Growing fresh herbs is a simple way to start gardening or enhance your existing garden. Not only are they easy to grow, but they add a ton of flavor to your meals. Snip a few fresh herbs while cooking dinner for a quick addition or dry them to save for cooking year-round. Here are ten herbs that I’ve had success growing, plus tips for cooking with them.
Herbs are the perfect plants to grow in your garden. They grow in containers of all sizes, indoors and outside. If you keep them trimmed, most stay small and are easy to care for.
If you’ve been dreaming of a garden or want to add some herbs to your existing garden, here are ten that I love and think are excellent to grow. Best of all, they’re useful for all kinds of recipes.
10 herbs to grow
1. oregano
How to grow it: Oregano needs full sun. It can be watered less often than its neighbors.
How to eat it: Fresh or dried, it’s essential for marinara. Combine it with a few other herbs for an Italian spice mix that’s great on chicken, pasta, and bread.
2. basil
How to grow it: Basil needs full sun and a bit of humidity, but well-draining soil.
How to eat it: Fresh basil is a key ingredient in pesto sauce. Fresh or dried, it pairs with oregano for marinara or Italian spice mix.
3. cilantro
How to grow it: Cilantro needs full sun but will flower when it gets above 90 degrees regularly. Pinch the flowers off daily to extend cilantro’s life.
How to eat it: Fresh cilantro is excellent in salsa and other Tex-Mex recipes. It’s the main ingredient in chimichurri sauce.
4. sage
How to grow it: Sage needs full sun, a less water than its neighbors.
How to eat it: Dried sage adds a perfect fall flavor to chicken or your Thanksgiving turkey.
5. mint
How to grow it: Mint needs to be grown in a container. Left to go wild, it will… and fill your entire yard if you let it!
How to eat it: Fresh mint can go in a summer fruit salad or mojito cocktails. Dried mint can be added to hot tea.
6. lemon balm
How to grow it: Lemon balm is in the mint family (so it will be very prolific) and has a lemon/mint smell and flavor.
How to eat it: Fresh leaves can be steeped in tea. Dried leaves can be added to diluted vinegar for all-purpose cleaning.
7. rosemary
How to grow it: Rosemary is an evergreen and some varieties grow as large as a Christmas tree. It needs full sun and moderate watering.
How to eat it: Fresh or dried rosemary is delicious on chicken and makes a flavorful garnish on homemade bread like focaccia.
8. thyme
How to grow it: Thyme can handle partial shade and doesn’t like too much water.
How to eat it: Fresh or dried thyme is a good all-purpose seasoning for chicken or vegetables.
9. chives
How to grow it: Chives make nice windowsill container plants. The like full sun and a generous amount of watering.
How to eat it: Chives are just small green onion sprouts. They taste just like green onions, so they can be snipped fresh to top baked potatoes or mix into dressings.
10. parsley
How to grow it: Parsley likes full sun and regular watering. It attracts monarch caterpillars, so you may want to plant extra just for them!
How to eat it: Dried parsley is an ingredient in Italian spice mix. It also makes a nice all-purpose seasoning for chicken or vegetables.
I grow most of my herbs in the same part of my backyard garden, just outside my kitchen door. The others sit on the shelf above my kitchen sink. The trick to using them daily is to keep them where you can see them. While I’ve heard that herbs picked in the morning have a stronger flavor, I tend to pick mine when I start cooking supper simply because that’s when I think of it.
For herbs that are very prolific, you may want to pick them daily or every few days, even if you aren’t using them that often. This encourages the plant to keep making leaves. You never want to pick so many that the plant can’t feed itself though; leaves absorb the sunlight that helps them grow bigger.
Have a backyard gardening question? Leave a comment or send me an email. I’ll do my best to help you out… and it might turn into a whole blog post.
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Thank you for the wonderful post! I love herb gardening, and need to get back to doing more of it. Parsley, cilantro, fennel and rue are all “nesting” plants for the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly. That’s where they lay their eggs, and the caterpillars will devour plants right down to the main stem! We used to raise native butterflies, so we planted a ton of these herbs. We had to protect the ones we wanted to used for cooking by putting them in a cloche 🙂
You’re very welcome! Herb gardens are so flexible and rewarding. It seems every time I plant parsley that it gets eaten up by monarch caterpillars. I think I should probably just plant a whole bed of it!