Growing an Herb Garden for your Kitchen

Growing an herb garden can be a very rewarding in many ways, most will claim that access to fresh herbs close to the kitchen will help improve the taste of prepared meals, and add a lovely scent to the house. some of the herbs that I have had recent success with are: sweet basil, dill, parsley, and lettuce (head lettuce may be harder to grow to maturity but leaf lettuce is easy to grow and can be harvested simply by thinning out the leaves as they grow. Many herbs can also be grown year round indoors, this may take some experimenting to see what will survive and or thrive under the growing conditions and factors of your own scenario.

Tools/Supplies you will need for growing an herb garden:
- variety of seeds
- starter soil
- seedling tray/greenhouse
- plastic tags and a marker
- chop stick
- small spoon
- bowl
- water
- sunny window sill

Depending on the type of starter soil that you use you may need to hydrate the soil with some water. it doesnt take too much water just make sure to mix the soil and water before placing the soil in the planting cells.

A small spoon can be very useful when filling the empty plant cells with soil, do not pack the soil into the cells the seeds need light soil for there roots to push through fluffy moist soil is the best when starting seeds.

Poke shallow holes in the soil where the seeds will drop, you can use almost anything to create the hole, I just used a chop stick I had lying around.

Now its time to plant the seeds that will soon grow into your fragrant and delicious kitchen herb garden. When you are planting your seeds be sure to tag all of your cells so that its not guess work of whats what when everything starts sprouting. gently cover the holes with soil you dont need to add more soil just close the seed holes gently with your finger by raking some soil over the holes.

Set your plants in a sunny window sill, be patient and they will grow, as soon as seedlings emerge you can remove the greenhouse cover. Keep the soil moist but not wet, and make sure the soil does not dry out completely. Plants are at there most delicate stage at this point of growing, it is easy for your plants to die from root rot when over watered and succumbing to drought from lack of water.

When the second set of leaves mature on your seedling you can start to fertilize with an mild strength organic starter fertelizer, and when roots emerge from the bottom of the planting cells they can be transplanted into bigger 3-4" pots. Although most kitchen herbs will need to be transplanted again, they can be grown to full maturity in 6-12" pots depending on the herbs that you are growing. Growing an herb garden is just that easy.