The Essential Herb Gardening Handbook

By Daniel I Stein

Gardening and cooking are two wonderful ways to express your creativity, and lifelong skills anyone can learn. So whether you are designing your perfect herb garden, looking for the best way to use a windowsill, or trying to refresh your recipes, The Essential Herb Gardening Handbook will be there every step of the way.

Starting with basic principles and techniques any beginner can master, and progressing to more advanced skills like companion planting, plant propagation, and flavor pairing, this book will be your guide for years to come.

In this book you will discover...

• The basics of planning a garden in any space
• Guides for growing 20 popular herbs
• Which herbs to grow best next to each other and why
• How to create 9 different international herb gardens to support diverse styles of cooking
• How to improve your soil and have a thriving garden year after year
• Common gardening problems and how to easily fix them
• Everything you need from sowing seeds to harvesting herbs, to cooking with style!
• And much more…

Even if you have no gardening skills, minimal space, or just feel hopeless in the kitchen, anyone can start growing herbs and creating meals to be proud of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ravina M Chandra
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781778002953

Book preview

Chapter 1

Planning your Herb Garden

If this is your first attempt at gardening, then let’s assume that herb plants are a bit like humans. Like us, they need food, warmth, water, and shelter, and different plants have different preferences. Like humans, some plants crave the hot sun, while others prefer to bask in the shade during the afternoon heat. Some prefer rich, deep soil, while others can survive in the impoverished, dusty ground.

Food for your herb plants is the soil they grow in and any extra fertilizers you provide.

Warmth is usually provided by the sun but can also come from a greenhouse or a more sheltered spot indoors or an area with stones, which attracts heat and loses it slowly as the sun sets; these all make a cozy place for plants.

Water is essential for germinating most seeds, and without enough moisture, your herbs will die. On the other hand, too much water and their roots get waterlogged, so you need to understand how much water is correct for the herbs you choose. It is usually best to plant herbs with similar needs together.

Shelter is the last on the list, and remember that you will see smaller plants using shrubs as protection in the wild. You may be familiar with the way bluebells choose to grow in woodlands in the late spring, protected by the cover of the larger trees above but also making full use of the available light before the summer leaf cover fully shades