Monty Don’s Grow Your Own herbs
They’re so delicious and so easy to grow...
We are a nation of keen vegetable growers yet we almost take herbs for granted, although they are every bit as important and useful in the kitchen.
They are also extremely decorative and much easier than vegetables to grow in containers and small spaces, including indoors on a windowsill or in a window box. In short, there is no reason why anyone who likes fresh herbs cannot grow them easily at home, whatever their situation.
On Saturday, in Weekend magazine, I explained how easy it can be to grow a wide range of delicious, fresh vegetables — and tomorrow and Wednesday, I will be looking at fruit trees as well as berries and currants. But no edible garden is complete without herbs, so today, in the first of these special fourpage pullouts, I’m urging you to give them a go.
One of the great luxuries of growing your own herbs for the kitchen is having plenty of them, so you can use them freely. If you are used to buying herbs from a supermarket, it is a liberation and luxury to be able to pick great bunches of leaves for months on end for the price of a packet of seed or a tiny hydroponically grown pot.
Quality is good, but quality and quantity is best. One of my bugbears in life is the parsimony with which herbs are treated — all those spindly little plants in plastic pots masquerading as parsley or basil, while when you grow them yourself you realise that just one basil or parsley plant will give you ten times as many pickings with twice the flavour. To gather great bunches of parsley or mint and use them with generosity not only changes the way you cook and eat, but changes your whole attitude to herbs and the role they play in garden and kitchen.
Growing your own herbs gives you much more quantity and much better quality for much less money. and if that were not incentive enough, they are one of the least troublesome groups of plants it is possible to grow.
Herbs are delicious, healthy, healing and many are beautiful. They grow superbly in containers and complement most other plants. every garden should have some!