An Herb Garden for Your Kitchen Counter

An herb garden for your kitchen counter will provide fresh herbs for cooking, scent your kitchen, and allow you an opportunity to garden all year. It's small scale, but no less satisfying than a larger garden in the back yard.

There are a couple of ways to create a kitchen counter herb garden. You can buy herb garden kits almost anywhere: your local nursery, the supermarket nursery department, and dozens of websites. Most will come complete with a container, some means of drainage, soil, seeds, and directions. It's up to you to provide a warm, sunny window.

Or you can have a little fun and create your own herb garden for your counter. One that suits your style! I like a pottery bowl made by a friend that goes well in my kitchen, but doesn't match any of my dishes.

Decide which and how many herbs you intend to grow. If this is a cooking garden, choose those you use most frequently: perhaps basil, thyme, mint, sage, chives, and rosemary, others if you like. If you're really ambitious, make a special container for peppers and garlic. Decide whether to start from seeds or seedling plants.

If you're starting from seed, start early. Fill egg carton halves with soil and seed each egg cup with two or three seeds. When it's time to transplant, choose the most robust in each. Water and place the carton in a warm, sunny window to germinate. Meanwhile, choose your permanent container. Make sure it's one you'll enjoy seeing every day - a favorite flat bowl or an attractive dish from your garden store. Fill the bottom with gravel or small stones to provide drainage, if the container doesn't have a hole.

Use prepared soil or make your own from compost, sphagnum moss and soil from your garden. Outside soil has microorganisms that will feed your plants. There are numerous recipes for soil on the Internet.

Loosely fill the container to an inch below the top with the mixture. When it's time to transplant, clip off the weakest plants with scissors and transplant the remaining one surrounded by as much of its own soil as possible.

Keep the soil damp but not wet. Stir it gently with a fork every now and then to keep it loose.

Clip off the amount you need for cooking with scissors, and let the rest keep on producing!