Planting Your Herb Garden for Spring

The rule of thumb, the green thumb that is, is that you should not plant your herb garden until mid April. However, since we’ve been having unseasonably warm weather we were able to plant our herb garden a little earlier than we usually do this year.

We decided to replant our mints because after two years they’d become completely root bound, which did not stop them from coming back, but we wanted to start over fresh. Our garlic chives, onion chives, and spring onions came back wonderfully and made it through our surprise little morning snow we had in early March (normally in the South we only see snow as late as February and even then it’s a surprise.)

This year also marked our first year for attempting to grow zucchini and we nixed the idea of growing anymore tomatoes… We’ll just get them from the farmers market or the grocery store and save the stress for something else.

Some of our herb children waiting to be planted.

Since we were planting in pots, it’s very important that you pick soil that is marked for container use, and we like to go for a soil that is both organic and is meant for growing herbs, veggies and other edible plants.

This year we replanted our… basil, oregano (we bought both Greek and Italian this time), lemon thyme, all the mints (sweet mint, chocolate mint), lemon balm and rosemary.

We always buy at least 6 basil plants… its delicious in sandwiches and aoili’s or on pizza and pasta.

You’d be surprised how fast this lemon thyme will fill in.

We’re going to have to pick up some more Italian Parsley. Of all the herbs we use this one the most in our cooking.

Note: If you are thinking of growing dill, you’re going to want to give it a container of it’s own. It tends to be a wild child and it tends to try and take over the rest of the space if you plant two different herbs in one.