A herb garden is a simple way to add fresh herbs to your food. What’s more, is the feeling of pride you’ll get each time you use these herbs in your cooking or medicines. Herb gardens not only provide you with a supply of free and tasty plants, they are also beautiful, brightening up the landscape while leaving behind tantalizing scents.

Many people find that having various herbs surrounding the bottom of their trees looks great and also supports pollination from insects. Although, before you start you need to decide if you want a cooking herb garden, ornamental, fragrant, medicinal, colonial or a windowsill. You can have all of these in your backyard if it is large enough.

Location & Soil

The great thing about herbs is that they grow fast. So, you don’t have to wait a long time until you start tasting the fresh herbs from your labor. However, depending on the herbs you plant some thrive in shade others in sun. The majority need at least six hours of sunlight every day.

One of the best and most convenient locations is near the kitchen. A couple of herbs near your kitchen makes it easy to reach and harvest as required. Once you have chosen the location, the next step is to check the soil. You’ll always want to ensure well-drained soil, a daily watering routine and a combination of fertilizer and compost.

Check to see if the soil has a lot of clay. If it does, then add more compost to the mix. Compost is something you can never have enough of even if your soil is good. After all, herbs require nutrition to grow.

We would like to advise avoiding the use of compost manures in a herb garden. These have high nitrogen content which can help the herbs grow faster, at the expense of their flavor.

Choosing the Herbs & Planting

Based on your personal preference, choose what herbs you want. Almost every herb will grow for at least a single season and may continue to grow each year. The most common and very useful herbs are basil, rosemary, chives, oregano, and sage.

Herbs can be planted as either seeds or plants. If you want to hit the ground running, you should plant a mature plant. If time is something you have a lot of then you can save money by planting seeds.

Once the herbs are planted, they will need 2 inches of water a week. They may also need to be harvested frequently. There is no such thing as harvesting a herb plant too early. Regular harvesting will do more good than any perceived harm. Harvesting a herb plant helps to produce more foliage which will increase how much you can harvest in the future.

Bottom Line

Setting up a backyard herb garden is very easy and cost-effective. However, apart from the steps above you are more than welcome to experiment.