A well-designed potager is a functional family vegetable garden eloquently disguised as an ornamental flower bed.
Chives: The Delightful Little Onion for Your Herb Garden
Most people think of chives as green onions, but they also create amazing purple flower heads as well. Chives are the cousins of the decorative allium, and they can be attractive border plants for a herb garden.
Herbal Medicine at Home: 20 Tips to Get You Started on Herbal Home Remedies
Many herbs have been used as medicine and as home remedies for hundreds or even thousands of years. If you are thinking of starting a medicinal herb garden, or if you want to make your own herbal home remedies, here are 20 posts to get you started. How to Grow and Use Medicinal Herbs at […]
Must-Grow Kitchen Garden Herb Plants – The Ultimate Growing Guide Index
No garden is complete without an herb garden. Whether you use them for cooking, preserving, or home remedies, here is a list of must-have herbs from our Untrained Housewife community.
Grow Your Own Basil
I’m so excited to be sharing about growing basil. It’s one of the things that we’ve managed to not kill for years, and we use it constantly in our cooking! The basil you see in front of my daughter (and behind her, too) all started from a $3 plant from our HEB grocery store. Here’s […]
Grow and Use Dill in the Herb Garden
Few flavors say “summer” to me as distinctively as dill. At my house, dill is a salad seasoning. Specifically, we use it to flavor potato salads and pickles and virtually never add it to anything we plan to cook. (Well… I might add dill when I bake seasoned yeast bread.) Dill is almost certain to […]
Growing Yarrow: The Plant With A Long Resume
Yarrow, or milfoil (Achillea millefolium), is a perennial herb that seems like the shy one in the garden. However, it’s named after the Greek god Achilles, and yarrow is deserving of its name. This powerful medicinal plant is a valuable first aid plant that’s found in many gardens, and since it’s tolerant of most weather […]
Growing Thyme in the Herb Garden
Thyme, an ancient herb plant long known to gardeners, can be added to every garden space. This plant is native to Mediterranean area, and the first documented use of thyme was by the ancient Egyptians. Thyme was originally used for cleansing and incense but now is one of the most widely used culinary herbs, often […]
Growing Basil in Your Garden
Basil is one of the most-used herbs in my garden. It is a nice companion plant for tomatoes, a wonderful addition to tomato sauces or salads and a must-have for amazing pesto. Basil is an easy-to-grow annual that does in the garden as well as in containers- or even indoors on the windowsill as a […]
Lemon Love: Grow and Enjoy Lemon Balm in Your Garden
What’s that plant pouring out of a container on your deck, attracting beneficial insects to its profusion of tiny blooms? It’s lemon balm, or if you’d like to sound fancy, Melissa officinalis. This fresh-tasting member of the mint family is easy to grow, and its delicious lemon-flavored leaves are perfect in teas or as […]
Grow a Licorice Garden: Black Licorice Flavored Plants
Who loves licorice? I do! I do! Ever since I was a child, chewing on my parents’ fennel bushes, I’ve been enchanted by the sweet flavor of black licorice. It seems that this flavor is very much a matter of personal taste: some love it, others can’t stand it. I’m in the first club. Cilantro, […]
Drying Sweet Basil in a Home Dehydrator
It was time to begin harvesting our sweet basil crop – this year I picked up a cheap dehydrator (not the brand I want for long-term use but it will work for now) to make preserving herbs a lot easier. Harvest basil in the morning when essential oils are the most concentrated in the leaves. […]
