The Fun of Growing Your Herbs and Using Them for Cooking may be a pleasurable and soothing way to connect with nature, but did you know it also offers several health benefits? Gardening is a mentally and physically beneficial hobby that may be enjoyed by individuals of all ages. You also get to enjoy the wonderful fruits, veggies, and herbs you’ve grown. So take your tools and get your hands dirty in the soil!
For thousands of years, people have produced herbs for both food and medicine. They’ve been used to heal illnesses, ailments, and even to calm people in the past.
When I think of herbs, I imagine a gorgeous, aromatic, and delicious salad, such as this Herb Salad. Herbs, on the other hand, have a lot more to offer. For thousands of years, people have been cultivating herbs and researching their medical and nutritional advantages.
Herbs have long been utilized as antiseptics, antibiotics, and even relaxants in traditional medicine. These nutritious and tasty plants may be grown in almost any location.
Herbs Can Be Grown Indoors
The fun of growing herbs is that they may be grown either indoors in pots or outdoors as a shrub. I prefer to plant some in a container and place them at my front entrance to greet my visitors with a lovely, refreshing welcome!
The truth that your meal will start to taste very much like a five-star restaurant with the simple addition of fresh herbs should be enough to persuade you to cultivate your herbs if for nothing else. The only disadvantage is that you might never want to go out to eat again!
Indoor herbs require at least six hours of sunshine. I don’t have any windows in my kitchen, though I do have two huge porches with plenty of room for pots, as well as a specific place for growing herbs among two pairs of stairs near the kitchen and a vegetable garden. Another interesting thing I do is combine edible flowers with my herbs before planting them as shrubbery.
My Herbs
I’ve previously planted rosemary base plants, interspersed with other herbs like lemongrass, basil, oregano, thyme, and sage for almost two feet into the backyard. I like to surround them with strawberries, which I like. These herbs are really simple to cultivate, and I love how wild they appear when they’re all growing together.
This year, I potted onions and parsley in an Antique herb pot and an Italian fountain. They are not only attractive and practical, but they also make it simple even for children to harvest herbs for my Quail Pizza! Basil, Italian parsley, marjoram, sage, rosemary, and thyme make up the Italian herb pot.
It’s crucial to keep herbs wet if you want them to develop well. Mist your herbs frequently if you live in a dry environment. Herbs also want to be picked often to maintain their health and output. Remember to freeze or dry your herbs! Enjoy a delicious gastronomic adventure.
How to Save Herb Seeds in Simple Steps
Among the most challenging gardening activities has been saving herb seeds. You can get fresh herbs for pizzas, sauces, pesto, or just to put in salads during the vegetative phase, but the plants finally stop producing and then go to seed. The next goal is to gather and save the seeds after you’ve harvested what you want to save. This is the time of year when I start thinking about next year’s fortune.
Herb Seeds Can Be Saved
It is quite painless to save your seeds. It may appear time-consuming, but consider that each small flower bud of a herb might contain dozens, if not hundreds, of seeds.
Whether it comes to deciding when to let your herbs grow to seed when and how to harvest them, the decision is perhaps the most difficult.
Calendula and chamomile, for example, will self-seed. This indicates that the seeds will drop to the soil the next year and thrive. You may still collect seeds from such plants, and I recommend doing so just in case the herb doesn’t self-sow due to a very rainy winter. I also prefer my herbs to self-seed as many as possible because they keep getting stronger and better as they knew when to spring out from the soil and have developed a strong root system.
Herbs that don’t self-sow or from which you wish to keep seeds must be allowed to “go to seed” before being harvested. This involves allowing plants to establish a blossom head, and that is where your seeds will grow or holding back the bulbs of some herbs, such as garlic and onions, to transplant the following year. This may be accomplished by drying the bulbs and keeping them in a cold location until you’re ready to replant them. Garlic and onions can be planted in the fall and harvested the following spring, or planted in the spring and harvested the following fall.
It’s critical to keep the flower head on the plant for as long as possible so that it may dry mainly on its own. Before they are totally dry, some plants will shed their seeds. These seeds will need to be picked “underripe” and dried inside. However, to acquire the most developed seed, try your utmost to let them dry on the stem directly. So go and enjoy the fun of growing and cooking with herbs.
