Health & Medical Food & Drink

Is it Hard to Grow Herbs?

Do you love to make Pesto or season your chicken with parsley and rosemary? Maybe you love the taste of fresh mint in a cool summer drink. Fresh herbs are the way to go when it comes to seasoning your foods and drink. You can't use dried basil in Pesto, you need to use fresh basil leaves. You could use dried parsley or dried rosemary, but it just wouldn't be the same. One option is to head to the grocery store to pick up some "fresh" herbs. How fresh are they? Not as fresh as if you had grown them yourself. They are also much more expensive when you buy them in the store.

If you are interested in growing your own herbs, you might be a little uneasy. Maybe you picture yourself killing your back in a large garden while trying to dig, weed, and till your garden. Or maybe you picture your entire kitchen littered with pots of herbs growing crazy or drying out because you just can't get the watering schedule right. Growing herbs is not as hard as you might think it is.

One great thing about herbs is that you can grow as few or as many as you want and still get enough for it to be worth it. Just a couple of parsley plants will give you enough parsley to season your family's meals a couple times a week. Still, if you really love many different herbs, you can grow a large variety and still not have an excessive amount of pots around the house.

First, just decide how much you want of what herbs. If you want a large variety, start with just one or two plants of each. Plant them in small containers, put them by a sunny window, and water them regularly. You can put a fertilizer in the soil beforehand to make sure they grow strong, or you can give them a little milk mixed with water every couple of weeks.

When your herbs grow big and bushy full of leaves, pluck what you need. Use the herbs in your foods and soon your herbs will grow new leaves. That's what's so great about herbs. They will keep producing year-round if you let them. If you get some dead leaves because you took too long to pluck them, just remove them to let the new leaves grow in.

Growing herbs is not hard. You can make it more complicated if you grow a garden in your yard or if you have a lot of plant boxes and pots, but it's all up to you how complex you make it.


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