Herbs Ideas, Tips & Guides

Want the best of both worlds? Here are the Best Edible Ground Cover Plants that you can grow to add stunning appeal to your landscape with a fresh supply in your kitchen!

One thing I sometimes grapple with is how far apart to space seeds and plants in a container. Should I follow the guidelines on the side of the seed packet – or can veg in containers be grown closer together? After playing around with different spacings, I ‘discovered’ some general rules of thumb.

In this case, it was the egg, as that is what I found myself thinking of when I picked today’s blooms…

You’ve probably heard of companion planting: Grouping different plant species near each other to the mutual or sole benefit of one or the other. Companion planting methods are used for various reasons, most commonly to repel pests. Herbs, including thyme, are often recommended companion plants. So what companion plants go well with thyme? Read on to learn about companion plants for thyme.

Grow these Best European Houseplants if you wish to add some variety to your houseplant collection.

August has been a strange month and although in parts of the UK has been particularly wet, here in the no-mans land between the East and West Midlands we have had rain throughout the month, but not in any great quantity, and it has been warm rather than hot Looking back, I am guessing this the reason behind the almost overwhelming growth in the garden, growth of annuals, perennials, shrubs  – and WEEDS!

Growing herbs in your home garden is not only restricted to cooking, aromatherapy, and health, but also the beauty of the blooms! Check out some striking Herbs With Purple Flowers!

There are always lots of things to learn as a gardener, and many of them can only be learned through doing—through actually getting out there and getting your hands dirty. But there are some things gardeners can learn from reading, watching, or listening.

Discover the radiant world of theYellow Flowering Herbs – the plants you can grow for their health benefits and radiant blooms, both!

Perfect for small spaces, theseVertical Pegboard Garden Ideas to Grow More Plants combine creativity and functionality, allowing you to nurture a flourishing array of plants while adding a touch of artistic charm to your surroundings.

In the world of botanical beauty, a unique serenity is found within Herbs with Greyish Leaves. Join us on a journey to explore the cool and understated charm of these herbs!

Lavender is a lovely and popular flowering herb. The lavender I grow in my garden isLavandula angustifolia, also known as English Lavender. The variety I have is called Hidcote, which is a relatively compact lavender with deep purple flowers. Versatile and easy to grow, this lavender is a useful wildlife attractant on the sunny fringe of my forest garden.

The purpose of companion planting is an effort to encourage growth, yield, and taste of the plants by growing them together. Planting beneficial plants together helps in keeping harmful pests away and also works on attracting pollinators. Keep reading to know more about Zucchini Companion Plants that are great for best yield and taste.

Creeping Thyme is a beautiful plant that adaptable to grow in various conditions. It is easy to look after and also grows stunning flowers!

Basil is one of the easiest herbs to grow in the vegetable garden, herb garden, or kitchen window. The highly aromatic basil leaves protect other plants from pests and attract pollinators as well. The basil plant also prevents insects like Japanese beetles, bean beetles, and worms. Instead of requiring protection, basil helps its neighboring plants. Let’s have a look at the Basil Companion Plants. 

After another weekend working hard in the garden, it looks very different again. Ryan was working on Saturday, so I spent the morning outside. The first thing I did was erect my new raised bed cover, which would have been easier had it not been a bit breezy! But I got there in the end. It’s basically a plastic cold frame that fits over the top of my raised beds. It has nice long anchor pegs to hold it down, and is now being used to harden off plants before they go outside, and protect my brassica seedlings (I bought Flower Sprouts and Purple Sprouting broccoli from the garden centre; now I have to spend the summer protecting them from every pest in the known universe!).

The AeroGarden originally hit UK shelves just in time for Christmas 2008, and continued to make waves through 2009. AeroGardens (there are more models available now) are automated indoor hydroponics units, designed to sit on a shelf and provide small edible plants – herbs, leafy greens, tomatoes if you’re happy pruning – with light and liquid nutrients.

It’s that time of year again, when Advent Botany offers up a feast of festive plants. Long-term readers will remember last year’s Night of the Radishes, my contribution to the Advent Botany 2015 cohort. There was also a 2014 selection.

Sometime towards the end of last year, my friend Chris gave us a homegrown, blue pumpkin. I’m amazed to find that I don’t have a photo of it, but it was large, a fairly traditional pumpkin shape, and rather spiffingly blue. It sat on the dining room table for months, waiting for me to pluck up the courage to do something with it, which eventually happened last week.

Yesterday I read that Trump adviser Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, thinks that the green movement is the greatest threat to freedom.

One of the first things I did in the garden last year, when we were still waiting for the hard landscaping to be finished, was to put some large, colourful planters into the front garden. To begin with they were planted with sweet peppers (actually cool chillies), but in the autumn I replanted them with their permanent contents, and they have become my container herb garden. Although they’re at the front of the house they are one of the easiest place to get to from the kitchen for a quick snip, and the paving means I can get there in my slippers…. This means I can, and do, just pop out to get a handful of fresh herbs, and we are starting to add more of them to our cooking.

I haven’t been well this summer. An unbearable situation at work went on for far too long, and pretty much brought me to my knees. I can’t remember ever having felt so exhausted, literally dragging myself out of bed every morning. Ryan was a big help in the garden, and is the only reason we have made as much progress as we have. We’re stalled at the moment, waiting for the sheds to be delivered, but the plants in the finished half are all doing very well.

There’s nothing quite as British as a nice cup of tea, and sitting down for a good cuppa can certainly brighten up your day. A tea bush is unlikely to thrive in most UK gardens (although there are a couple of tea plantations) because of the climate, but there are plenty of herbs that are easy to grow and make a refreshing brew. They’ll even grow well in containers – so they make ideal plants for a windowbox or a patio. Having them close at hand means you can harvest leaves as and when you need them.

Good King Henry is a perennial herb in the family Chenopodiaceae – the same plant family as some familiar vegetables (including beetroot and chard), some familiar weeds (e.g. Fat Hen) and some other useful but more unusual plants – including quinoa and tree spinach.

Spring is finally here, and whether you’re lucky enough to have a vegetable patch or you have a few pots on the patio or windowsill to fill, it’s time to think about getting this year’s herb garden underway.

If you’ve just decided to grow your own vegetables to save money, then where do you start? A visit to the garden centre, or a quick flick through the seed catalogue, can be daunting – especially if you don’t have a lot of space for your vegetable patch. What’s going to give you the most bang for your buck?

Part of my dissertation involved immersing myself in the history of plants that have been adopted as crops outside their country of origin – novel crops, as I referred to them. It’s a long history, with recorded attempts to move plants from one place to another going back as far as the ancient Egyptians. Even before that, probably for as long as we’ve been human, we have been moving plants around, whether by accident or design.

Basil is absolutely luscious, but this variation on the pesto theme is (surprisingly) even tastier – and parsley is a lot easier to crop in the British climate. The quantities in this recipe are a bit free and easy, so go easy with the garlic, cheese and lemon, adding gradually until you get the ideal combination.

We’ve had the Hydroponicum for over a year now. It has kept us supplied with salads and stir-fry veg, and I’ve grown one or two more experimental crops as well. Not everything I have tried has been successful. My spinach bolted (I’m not sure why, and I haven’t tried again yet). Alliums don’t seem to like germinating in the hydroponic seedling tray, and coriander downright refused. Coriander seedlings will grow hydroponically, though, so I may try allium transplants at some point.

At New Year, the AeroGarden blasted off on a new mission – to grow fruiting veg. It started with a crew of three – two peppers and a tomato. The seeds germinated quickly, and the start of the mission went according to plan.

Earlier this year I was absolutely horrified when the flat footed fence fitters trampled all over my wild garlic. It was just starting to leaf out, and I don’t know why the sudden garlic smell wafting up from their feet didn’t give them pause, but it didn’t!

When I was growing up, one of my favourite meals was gammon with parsley sauce. So when I started my own kitchen garden, I was determined to grow plenty of parsley. But even if you only have a few containers on the patio, it’s easy to grow plenty of parsley that’s much fresher and cheaper than the herbs on sale at the supermarket.

Header image: *Psyche Delia*/Flickr, CC BY-NC

It has been a month since we set up the AeroGarden and started our journey into space gardening. It came with three herbs – basil, dill and parsley. The basil was the first to burst into life and has been the fastest growing. I trimmed the top of one of the young plants at the end of July, and it’s probably ready for another trim now. The parsley was the slowest to germinate and isn’t remotely close to catching up, but it is growing well now.

Once the cool chillies were removed from the planters at the front of the house, it was time to put them to their intended purpose – a high rise herb garden within reach of the front door.

Throughout history, herbs and spices have been extremely popular, used as medicines and aphrodisiacs as well as making their way into dinner. A plant that the Romans (and ancient Greeks and Egyptians) would have been familiar with was Silphium. They thought it was the finest of all seasonings, as well as a top notch medicinal plant. The Romans got a taste for meat from animals fed on Silphium, and it seems that the herb may well then have been grazed into extinction. It never seemed to make it into cultivation. Another possible explanation of Silphium’s disappearance is that a change in the Mediterranean climate meant it could no longer thrive, and died out naturally. According to Pliny, the last known Silphium plant was given to Emperor Nero as a gift.