Growing culinary herbs is an excellent way to provide fresh, flavorful and healthy food for yourself and your family. Other than buying seeds or herb plants for the garden, potting soil, stones and containers if you're planning an indoor or container garden, the initial cost of herb planting is minimal but the payoff is huge.

Reasons for Growing Culinary Herbs

Growing culinary herbs provides a supply of herbs and flowers that have many uses. One of the main uses is to have fresh herbs at hand to use when creating meals. Home grown garden herbs have no preservatives or additives and are healthy ingredients that can be added to any recipe. Not only can the herbs be used in cooking, they can also be used for medicinal purposes such as brewing a steaming cup of spearmint or lemon verbena tea to soothe a sore throat. There are edible plants such as fennel, coriander and borage while others are toxic such as wormwood and tansy. Many herbs are used in craft projects including santolina, yarrow and artemisia to make flower arrangements, wreaths and potpourri.

Harvesting Herbs

Now that you're efforts at growing culinary herbs has produced fresh herbs, it's time to harvest the crop. First and foremost, always allow new plants to adjust to their garden setting before harvesting. For most plants, once they are ready to harvest, do not cut more than a third of the stem so the plant can replenish itself and have time to re-grow before the next harvest.

Herbs for Cooking

If you're going to use herbs from your garden in a meal, do not harvest the herbs until the day you plan to use them. This ensures they will be the freshest growing culinary herbs in the garden. Use a sharp pair of scissors to snip the stem. Do not cut the leaves.

Herbs for Drying

It's important when cutting herbs for drying that the plant be cut prior to the first bloom so that the leaves retain a high oil content.

Herb Maintenance

When herb planting, it's important to know whether the plant is an annual or a perennial and what to expect as its season ends. All herb plants should be snipped, pruned or cut back to encourage growth and to maintain a healthy plant. Growing culinary herbs is not only beneficial to you but it also provides a source for attracting bees and that's good for the environment.