[Sca-cooks] Re: easy to grow herbs

[Ron and Laurene Wells]

By all means!  Include some variety of Mint in your initial
plantings!  Mint is ideally suited to growing in a pot,  or container of
some sort, because this keeps it's wayward habits under control.  It is
very east to grow, and endures quite a lot of neglect.  I have some
Chocolate Mint that has been growing in a pot for 2-3 years now.   Another
wonderful thing about mint, is after the first year or two, if you decide
you just don't have enough mint for all your hit and iced tea needs, as
well as any garnishes you may want to include, it can very easily be
divided!  Just take a root cutting, plant it in a new location, and tend it
carefully the first year, and  you will have a whole new plant!  Mint also
thrives on pruning, or pinching back.  Keep the tops trimmed off, and the
roots will be healthier and the plant will look bushier.  It is DEFINITELY
a beginner level plant!  If you leave it be, it will get leggy and ugly
looking.  I have successfully grown mint in full shade and full sun.  I
think it really prefers something in the middle though, like filtered
sunlight or partial shade.

Rosemary is another easy plant to grow.  Once it is established it can be
virtually forgotten about in many climates, and it will endure.  A friend
gave me a cutting from her huge shrub of a plant, and I have been able to
root it in water, but have not yet been able to successfully transplant it
to a pot.  Still working on that detail.  If you started with an
established seedling or planting, you would not have the same trials I am
experiencing trying to get this cutting to grow.  My friend has her giant
plant growing in full sun.

Oregano is a nice herb also.  It grows well from seed, but you can often
find seedlings in nurseries, which will give you a much higher success
rate.  It likes full sun, but can grow with some filtered sunlight.

Chives are an excellent starter herb.  If you simply trim the tops when you
are cooking, instead of uprooting the whole plant, the bulbs will grow back
like perennials every spring.  They also make cute little pruple flowers
when you let them grow without disturbing them.  Their attractive foliage
and flowers make a nice addition to any garden bed.  Chives seem to grow in
most range of sun - partial shade to full sun.  I even had some growing on
the North side of my house once, in nearly full shade.

Lavender can grow from seed, it smells nice, and withstands a small amount
of abuse or neglect.  Even when you start out with an established plant
however, it does not withstand drought very well though, as much as it
looks like a desert plant to me, so be sure to keep your Lavender
watered.  I suspect that overwatering could cause similar problems, so I
would rank this plant somewhere near intermediate skill level.  It thrives
in full sun, and does NOT like shade.

Basil grows VERY well from seed, and is also very easy to find as seedlings
or transplants.  You usually find more varieties of basil in seed form
though.  So, depending on how fast you want to see results, or how soon you
want to be able to harvest the product of your labor, choose either
one.  It likes full sun and lots of water in hot summers!  Don't let Basil
dry out more than a day!!

Something to consider about growing plants in pots is that they require TWO
to THREE times as much water as plants growing in the ground.  On hot
summer days, you may have to water your potted plants twice a day to keep
them thriving and healthy.  I highly recommend you invest in a timer drip
system if you anticipate that you will be getting busy, or be gone for
intervals of several days at a time during the summer months.  I have not
yet been able to afford a timer watering system of any sort, and inevitably
EVERY SUMMER some of my plants die because I get too busy to take care of
them.

As far as choosing herbs, I suggest you browse the available plants in your
local nursery (and seed catalogs!) and choose herbs that you have trouble
finding, that you know you will use often, or that simply intrigue you in
some way.  If you are highly interested in the plants you are growing, you
will be more likely to desire to care for them consistently than if you are
growing them simply because some crazy woman said they would be easy to
care for.

Not an herb, but given the recent coments on tea, I thought I would mention
that www.exoticfruit.com sells the chinese Tea Camelia from which tea
leaves are harvested.  I suspect you could grow this in a large planter
also, if it is something you are interested in.  I have not had the
pleasure yet, but it is something that interests me.  You have to order
their printed catalog as they do not as yet have an online ordering system.

Also, for a tremendous variety of herbs from seed (They do sell some
started plants also - though of course shipping costs more because of all
that dirt - but sometimes it's worth it, like when you are too late in
getting your seeds started for the season, or when it is a particularly
difficult variety to grow from seed) I suggest you order a catalog from
this nursery: http://www.nicholsgardennursery.com/
This is where I got my chocolate mint about 4 years ago, that has survived
several tramplings, uprootings, transplants and one move!  They do sell
healthy vigorous plants!

Have fun and Good luck!

-Laurene
http://welcome.to/tinyzoo


At 07:41 AM 5/4/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Message: 9
>Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 00:05:26 -0500
>From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>
>To: SCA-Cooks maillist <SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org>
>Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: SC - Creating a period garden
>Reply-To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
>
>Balthazar of Blackmoor commented:
> > After checking my garden this morning, I have noticed
> > a few more bulbs beginning to form.  Patience, I
> > suppose, is the order of the day...
>
>So how can you tell if the bulbs are starting to form? I assume you
>don't want to pull them out of the ground or probably not uncover
>the bulbs. Can you tell by just clearing a little of the dirt from
>around the stem below the ground, and not hurt the plant?
>
>Thank you Balthazar and the others who sent me info on herb growing
>by email. I think I will try this. At one time I had a bunch of
>various house plants, but they gradually died off as I got active in the
>SCA and got married. Now I may be willing to try again. We are going
>to Fredricksburg, TX, near here in the Texas Hill Country, for our
>anniversary this weekend. One of the places I've spotted in the
>literature is an herb farm (http://www.fredericksburgherbfarm.com/ ).
>They have seeds and they may have cuttings. We'll see.
>
>I don't want to get overly ambitious here, so I want to limit myself
>to say half a dozen herb pots. If you were going to grow just a few
>herbs, which would you pick. Please take into consideration that this
>is a new thing for me, so if there's a big differance the easier to
>grow herbs should take priority.
>
>I'm tired of buying the fresh herbs in the grocery in their expensive
>little plastic boxes, an then using/needing only a small portion of the
>package before they go bad.
>
>I might also try some mint sometime. My mother had a patch that grew
>around the faucet of the backyard hose. It leaked, so the mint got
>plenty of water, yet it was surrounded on three sides by the concrete
>patio and the fourth side by the house. So the mint didn't have a
>chance to run rampant through the yard.