Embrace spring with essential kitchen herbs
Easy and productive plants to grow to welcome a new season
With spring almost here, my house is filling up fast with flats of sown seeds and sprouted seedlings. I start with many veggies and flowers, but also a wide selection of my favourite kitchen herbs.
Growing herbs was my gateway into gardening when, as a teenager, I discovered I could grow many of the plants we used to flavour our food. That was more than 30 years ago and I still take delight in growing herbs for fresh use and drying.
If you use a lot of herbs in your cooking, you can save money by planting them in pots or garden beds. They’re considered high-value crops as they’re expensive to buy at the supermarket, but most are easy and productive plants to grow.
I’d suggest planting the herbs you use the most, like basil, parsley and oregano, and also trying something new like lemon verbena or Thai basil.
Many herbs can be grown from seeds started indoors or direct sown outside, or you can buy transplants from local nurseries.
• Basil - If I could grow just one herb it would be sweet basil. I love the spicysweet flavour of the leaves and add them to many different dishes. Growing great basil starts with the right site. This heat-loving herb needs full sun and fertile, welldraining soil. Raised beds are great as is a big container.
I start basil seeds indoors under grow lights in early April, about six weeks before the last expected spring frost. You can also buy seedlings from your favourite local garden centre but don’t plant them outside until the temperatures are reliably warm. My go-to varieties include Everleaf Genovese, Rutgers Obsession, Spicy Globe and Devotion.
• Parsley - With Lebanese in-laws, I’ve learned just how versatile parsley is in the kitchen. It adds a fresh flavour to practically everything and is essential in dishes like tabouli and falafel.
I grow both curly and flatleaved varieties, starting the seeds indoors in mid-march. Parsley is fairly slow-growing and needs about eight weeks of indoor growth. Once it’s ready for the garden, plant the seedlings outdoors in a spot with at least six to eight hours of direct sun.
Last year, I grew a new-tome variety called Menuette, which has extremely narrow foliage, making it easy to chop very finely. The plants are beautiful and delicious.
• Rosemary - In its native Mediterranean region, rosemary is a perennial evergreen shrub. In colder climates, it’s grown as an annual herb, often in containers. I like terra cotta pots for the aesthetic, but the porous material also allows excess moisture to evaporate from the soil, which rosemary appreciates.
Rosemary plants have a conifer appearance with needle-like leaves packed with fragrant and flavourful oils. You can grow rosemary from seed, but it’s extremely slow so you’ll need to sow them indoors now. The tiny seeds need light to germinate, so press them into the dampened growing mix. I prefer to buy seedlings in late spring as there are many improved cultivars available at garden centres. Good choices include Arp, Barbeque, Rex, and Prostratus, a cultivar with a unique pendulous growth habit.
• Greek oregano - Common oregano is a widespread garden herb, but I find it lacks the bold flavour of Greek oregano, my preferred type. I grow at least a dozen plants each summer, sprinkling the chopped leaves fresh over pizza and potatoes and drying plenty for the winter pantry.
Greek oregano, which has deep green leaves, can be grown from seeds, but they need eight to 10 weeks of indoor growth, so start them inside now. As with rosemary, the small seeds need light to sprout, so press them gently into potting soil.
A related crop, Syrian oregano, sometimes known as za’atar, has smaller, silvery green leaves and a more compact growth habit. This is the oregano I use to make za’atar spice mix, a blend of dried Syrian oregano, sesame seeds, sumac, and salt. Za’atar is lovely in marinades and over potatoes, but it’s best when mixed with olive oil, spread over pizza dough and baked until golden. My favourite breakfast!
Other essential herbs include mint (grow in pots, not gardens as it spreads aggressively), lemon verbena (great for tea), chives (dig up a clump from a friend), cilantro (direct seed outdoors in May) and thyme (it’s slow to grow from seed, so buy plants). Niki Jabbour is the author of four best-selling books, including her latest, Growing Under Cover. She is a twotime winner of the American Horticultural Society Book Award. Find her at Savvygardening.com and on social media.