Grow your own aromatic herbs
I have always felt there is a great affinity between gardening and cooking. Both involve nurturing to some extent, we cook to feed and nurture our families and we may also nurture our fruit and vegetables to provide the food for our families.
The growing of herbs and their use in cooking takes the bond between gardening and cooking to another level as many herbs can also be grown as ornamentals too. Purple sage is a perfect example of this, worthy of its spot in the garden whether it ever accompanies a pork chop or not. Bronze fennel, rosemary, lavender, chives, bay and thyme can also fit this category. Having said that actually growing herbs for cooking shows some intent, your’e not just going to boil that potato you are going to make it special by adding some mint leaves as well and make the effort.
Fortunately for those of you who have limited garden space herbs do very well in pot and containers, in fact this is even more useful if you can grow them near a kitchen door or on an even smaller scale on a window cill. Having recently witnessed a wastral stray tom cat back up to my ground planted thyme plant and do what ever cats do to let other cat know they are around I have formed the opinion that may be pots are a better option anyway.
Herbs love as much sunshine as you can give them and not to get waterlogged at any time of year. In our Irish climate we are never going to grow herbs in the abundance you might see on main land Europe. Huge armfuls of basil, soft piles of fragrant thyme, sheaves of corriander that can be found on French and Italian market stalls. The only way to grow with such profusion as that here is under the cover of a glasshouse or polytunnel. I have seen this first hand where at this time of year growing herbs undercover can be like a game of ‘ What’s the time Mr Wolf ‘ you turn around for a second and when you look back everything seems to have grown, stand and look and nothing appears to move.
As with growing fruit and vegetables there is no point growing something you won’t use. So if you don’t like mint don’t grow it just because it’s easy to, far better to make the effort and grow something you do like. As I mentioned before the shrubby herbs, bay, thyme, rosemary,sage and lavender, which cooks cleverer than myself use sparingly in cooking, can all be border or pot grown. Add to that some of the tougher herbaceous varieties like chives, marjoram, oregano, fennel, sorrel and parsley, I prefer flat leaf myself, which will also grow in the open ground or pots.
Mint can be invasive so I think it is best kept to containers. Basil is really too tender to grow well outside at all in my opinion and I would recommend growing it in a pot underglass or on a window cill. Purple basil is even more temperamental and should always be cosseted under cover.
Coriander is an annual and can easily be grown from seed in kitchen gardens or in containers. It runs to seed very easily so repeat sowings are necessary for a continuous crop. Tarragon is another lovely herb but beware you want French not Russian tarragon which is tasteless but sometimes masquerades in garden centres.
If growing in pots go for a soil based compost like John Innes No. 3 as it has more body to it. Feed with a liquid seaweed fertiliser every couple of weeks. Harvest regularly, you want the fresh soft tips rather than older woody growth. In the open ground choose a sunny dry area, dig in some garden centre bagged manure and a slow controlled release fertiliser. Finally a really special shrubby herb is Lemon verbena that can be soil or container grown. It is a little bit frost tender so needs to be in a sunny sheltered spot. It is mostly used for teas and infusions but for me its real magic is when you rub its leaves as you pass by and take in the most marvelous fresh citrus fragrance it gives off.