How to make your garden a circulating spice & herbs warehouse.

Growing herbs and spices for home usage can be beneficial in many ways. It is well-know that natural herbs are widely applied in medications, they are good for individuals’ health and illness. Besides, some natural herbs and spices can fresh up the air and expel parasite due to their strong smell. Most importantly, herbs and spices add various flavour into your dishes, even a random combination of any number of those can be a brand new flavour that makes your meal delicious and flavorous. Imagine how wonderful it might be if you have your own plot planting and growing all herbs and spices you need for daily usage. Need some mint leaves to fresh up your homemade cocktail, just visit the garden outside your kitchen and pick the green young leaves to make your day.

Here are some tips if you are a beginner and want to have a herbs and spices plot for your own kitchen garden.The following herbs are the most often used spice for meals around the world, for example, garlic, mint, rosemary and fennel. You can see them in American food, Thai food, Chinese food and so on. This creates a variability for you when you feel like to switch to another country’s menu, also saving you more time of going to the grocery store back and forth. We also recommend several amazing gardening tool for you to start up the spice spot in the end of this article and you do not want to miss it.

 Garlic

Garlic is one of the ancient bulbous vegetable. It is extremely easy to grow and fast to harvest, it requires very little space in your garden plots. To grow garlic, all you need is a single garlic bulb and split it into individual cloves. The cloves are supposed to be plant with the pointed end upwards. Be careful not to damage the cloves and place them about 15cm apart and twice of their own depth.

Spring is the best season  to plant garlic, the garlic bulbs prefer sunny and warm environment to grow. Less effort is required except for watering and weeding regularly. The single clove will multiply to a whole garlic bulb gradually in the soil, and then you can enjoy roasted garlic bulb within few minutes whenever you feel like to. It is suggested to do the finger test on soil when watering, avoiding the bulb rot with a over-watered soil.

Rosemary

Rosemary is one of the ancient mint family member, it is often used to strengthen the taste of meat and expel some of the meat smell. The flavour of rosemary is strong and its widely applied in steak plates. Speaking of the habitat rosemary needs, enough sunlight, nice drainage and ample air circulation is required for rosemary to grow. 6-8 hours sunlight with a well draining soil will keep it strong even with little fertilizer. To be noticed, spring is the best season to fertilize the soil.

However, rosemary prefer to grow under warm environment, it is recommended to have the rosemary plot coated during the cold weather with temperature under 20 degree. Moving the rosemary plot to home or somewhere with shelf and heat can be an option as well. We can either use rosemary seed or plant to grow it, it is up to our own convenience.

Basil

Basil is generally used in lots of Italian and Thai dishes. People normally see it in pizzas, salads, sauces and Thai fried dishes. Basil is beneficial for anti-oxidants and helps relief the low blood sugar. It thrives in well-drained soil and indirect sunlight. It is wide spread that plant basil around the tomatoes will make your tomato more sweet, even though there is not clear scientific evidence to prove it so far, it is still worth a trail.

Basil is easy to sow from seeds and relatively fast to germinate. Just like the rosemary, basil is sensitive to the coldness, therefore it is considered to plant with rosemary in the same plot if you need both of them. Keeping an eye on the temperature and make sure to cover them when the weather gets cold. Basil also root easily with a cutting of branch, just put it into water for a week and transplant it into the soil carefully. Basil grows well in warm environments with at least 5 hours sunlight a day. Also only water basil when the soil surface is dry and keep the leaves from wet. It is a pick-as-you-go kind of herb, you may harvest only what you need.

Mint

Mint is one of the easiest-to-grow kind of herb, there is really not much to say about it since it can grow from both soil water without fertilizers. It grow fast and can be cut at any point you want to as long as it is not root. It requires rich and moist soil. Feel free to harvest any time you want to, no matter for mojito making or just send away a bad morning breath.

The only thing you have to be care is , the mint and easily grow wild, it is just time for mint to cover the whole ground and compete with other plants in your garden over water and nutrition from the soil. It is recommended to harvest the mint regularly from the top leaf.

Fennel

The fennel herb has a long history of use. It first started to appear in Egyptians and Chinese medications and then transferred to Europe to be used for flavouring fish and eggs. Nowadays, it is widely used in our menus. There are two propagation method, one is dividing the plants and transplant, another option is to grow from the seed. Transplanting is quite challenging and risky to grow, so better take the safer act by planting from seeds.

Fennel requires sunlight and a well drained soil bed. It is a short lived perennial that blooms best in the second year. Fennel is famous for its aggressive growing, make sure to harvest time to time and do not plant them near dill, these two herbs get disturbed and confused about the flavour they are supposed to grow.

Parsley

Parsley was first introduced to medication before seasoning. The ancient Greeks held parsley to be sacred, using it to adorn victors of athletic contests. Parsley is flavorous and delicious, it is popular for seasoning world-wide. It has various nutrition that help people’s health in many ways.

For a head start, place the seed in to soil bed 3-4 weeks before the last spring frost since parsley is a slow starter. It require a rich weed-free soil and can bear the cold weather.Make sure to water the seeds often while they germinate to prevent from dry-out.When the leaf stems have three segments, parsley is ready to be harvested.

There are plenty more herbs and spices that are easy to grow and fast to harvest. It is important to categorize these herbs according to their preferred soil type, watering frequency and exposure time to sunlight. It is necessary to make a clear schedule about watering, fertilizing and weeding. Also, remember to cover the herbs that can not stand coldness. The abundant variety and availability of planting, sprouting, and harvesting fresh herbs can really create delicious meals for the family.

If you need something to separate the herbs into different sections and take care of them, here are some essentials you could have for a fresh start. A 3 Tier Raised Garden Bed and a Garden Potting Table fulfill most of your needs. This 3 Tier Raised  Garden Bed allow you to categorize the herbs according to soil habitat and help them grow better with wide space and enough amount of soil. On the other hand, the Garden Potting Table is spacious enough to keep all your gardening tools, fertilizers, insect repellents, extra soil and so on.