Every so often, our friends at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture send us a tip for tending our own gardens. Here, they share inventive ideas for easy edible herb gardens.
“Imagine this: Standing in front of steaming sauté pans and bubbling pots, you bring a wooden spoon to your mouth and realize that your showcase dish needs a little bit of… something… then it hits you, you reach to your window, pinch off a touch of your favorite herb and add it to the pan—now it’s perfection.
A chef’s herb garden is a real kitchen delight—the household version of farm-to-table. At Stone Barns, the journey from garden to plate is short trip, and is representative of our goals to change the way people think about food and farming. Growing your own herbs is one way to cultivate appreciation of the entire process—and it’ll spice up your home cooking. Whether you live in a country house or a city apartment, there’s a culinary garden waiting to happen in your window. Stone Barns invites you to make it grow with these tips from the farm.
Give your garden a home
Most herbs prefer full sun, but when dealing with indoor space most full sun areas around buildings get excessively hot due to reflection. Ideally a window that will give pots partial shade is best. In your chosen window, group your planters and pots together—this creates cool pockets and localized shading.
*Tip: Windowsill not large enough? Consider getting a rustic garden cart to give pots more surface area and give your window garden a stylish home—these carts often have wheels so you can even make your herb garden mobile, rolling it to the best sun and shade.
Appreciate your soil
Soil is the building block for healthy plants. For best results, Stone Barns recommends organic or natural potting mixes—these are free of Styrofoam, wetting agents and other unnecessary additives. Look for a soil that has a variety of particle sizes and ingredients. Add a small amount of compost to your potting mix to impart beneficial nutrients.
*Tip: Sand can also be a useful potting addition in growing your herbs because it helps the soil mix dry out thoroughly and keeps the herbs from getting waterlogged.
Honor your watering can
No matter the herb, all pots should be watered until the soil is saturated and drains from the bottom. In slightly drier environments, the essential oil content of herbs increases (which is good!) so less frequent watering is recommended. Allow the soil to dry on the surface before the next watering. No need to overwater.
*Tip: Every potting mix has different water holding capacities, so monitoring the soil moisture by touch, weight or probe is a good test.
Know your culinary herbs
Most culinary herbs, and all of those in this post, fall into one of two families: Mints and Umbels. It’s important to know that these families do not like to share pots, and like to be harvested differently.
Meet the Mints Herbs in the mint family include rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, marjoram, lavender, tarragon and hyssop. These plants enjoy each other's company and can be planted in any combination in large containers—at least 10 inches for groupings of three or more. These herbs can take a long time to establish from seed, so transplanting seedlings into pots is a great way to get your garden going. Once they are established, they can be kept alive for many seasons—even through winter if protected and tended to.
Basil, Oh, Basil: Basil, in all of its diversity, is a common relative of mint and can be planted by itself or with mint members, like those listed above. Note that basil requires more regular water and is not perennial as the others are.
True Mint: actual mint varieties—traditional mint, spearmint, apple mint, etc.—are also suited to window growing, but are not good companions because they spread out and hog the pot. Best to grow these in their own, broad rather than deep, containers.
Harvesting mint family herbs: All of the mint species can be picked relatively the same way. Stone Barns Vegetable Farm Manager Jack Algiere says the key to continual production is harvesting all of these varieties at or before they flower. The plants should be pruned in their entirety and allowed to regenerate as a whole. Cutting the soft stems back to a reasonable height above the ground in a manicured shape will assure healthy recovery.
*Tip: If flowers start to form, clip off from below the point of growth. This will keep the plant’s energy focused on growing the leaves you’ll use in cooking.
Meet the Umbels The umbels include herbs such as leaf fennel, parsley, chervil, dill, cumin or cilantro, and also work together in the same pots. These species, in all of their varieties, have tap roots—a system with one primary root that grows vertically down—so deep pots are more important than broad ones for planting umbels. When it comes to watering, deep pots can be deceiving because they may look dry on top but are very wet down low. Be careful not to over water umbels, as it can kill them quickly.
Harvesting umbel family herbs: Umbels should be harvested either by cutting the top leaves multiple times before flowers begin to form—these plants create seeds and die quickly after flowering. If you miss the harvesting moment, you can pull them up and start over or let them go to flower and make seed before pulling up—then you’ll have dill seed, fennel seed, cumin seed, coriander etc.”
Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is a non-profit farm and education center located just 25 miles north of Manhattan in Pocantico Hills, New York. Stone Barns operates an 80-acre four-season farm and is working on broader initiatives to create a healthy and sustainable food system. It is open to the public all year round from Wednesday through Sunday 10am-5pm. For more information about their work, and details on seeing the farm, visit their website at www.stonebarnscenter.org.
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