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Herbs in Your
Garden
Every garden, patio
or windowsill should have herbs.
They are indispensable for cooking, offer wonderful fragrances,
and provide a host of interesting leaf shapes and growth forms.
Most require lots of sun, many of the perennials tolerate
drought. They can be tucked in with flowers or vegetables.
Making a short list of ‘must have’ culinary herbs is difficult,
but here is my attempt. A deep whiff of
rosemary is sufficient to add cheer to even the gloomiest of days.
This tender perennial has needle-like leaves that add an
interesting texture to the garden and its flavor is unbeatable with
roasted potatoes, mixed root vegetables, or nuts. Greek oregano is a
hardy perennial and adds wonderful flavor to tomato, beef or lamb
dishes. Sweet marjoram, a
tender perennial usually grown as an annual, is a relative, and is
milder. Decorative oreganos, such as “Herrenhausen”, “Bristol Cross” or
Dittany of Crete have lovely flowers that add color to dried
arrangements. Common thyme, a hardy
perennial, can enhance a wide variety of foods including meat,
vegetables and eggs. Lemon
thyme is great with fish, chicken or in tea.
Silver thyme is useful in hanging baskets or as an accent plant.
Several of the low growing varieties such as red or
white--flowering creeping thyme form dense perennial groundcovers. The gray-green, thick
and puckered leaves of the hardy perennial garden sage adds yet another
interesting texture to the garden and flavor to your cooking.
Purple, golden and tricolor sages are showy additions to border
plantings, but may not make it through the winter.
Pineapple sage makes great tea, can be used in jams and jellies,
and is easily overwintered as cuttings. Each year I also overwinter
cuttings of Mexican bush sage; I am willing to wait for its gorgeous
velvety lavender flowers that bloom at the very end of our growing
season. A recent favorite of mine is Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and
Blue’, an anise-scented sage with spectacular deep blue blossoms.
A tender perennial, I’ve found the cuttings tricky to grow. Almost all mints must
be restrained, for they are hardy perennials capable of overtaking your
entire garden. Spearmint is
valuable for cooking, peppermint tea is soothing to the stomach, apple
or pineapple mint and many others are decorative as well as flavorful. I tuck both curly and
flat-leaved parsley in my flowerbeds.
Both are biennials that can easily be grown from seed and have
culinary uses far beyond an attractive garnish.
I have had less luck growing cilantro, and since it is easily
available in grocery stores, I fall back on that source for my cooking. Onion chives is a hardy
perennial herb that is lovely placed among flowers or growing in a
planter – both the tubular leaves and purple flowers are useful in the
kitchen. Perhaps you can
find a friend who would share a bit as they divide their plants. The lacey leaves and
graceful flower heads of dill add a pleasant texture to the garden and a
wonderful tang to cooking.
Seed it once and you will have dill in succeeding seasons. French tarragon is a
hardy perennial that will thrive season after season offering its
wonderful flavor to much more than fish and vinegar, its most common
uses. It is best used
lightly and not cooked too long. Careful soil
preparation is needed to grow lavender successfully, but you will be
rewarded with plants of lovely fragrance and flowers that can be used in
cooking or dried for spectacular wreaths or bouquets. Many lists of common
culinary herbs include lemon balm.
Personally I have avoided adding this to my home garden because
it is one of those overeager plants that friends try to pawn off as they
dig up ubiquitous volunteers.
I prefer to grow lemon verbena though it is a tender perennial
that seems to attract whitefly when brought in for the winter.
It has a fantastic lemon scent and taste; try adding leaves to
sun tea or grinding them with a little lime juice and sugar to bring out
the flavor of fruit salads. The Herb of the Year
for 2011 is horseradish. The
roots are used as a spicy condiment for meats or seafood but were
historically used medicinally.
It is grown from root cuttings as an annual for the best culinary
quality. It spreads rapidly and can be difficult to eradicate. A short word about
scented geraniums. There are
a seemingly endless variety of these plants, valuable primarily because
of their wonderful scents and stunning leaf shapes.
The flowers are delicate, not showy like those of zonal
geraniums. A few, such as
rose geraniums, can be used to flavor tea or jelly. Edible flowers could be
a topic all on its own, but I must mention my favorite.
Nasturtiums brighten both your garden and your plate.
The peppery taste is addictive in salads and herbed cream cheese.
Try a few seeds this year.
I have concentrated
here on the most common culinary herbs, not delving too much into herbs
for fragrance, crafts, beauty products, dyes, or medicine.
The world of herbs is a wide one.
I invite you to visit the herb garden at Copyright 2011 |