it merely outgrew my aerogarden or it would have lasted longer.

I do prefer growing perennials because I feel they give you a nice bang for your buck, having to only buy them once. However basil is very very very easy to grow from seed, and seeds are cheap. Also, basil is ridiculously expensive at the store. A couple bucks for a few sprigs. It has a really short shelf life so you pay a premium for it. Anyone who has ever made pesto at home and thought to buy the basil at the store probably knows what I’m talking about. Most pesto recipes will call for one or two cups of packed basil leaves, you might as well be buying lobster and tenderloin for what that can cost.

As for dried basil? I never touch the stuff, I find it disgusting. The essential oils in basil must go rancid really fast or something because dried basil both does not taste good, nor does it taste like fresh basil. I like fresh basil.

Basil is very healthy for you with a bunch of antioxidants and everything else, and it goes well in many foods. Most Italian dishes can take it from pastas to casseroles to pizzas. It goes well with fish. It goes well with roasted potatoes, it goes well with anything you would add garlic to. Pesto, is a very heart healthy condiment that you can easily make with basil. I also happen to like basil in scrambled eggs. When I grill steaks I like to put basil leaves on top, and then parmigiana cheese on top of the basil.

There are also some very attractive varieties of basil with interesting leaf colors that would be stand out plants in an ornamental garden, and you can still eat them too. It is a nice dual purpose plant, even if you do need to start it from seed again after every winter.

More on how to grow basil.

4. Parsley

No, I do not mean the curly leaf parsley used as a garish in so many restaurants. I mean flat leaf Italian parsley which is a great addition to many dishes. To my knowledge, parsley does not have many flavors as the other herbs I mentioned above, there is pretty much just the standard variety, and yes flat leaf italian parsley does have a taste similar to the curly leaf parsley, but they’re not quite the same.

I like parsley because it is a biennial, which means it lives for two years. Not quite an annual, not quite a perennial, but it can survive outdoors in a pot in my zone 5 garden. Like the other herbs it likes sun and well drained moist soil, and it grows pretty vigorously once established, to the point where you can harvest it heavily and it’ll keep growing back.

Parsley, like basil, is used in many many Italian dishes, but it has a particular affinity for potatoes. Almost any potato dish is improved with the addition of chopped parsley. This includes soups, mashed potatoes, fries, roasted potatoes, scalloped potatoes, and potato casseroles. During summer when I am growing it I will add it to anything that has potatoes in it. Parsley is in the carrot family and it also compliments carrot dishes very well.

Like basil it is easy to grow and easy to start from seed. I usually take a large container, 18-24 inches across at the top, and just sprinkle parsley seeds randomly on it, then sprinkle a handful of potting mix on top of the seeds, and water well. Soon enough the entire container is full of parsley.

Also like basil it does not store well. Now you can store fresh basil and fresh parsley via freezing, but it is very expensive when bought fresh at the supermarket and the dried stuff is horrible. Parsley suffers from the same taste failure as basil does when dry. I would not ever recommend buying it.

Parsley is significantly more hardy than basil, it dies after two years but not because it got too cold. You can often harvest it still in the winter when snow is on the ground, I often find it still green, and frozen, buried beneath some snow. Other times it will die back to the roots, like a perennial, only to come back in Spring.

More on how to grow parsley.

Honorable Mention: Rosemary

I like Rosemary, I do, but it isn’t as hard to grow as the above, nor is it as expensive. Like thyme, rosemary takes well to drying, so you can reasonably buy it dried, unlike thyme it is not as fast a grower, or hardy for much of the country. Someday, when I move to zone 7, I will grow rosemary year round outside and be happy with it, but in zone 5 I need to buy it every year. I can’t even start it from seed because it is a woody shrub and so grows slowly at first. For me to get the volume I need for cooking during the Summer I have to buy an established plant every Spring.

Rosemary does not come in a variety of flavors, but it has a very strong and recognizable scent and flavor and certainly is attractive in the garden both from the silver-green evergreen foliage, as for the scent which is strong enough for you to pick up without sticking your face right down into the plant. It does very well in the kitchen in many meat dishes, stews, and it also likes potatoes (is there anything better than herb crusted potatoes roasted with salt and olive oil and garlic?). You can take a little rosemary, a little garlic, and a little olive oil and mash it up into a paste in a mortar and rub it on practically anything as a flavor booster. I sometimes like to season the oil in our deep frying with some rosemary just to add some hints of that flavor to everything I might fry.

It can grow into a very large shrub if you live in a warmer climate, but for us northerners it will not do that well. Some people do take it in the house or in a greenhouse during the winter, and if you have one, and you keep it water, and you keep humidity up, and it gets enough sun (it needs a lot of sun) it can survive the winter indoors, but you really need the right setup. If you don’t have a humidifier and a big southern facing window to put it in though, it tends to suffer and die.

So Rosemary didn’t make the list because it is too slow to start from seed, doesn’t last through the winter for many people, and is able to be used in dried form from the supermarket. However, I do give it an honorable mention and I do recommend it for gardeners in the South.

More on how to grow rosemary.

I received a review copy of this book called Herbs, The Complete Gardener’s Guide and I do think it would be a useful purchase if you wanted to learn more. It isn’t perfect, it is written by a Canadian who seems to have written for a Canadian audience which means he often assumes you’re in Ontario like him and doesn’t address the variety of climates in North America that much. It is, however, comprehensive, covering all aspects of herb gardening, and includes many large photographs and illustrations.

The answer is yes. Not only have you been wasting a perfectly good nitrogen source down your toilet, you’ve also been using water unnecessarily too. My city bills me for water usage, and I figure every time I pee outside I’m saving a nickle while providing free fertilizer to my garden.

For those who do not know, pee is sterile, yes, it is. Unless you have a UTI, it is sterile. Pee is filtered from the blood, not from your colon. Once it gets into the air it can be colonized by bacteria and whatnot, but as it leaves the body, its sterile, you aren’t spreading anything, except good fertilizer. That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that you could drink your pee like an idiot. Urinating is how your body filters your blood, adding the stuff right back in is not healthy. If you’re ever in a survival situation, don’t drink your pee. Just don’t do it. Make a simple solar still, it isn’t hard, you can purify it easily enough, don’t be lazy like Bear Grylls.

Urine is mostly water, with added urea (which is basically nitrogen), some salt, and trace other compounds, nothing dangerous to your garden. It can be acidic though, so you don’t want to actually pee on your plants. Also, just personally, I don’t pee on my vegetable garden. It isn’t dangerous, but that doesn’t mean I want to risk splashing on my food. I’ll grow vegetables in well composted cow manure, which is definitely more gross, and plenty of people will do the deed in the veggie patch, but I won’t. I will pee into my compost and then later use that compost in the vegetable garden, but I let it all compost for awhile of course.

What I like to do is fertilize trees with it. It is a nitrogen fertilizer after all, and if you want a tree to grow bigger it needs nitrogen.

Just make sure to spread it around, chances are your pee is not that acidic, but over time you could affect the soil PH, additionally if your diet if really high in salt you could end up making unwanted salt deposits. The easiest thing to do is to just eat less salt, you’ll be healthier anyways. So what you want to do is find a plant you think could use more nitrogen, and pee around the root zone of it. Easy peesy, you’ll help the plant and lower your water bill. Additionally, anecdotally human urine can act as a repellent for critters that might otherwise come and munch on your garden.

This is so easy to do I recall the country of Australia running some sort of public campaign a few years back trying to get men to use the great outdoors, for them it was about saving water, but I’m sure the lawns loved it too.

If you really wanted to get into this more you could even buy what is called a urine diverting toilet which has been used more in less developed countries but is finding greater use here as well lately. This allows an easier method of indoor collection of urine to be used in the garden. What will they think of next?

The main point I want to get across is that when you’re out gardening, and you feel the urge, you don’t have to go running inside, you’re not only choosing the more convenient option, it is earth friendly too.

Spring means that the garden centers are packed with people, and car trunks are packed with plants. Everybody has dirt on their knees, dirt under their nails, and are excited about gardening. To make certain that this excitement yields positive results, let’s discuss the basics in this article of spring planting tips.

Installing new plants and having them grow successfully is not difficult, nor is it as complicated as some would have you think. Is it as easy as just digging a hole and setting the plant in? Yes, it certainly can be. I won’t get into bed preparation, as I have covered that in other articles that are available at http://www.freeplants.com

Let’s start with B&B plants. B&B is short for balled in burlap. Closely examine the ball on the plant that you have purchased. Did the diggers wrap twine around the ball to hold the plant secure? If they did, you should at least cut the twine and lay it in the bottom of the hole, or remove it completely. Pay close attention around the stem of the plant where it emerges from the root ball, as diggers often wrap the twine around the stem several times as they tie the ball. This is extremely important because if the string is nylon, it will not rot and will girdle and kill the plant two or three years from now.

When B&B plants are stored in the nursery for extended periods of time it becomes necessary to re-burlap them if the bottom starts to rot before the plants are sold. If the plant that you buy has been re-burlaped it is possible that there could be nylon stings between the two layers of burlap, check the stem carefully. As long as the nylon string is removed from around the stem of the plant, it is actually harmless around the rest of the ball, and you do not have to remove it.

Is the root ball wrapped in genuine burlap, or imitation burlap made of a non-biodegradable plastic material?

Genuine burlap will rot quickly underground and does not have to be disturbed before planting. If you’re not sure or suspect a poly type burlap, you don’t have to remove it completely, but should loosen it around the stem of the plant and cut some vertical slices around the circumference of the ball.

More spring planting tips . . .

Now here’s the critical part. What kind of soil are you planting in?

If your soil is heavy clay, I highly suggest that your raise the planting bed at least 8” with good rich topsoil. If you can’t do that for some reason, install the plant so that at least 2” or more of the root ball is above the existing grade and mound the soil over the root ball. Keep in mind that plants installed this way could dry out over the summer, but planting them flush with the ground in heavy clay can mean that the roots will be too wet at other times of the year.

The “experts” suggest that when planting in clay soil you dig the hole wider and deeper than the root ball and fill around and under the plant with loose organic material. That sounds like a really great idea doesn’t it? Some of these experts also recommend that you dig the hole extra deep and put a few inches of gravel in the bottom for drainage. Where do you suppose they think this water is going to “drain” to?

Keep in mind that most B&B plants are grown in well drained soil. That means that the soil in the root ball is porous and water can easily pass through. Now imagine if you will, a root ball about 15” in diameter, setting in a hole 30” diameter. All around and under that root ball is loose organic matter. Inside of that root ball is porous soil. Now along comes Mother Nature with a torrential downpour. There is water everywhere, and it is not going to soak into that hard packed clay soil, so it is just flowing across the top of the ground searching for the lowest point.

When it reaches our newly planted tree surrounded by loose organic matter, it is going to seep in until the planting hole is completely full of water. (Remember my article on getting rid of standing water and the French drain system?) By using this planting technique we have actually created a French drain around our poor little plant that can not tolerate it’s roots being without oxygen for long periods of time. Because the bottom of this hole is clay, even though we’ve added gravel for drainage, there is nowhere for the water to go, and this plant is going to suffer and likely die.

If you can not raise the planting bed with topsoil, and are planting in clay soil, I recommend that you install the root ball at least 2” above grade and backfill around the ball with the soil that you removed when you dug the hole. Backfilling with the clay soil that you removed is actually like building a dam to keep excess water from permeating the root ball of your newly planted tree. The plant is not going to thrive in this poor soil, but at least it will have a chance to survive.

More spring planting tips . . .

Once again, raising the bed with good rich topsoil is the best thing you can do to keep your plants healthy and happy.

No matter what kind of soil you have, be careful not to install your plants too deep. They should never be planted any deeper than they were grown in the nursery. Planting too deep is a common problem, and thousands of plants are killed each year by gardeners who just don’t understand how critical planting depth is.

Staking newly planted trees is always a good idea. If your new tree constantly rocks back and forth when the wind blows it will have a very difficult time establishing new roots into the existing soil. Stabilize the tree with a stake. You can use a wooden stake, a fence post, or for small trees I often use 1/2” electro magnetic tubing, (conduit), available at any hardware store.

You can secure the tree to the stake with a single wrap of duct tape. In about six months or a year the sun will dry the glue on the duct tape and it will fall off. Check the tape to make sure that it has fallen off. You don’t want to girdle the tree with the tape.

More spring planting tips . . .

Container grown plants are much easier. Follow the rules for depth of planting as described earlier. Before gently removing the plant from the container check the drain holes in the bottom of the container for roots that might be growing out the holes. If so cut them off so they will not make it difficult to get the plant out of the container.

The easiest way to remove the plant from the container is to place your hand over the top of the container and turn it completely upside down and give it a gentle shake. The plant should slide right into your hand.

Examine the root mass as you hold it in your hand. Sometimes when plants have been growing in a container for a long time the roots start to grow in a circular pattern around the root mass. This is not good, and you should disturb these roots before planting so you can break this circular pattern. You can take a knife and actually make about three vertical slices from the top of the root mass to the bottom. This will stimulate new roots that will grow outward into the soil of your garden. Or you can just take your fingers and loosen the roots that are circling the root mass and force them outward before you plant them.

What about fertilizer, bone meal, peat moss, and all those other additives they are going to try and sell you at the garden center?

Raise your planting beds with good rich topsoil and forget about the additives. Be very careful with fertilizers, they can do more harm than good. I landscaped my house 14 years ago and I haven’t got around to fertilizing the plants yet, and have no intention of doing so. They look great.

As far as bone meal and all those other soil additives are concerned, don’t get too caught up in all that stuff. The only thing that I know for sure is that they will make your wallet thinner, but I don’t think you’ll see a difference in your plants. Over the years I’ve landscaped several hundred homes with fantastic results, and I never added any of these additives to my planting beds.

Did I mention planting in good rich topsoil?  That’s the secret!

Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit his most
interesting website, http://www.freeplants.com and sign up for his
excellent gardening newsletter, and grab a FREE copy of his
E-book, “Easy Plant Propagation”.

Features:

• Germination station with electric heat, humidity control and 72-cell seedling inserts
• Provides gentle warmth to the planting bed; controls humidity under 2-inch dome
• Humidity dome with dual vent points for optimal airflow
• Includes seed starting booster, instructions with growing tips
• Watertight base tray measures 11 by 22 inches

Too often people come to me asking what kind of a tree, or what kind of shrubs can be planted in a wet area to dry it up. This is the wrong approach. Most plants, and I mean almost all plants are not going to survive in an area where the soil is soggy for extended periods of time. The roots need to breath, and planting a tree or shrub in a water area will kill it.

Another common approach is to try and fill the area with topsoil. Depending on a variety of variables, this can work, but many times adding additional soil to a wet area will only shift the water to another area just a few feet away.

If you are lucky enough to have some natural fall to your property, or a drainage ditch near by, this problem is easy enough to solve. If you happen to live in an area that was developed over the past few years, there might even be system to remove storm water near by. In many new home developments I’ve seen storm water catch basins already installed in backyards. Trust me, this is a good thing. There is nothing worse than having a soggy yard all the time.

If you are fortunate to have some fall to your yard, or a storm water system that you can drain water into, this problem is easy to solve. Make sure you check with your local officials before you do anything at all with a storm drain. All you have to do is go to your local building supply center and buy some 4” perforated plastic drain pipe. The best kind for this purpose is the flexible kind that comes in 100’ rolls. This type of drain pipe has small slits all around the pipe. These slits allow water to enter the pipe so it can be carried away.

Just dig a trench from the center of the low area you are trying to drain, to the point that you intend to drain it to. Using a simple line level you can set up a string over top of the trench to make sure that your pipe runs down hill all the way. A line level is a very small level that is designed to attach to a string. Any hardware stores sells them for just a couple of dollars. Set the string up so it is level, then measure from the string to the bottom of your trench to make sure you have constant fall. You should have 6” fall for every 100’ of pipe.

The highest point is going to be the area that you are trying to drain, so you only want your pipe deep enough at this point so it can be covered with soil. Once the trench is dug just lay the pipe in. At the highest end of the pipe you’ll need to insert a strainer into the end of the pipe to keep soil from entering the pipe. Cover the pipe with some washed stone, and then backfill the trench with soil. The washed stone creates a void around the pipe so that the water can find it’s way into the pipe. Washed stone is usually inexpensive stone that has been washed so it is clean and free of mud. The only part of the pipe that needs to be exposed is the low end, where the water exits the pipe. Do not put a strainer in that end.

If you do not have anywhere that you can drain the water to, you still might be able to do something. But first consider what is happening, and why the water is standing where it is. Even if you have well drained soil, water can not soak in fast enough during periods of heavy rain, and it runs across the top of the ground and eventually finds the lowest point, and either leaves the property, or gets trapped.

If you have well drained soil, the trapped water usually soaks in. If you have heavy clay soil, the water lays there, and the soil underneath becomes very compacted, and the problem compounds itself. The more water that stands, the worse the drainage gets.

What I have done in areas like this, where there is standing water, but nowhere to drain it to, is to install a French drain system that actually carries the water away from the low area, and allows it to seep into the ground over a larger distance, where the soil is not quite so compacted. To install this French drain system you do everything exactly as explained above, except instead of draining the water to a lower area, you can send it in any direction you like. Even in the direction from which it came, which is uphill.

When installing this type of system, it’s a good idea to dig a number of shorter trenches, all heading away from the area where the water stands. Using the line level, make sure your trenches fall away from their point of origin so once the water enters the pipes it will flow away from the wet spot. What is going to happen is that during times of heavy rain the low area is still going to trap water, but much of that water is going to seep into the drain pipes and eventually leach into the soil under each trench.

Because this soil has not been compacted by the standing water and the baking sun, it will accept the water. It won’t happen near as fast as if you could just drain the water to a ditch, but at least you will have a mechanism in place that will eventually disperse the water back into the soil. It’s a lot easier to leach 200 gallons of water into a series of trenches that total 100 lineal feet, than it is to expect that water to leach into a 10’ by 10’ area that is hard and compact.

Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit his most
interesting website, http://www.freeplants.com   and sign up for his
excellent gardening newsletter, and grab a FREE copy of his
E-book, “Easy Plant Propagation”