One of the neat things about growing herbs is that you can grow them year round.  Herb garden plants grow very well indoors which means you can continue to have fresh herbs all winter. Plus, all the beautiful greenery really perks up your home.

There are many different herbs with many different uses.  In addition to adding wonderful flavor to your dishes, they can be decorative as well as produce a wonderful fragrance.  Herb garden plants are much nicer and healthier to smell than commercial sprays that are used to freshen the air in your home.  There is nothing like the sweet smell of a fresh herb garden when you walk into your home.

Herbs are also used for medicinal purposes.  They have been used for healing for hundreds of years.  A popular herb used for medicinal purposes is mustard seed.  It has been known to provide relief for sore muscles and arthritis when applied to the skin. It is used to help with respiratory problems and, when ingested, aids the digestive system.

If you are interested in growing herbs for medicinal purposes then do a little research to learn more about these herbs.  There are many that have lots of different healing properties.  You will find lots of information on the internet and there are some good books available that will tell you all about the many uses of various herbs. Before using medicinal herbs it is always a good idea to check with your physician.

Growing herb garden plants in your kitchen is great because, if you like to use fresh herbs for cooking, they are right there within easy reach.  If you have limited space you might want to choose which herbs to grow based on those you will use most when preparing meals.

A very popular herb and one of the easiest to grow is Italian herbs.  These herbs are great for cooking but are beautiful and have a wonderful fragrance as well. Some examples of Italian herbs are oregano, parsley, basil, fennel and garlic.

Some other ideas for your herbs include adding some fresh sage to your turkey dressing and adding thyme to spice up a Cajun dish.  Mint leaves added to iced tea makes a tasty drink to go with your meal.

Culinary herbs are excellent for growing indoors in the winter.  When the markets are low on supply you will have all the herbs you need right at your fingertips. You also have the added benefit of their wonderful aroma and beautiful foliage.

I shouldn’t speak of wonderful scents without mentioning lavender.  For fragrance this is perhaps the most popular of all herb garden plants.  It is known for its calming effect and is widely use in sachets and potpourri.  There is nothing like relaxing after an herb filled meal with the wonderful aroma of lavender filling the room!

Growing herbs as been a popular activity throughout history dating back to the Bible. Producing herbs in one’s home herb garden has always been a time tested method of assuring a constant supply on these fine flavorful plants.

This took a backdrop with the enduring popularity of convenient food stores and mass manufacturing of these ”products”, however, actually there is a strong resurgence of interest in the joy of creating and maintaining a personal home herb garden. The pleasure and excitement of growing herbs has been rediscovered and is even practiced in small apartments in urban areas.

Returning to this wonderful and practical hobby can be for many different reasons. The home herb garden can be cultivated for economical reasons, freshness and availability of the product, the scents and flavors associated with having herbs growing in your environment. There are many other reasons that can be attributed to this pastime if not simply for the sheer pleasure of seeing these beautiful plants come to life in your environment.

If you are among the newly initiated, you may have to do a little homework to start you off in the right direction. There is a large selection of different herbs to choose from when starting a herb garden project.

There are basically 73 different herbs recognized and are divided into 4 main categories classified for their individual usage. However, certain herb can be used for more than one purpose so can be classified in more than one category.

The list of herbs is quite extensive and can be classified in 4 main categories: aromatic, medicinal, ornamental and culinary. The gardener can choose which herbs he will be growing by defining the usage he plans to use them for once harvested. This is a brief review of the 4 main categories.

Culinary Usage
The many usage of herbs to enhance the taste of food has been mentioned repeatably through history. So many recipes have been created and savored by the perfect amount of a well balanced mix of herbs.

Most often a small garden can provide for a family very well so the amount of space needed depending on the variety you may wish to grow. Since herbs are used in small quantity, 1 or 2 plants can will be sufficient for a normal household. Among the most popular herbs grown are thyme, basil, sage, chives, oregano, mint, rosemary and savory.

Aromatic Usage
Aromatic herbs are in a class of their own. They offer great pleasure to the senses if not by their beauty then by the wonderful scent of the foliage and flowers.

If you choose to grow herbs with that intention, aromatic herbs can be a very interesting garden project. The enchanting fragrances come from their oils produced while growing and are used to produces various perfumes, eau de toilette and lotions.

Once harvested and dried, you can enjoy the smell of the plants for many months. They can be used to freshen the air in rooms or spaces and even used to give a pleasant smell to clothes and linen.

Aromatic herbs that are popular:  basil, marjoram, mint and rosemary.

Medicinal Usage

Before modern medicine, medicinal herbs has long been used to treat injuries and many levels of sickness. Many herbs are known and used even nowadays for their healing qualities. They play an important role in many products we by in a pharmacy, prescriptions and is used extensively with alternative natural medicine.

If you plan to grow herbs for medicinal usage, please research these herbs and capacities, They can be excellent when used in the right conditions but can be unpredictable if used randomly.

Medicinal herbs commonly used: Ginseng, Ephedra, Catnip, Dandelion and St. John’s Wort.

Ornamental Usage
Thought not always the first group of plants to be proposed when discussing landscaping, an wisely designed arrangement of ornamental herbs can be quite breathtaking by their brightly colored flowers and foliage.

They can be combined with other plants or even other herbs to create an overall exotic layout. Among the ornamental herbs that are often

Growing herbs in your garden can be satisfying. Seeing the way your herbs grow from seed to a plant with sprouting leaves and budding flowers, smelling the aroma of each herb, the way they all grow well together as one beautiful, happy herb family.

Then along comes your mint, which is EVERYWHERE.

Mints – which usually symbolizes virtue due to its fresh, mountain-spring flavor and aroma – are actually easy to plant and is useful for a lot of dishes; but it is also a voracious grower. If a mint plant had a mind, I would say that the aim for their existence is world (or in this case, garden) domination. It even has a killer instinct – the seemingly mild-scented mint will happily take and choke the life out of every herb in the same plot it is in.

Lesson number 1: Contain the power of expansion of the mint. Try to keep it in a large pot, or bury the pot in the flowerbed. Apply some mulch to the bed (or around the said pot) to discourage rooting. The mulch would also help in locking in much-needed nutrients and moisture for the roots.

Lesson number 2: You can grow mint in any type of soil and sun, as long as it doesn’t dry out.

Lesson number 3: Rust is a deadly and contagious (for plants) disease for mint plants. Look out for orange blobs (that look like rust) on the underside of your mint leaves. Remove the leaf immediately, taking care not to let it come into contact with other leaves and plants. If a lot of leaves are affected though, chop the whole plant down and burn it – this is so that the leaves won’t infect other plants around it. Remove the soil and clean the pot with disinfectant before planting a different mint plant.

Lesson number 4: Plant mint at least a foot to 15 inches apart. If you are planting different varieties, put them in different beds or pots to avoid cross pollination.

Mint is a wonderful and sprawling herb. If you care for it as you would a child (by checking up on them every once in a while), it would love you back by giving you a bountiful harvest.

Many kinds of mint herb exist today, and the most popular of these varieties are peppermint and spearmint. Other varieties of this plant exist and examples of which are the golden apple mint and orange mint. Some people think that setting up their own mint herb garden is expensive, but that is not the case. One can set up his own garden on a budget, and it is best to grow the variety that is easily accessible in your area and plant the mint flavor that caters to you best.

Peppermint and spearmint are examples of hardy perennials. A garden with these plants is truly very productive for they easily spread on every corner of a garden without help. This creates value for the money you are to spend when producing your own mint garden. Peppermint (Mentha piperita) contains square stems and its leaves have a purplish tinge. This plant is tall and shallow-rooted and like all the others, it spreads very rapidly. It also has light lavender colored flowers which appear as terminal spikes abundantly abloom throughout peppermint’s season. The herb’s maximum growth reaches three feet tall.

Another kind of mint herb is spearmint (M. spicata). The plant can reach two feet in height when fully grown and it has square stems like peppermint with curled leaves that are filled with veins. Its color ranges from light purple to white and its spike-like appearance is two to four inches in length. This flower starts to grow early in summer to fall.

Golden apple mint is another type of the mint herb and it has a more subtle flavor as compared to spearmint. The plant’s dark green leaves have touches of gold and together with it grows its light purple flowers. Orange mint (also known as bergamot mint) is best known for its orange-like scent. This mint variation contains reddish green leaves with purple edges while its flowers are lavender in color.

Growing this type of herb will truly save you money. Planting the root division to gain the maximum flavor of the herb is the best way to start. Growing a small number of this herb can go a long way for this type is inclined to spread all over the garden. To better control them, you can enclose them in a container to put its roots in place. This is to keep the roots from wandering off all over the ground.

While it is true that these plants can be grown anytime in the growing season, spring or fall is still the best period to plant them to achieve faster root division. Putting an 18 to 24-inch distance per row and two or three inches apart from each other will result to better growth. These plants will also save you from spending too much on fertilizer for there is no need to add more fertilizers on mints during the middle of the growing season; they can live without them. Although, you must take note that spearmint and peppermint prefer moist soil so a lot more watering should be done to these mint types in the garden until the roots are properly divided.

Diseases like verticillium wilt and mint rust are some of the weaknesses of this herb. To prevent your mint garden from acquiring the said diseases, you should carefully take off from the bed the dead stems and leaves before the arrival of winter season.

It has been weeks, maybe months – sometimes years – since you first started your home herb garden.

You toiled and slaved to make them flourish, you experienced the thrill of seeing the first sprout grow, and the heartache of seeing them whilt away. You learned the ropes; you made everything work despite your ‘ungreen thumb’ and you became somewhat of an herb expert in the local sapling club of your town.

Now, after all you’ve accomplished, a question hangs…

What do you do with your herbs?

Harvesting herbs is the next step in your herb garden journey. Having a home herb garden is pretty much like having your own health food grocery store.

Herbs are extremely useful, and each has their own uses. But to harvest them isn’t as simple as plucking the leaves out whenever you feel like it. You can do it of course, but only if you intend to use your plants just once.

But if you plan to harvest your home herb garden regularly, timing is crucial.

The best time to harvest your herbs is on a calm, dry midsummer morning because wind and heat have the tendency to disperse the herb’s essential oils.

On extremely wet days, herbs produce less oils, so harvesting herbs after the dew has dries and before the flowers open is strongly suggested. When harvesting, you should be conscious not to take more than one-third of the foliage.

Harvesting the whole plant obviously is not a good idea. The plants need foliage to re-grow well. Be sure also to check the plant and leaves for insects, diseases and damaged leaves before harvesting, and to take the proper steps to remove them if found.

Once you harvest your home herb garden, it doesn’t mean you would have to use them right away.

You can always store and preserve your harvest for later use.

There are three ways people use employ when preserving herbs for later use; drying, freezing and preserving them in salt or vinegar (much like pickling).

To start preserving, begin by bundling six to twelve stems together making sure to remove the foliage at the base of the stems. Secure them using string or special bundling cords for plants that are available in your local gardening store.

Hang the bundles in a cool place away from sunlight. Drying individual leaves, placing them in a screen or special rack is best. Be sure to turn the leaves or bundles regularly to ensure a proper and balanced drying process.
To make the most of their home herb garden some people who resort to using microwaves or ovens to speed up the drying process, but these methods tend to yield unsatisfactory results.

Freezing herbs is a more simple process of preservation.

You cut your herbs into 1.4 inch pieces, put them on a baking sheet lined with wax paper, and put them in a freezer. Once frozen, you can bundle them into plastic bags and place in the freezer again to save space.

The third way is via a certain medium like salt or vinegar.

Chopped herbs like mint, basil or tarragon can be covered with vinegar and it will be preserved for several months. You can also use salt by alternating layers between the salt and the herbs.

When it is dry, you can then separate the salt from the herbs and store them in an airtight container.

But what if you wish to use them straight from home herb garden?

First, you should clean the herbs carefully before using in any recipe. Cleaning them requires you to place them in a bowl filled with water.

If the herbs are too many to fit in a bowl, the sink can suffice. Then put two tablespoonfuls of salt in the water.

The salt will drive away whatever insects are in the herbs without damaging the plants. Once clean, remove the herbs and dry them in a salad spinner, or you can toss them by hand if you don’t have a salad spinner.

Remember, different herbs require different approaches.

What is mentioned above is generally true for all, but to be sure, know what kind of herb you wish to harvest and prepare and learn all you can about it.

Caring for a home herb garden is both beneficial & rewarding and reaping what you sow is good, but learn how to reap them properly lest you lose them.