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

Italian food is all about the spices.  You start out with your base of pasta and then add flavorful sauces full of tomatoes, cheese, and fragrant Italian herbs.  Whether you are replicating the cooking your grandmother did or just love the hearty aroma of Italian cooking, you know that you need the proper flavors from an Italian herb garden in order to make the right dishes.  There are many herbs that make up the Italian canon.  These include: basil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, parsley, sage, fennel, chives, and oregano. You can spend a lot of money and buy these herbs fresh or dried from the store, or you can grow your own Italian herb garden in a planter right in your kitchen no matter where you live, be it in the country or in a small city apartment, but there are some secrets to a bountiful Italian herb garden that one should know.

Italian herbs aren’t all that different from any other type of plant you want to grow in your container garden.  They need the right amount of sunlight, the best type of soil, adequate water and drainage in order to flourish.  The requirements for an Italian herb garden may vary from species to species, but these are the basic components of any happy plant. Drainage is especially important -and unfortunately often neglected- so ensure that your planter has holes at the bottom for excess water to drip out.

As you set up your Italian herb garden planter box, you should pair herbs that have similar growing requirements.  Did you know that rosemary likes a hot climate whereas parsley enjoys a colder environment?  As a result, rosemary and parsley would not do well in the same container.  However, if you want to know the secret of abundance of basil and garlic here it is: the two herbs have very similar soil and sunlight needs, therefore you should grow them in the same pot.

Some herbs love to spread wildly, for example thyme, a favorite of any Italian herb garden, will continue to grow until there is no soil left and it will choke out all the other herbs, therefore thyme should definitely be given its own container.

Once you have set up your Italian herb garden planter box and the herbs are growing nicely, the secret to keeping them abundant is to regularly harvest them.  By harvesting the ends of your herbs it stimulates new growth and also you have the added bonus of obtaining a large amount of fresh oregano available for adding to the pasta sauce or for freezing.

You can also keep your supply of Italian herbs steady by taking cuttings from mature plants about once every two months and repotting them as this ensures that your Italian herb garden is growing and also that you will have replacement herbs when some die off.  For instance, basil takes about three months to reach its best harvesting growth and when cut off it then takes about three months to grow back, therefore one should always keep three pots of basil growing in rotation so that there is plenty for your pizza.

Once you gain some real life experience with growing an Italian herb garden in planters you will see that producing  bountiful  herbs is not really so secret after all, they are just commonsense tips that allow you to create and maintain the best growing environment for your Italian herb garden.

If you plan to harvest your herbs for a purpose-crafting, culinary, medicine – you will need a garden designed to make this easier. Garden centers and libraries have dozens of books full of traditional and modern herb garden designs. Productive herb garden designs have several things in common.

Herb gardens are attractive even when scattered and disorganized, but for efficient harvesting of herbs, the productive herb garden needs a planned design. Walkways, compact-sized planting beds, and planned sun/shade exposure are three commonalities in herb garden designs.

The layout of your herb garden or multiple beds in your garden should take into account your need to harvest the herbs. Walkways or pathways between beds or within a larger garden plot will allow you to reach each herb. Paths can be grass, steppable groundcover plants, stone, gravel, wood-any flat surface wide enough to allow you to avoid damaging one plant to reach another.

Small planting beds make harvesting easier. Shapes such as circles, small squares and narrow rectangles are ideal designs for reaching all your herbs. Formal gardens often outline these shapes with shrubby herbs such as boxwood, lavender, marigold, or thyme. Productive designs allow you to reach every herb easily from your pathways.

Herb garden designs that place herbs with similar uses together make productive harvest much simpler. Designate one bed for medicinal herbs, another for culinary herbs, a third for aromatic herbs, or any division you want. Grouping or arranging herbs in pots in the same way will increase productivity in even the smallest herb garden.

Within your herb beds, you can further divide the herbs into how they are to be used. For example, marjoram, basil, lemon verbena, and peppermint area all medicinal herbs used for stomach upset. Group them together and you won’t need to reach far to get what you need. Creating an Italian dinner? If you’ve designed your culinary herb plot to group Italian spice herbs together, gathering the spices you need will be a snap.

Some herbs will need more sunlight than others. Ideal conditions often include 4 to 6 hours of direct sunlight per day. You can still plant your shade-loving herbs in a bed with sun-loving herbs if you arrange them so that taller, sun-loving herbs block the sunlight. Sunflowers are ideal for this-they love to hog the sunlight, and will protect more delicate leaves from the direct rays if planted on the southern side.

How will you be using your herbs? Large-scale productions such as commercial lavender farms need to simplify problems of harvest, weeding and pruning. Heavy landscaping cloth laid in rows, with small cut-outs for each plant, takes care of all three problems at once. Each plant is distanced from its neighbor to allow the farmer pathways between them. Planning and measuring before you plant, and knowing the needs of individual herbs, will increase your herb garden’s productivity no matter what herbs you grow.

Thyme garden herb is a variety of herb, which is grown for many different applications. The most common use for thyme is cooking, but it can also be found in medicinal applications as well as aromatherapy. The applications you will use the thyme for will depend on the kind of thyme you are growing, as not every thyme is created equal. In fact, some varieties of thyme will not even have a scent while others will perfume the air all around you.

In order to grow the best thyme, you need to understand the nature of the herb. Thyme prefers environments that will provide full light and a warm environment. This does not mean you cannot grow it throughout the winter. It simply means these are the summer is the time when the herb will grow the most hardy. In order to continue to grow throughout the winter, it is recommended to either plant inside, a movable pot, or a greenhouse. This will allow you to continue to harvest your thyme all throughout the winter.

Pruning is a practice that is different in thyme from many other herbs. The thyme garden herb prefers to be left alone. This does not mean you should leave it alone. If you do not commit to pruning back heavily in the spring, you will end up with a plant which is very woody and has extremely robust leaves. Cut the stems close to the bottom of the plant in order to allow the other limbs to continue to grow. Pay extra special attention to the stems, which look to be thicker.

Give your thyme garden herb the soil it desires in order to see the best harvests. Thyme, like most herbs, prefers soils, which are well drained. This means they prefer to be in sandy soils. This is because the roots will become mildewed and the plant will die if there is too much water in the soil. This is not to say that thyme prefers dry soil. The best soil will be a combination of dirt, sand, potting soil and lime. You will create a soil that will drain excessive water while retaining enough moisture to feed the roots.

In order to grow your thyme the way you want to, consider whether you want the plant to cover every inch of the garden, or be in patches. If you are looking for your thyme herb garden herb to cover the bed of the garden, plant about 6” apart and the limbs will eventually grow together. Be careful to practice proper pruning in this case so the limbs from one plant will not choke out the other. The other danger you run into is trapping too much moisture in the soil that creates a deadly mold that kills off your plant.

Remember your thyme garden herb can be used for whatever you prefer. If it is purely ornamental, consider the different versions of thyme available. Woolly thyme has a fun look to it, but there is no scent to allow you to enjoy the enjoyable aroma normally found in thyme plants.

QUALITY & QUANTITY GUARANTEE Each Packet comes with lots of seed, grow herbs indoors and outdoors! Plenty of seed to experiment with and grow a full herb garden! Our seed is also Guaranteed to grow! Assortment of 12 Culinary Herb Seeds Parsley, Thyme, Cilantro/Coriander, Basil, Dill, Oregano, Sweet Marjoram, Chives, Savory, Garlic Chives, Mustard, Sage.

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