These Herbs Make Everything Better

So go plant some already!

Many years ago, my friend and fellow co-founder of the popular blog GardenRant Michele Owens wrote an amazing book called Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. This book blew me away. It’s astonishingly well-written and entertaining to read (I’m not just saying this because I like Michele so much, it really stands out for the sparkling quality of the writing), and it makes a revolutionary proposition: that gardening is an ordinary, day-to-day activity that is part of the normal running of any household.

It’s not a hobby. It’s not a niche. It’s not a luxury for ladies of leisure. It’s not something that only certain people know how to do. And it doesn’t require a huge amount of skill or know-how. Her gardening advice boils down to:

1. Bring in an enormous amount of compost to plant into

2. Cover that with an enormous amount of mulch (wood chips and the like) to keep weeds down and hold water in.

3. Ask the neighbors what grows well for them, and grow that. (because microclimates, local bugs, etc)

Anyway, please go read Michele’s book. It’s wonderful.

I was thinking of her this week, when Portland turned all sunny and balmy and spring-like. Trader Joe’s got in a shipment of little herb plants priced at three bucks each. There’s a big pot already sitting by my front door. This was not a hard decision.

Fresh herbs make everything taste better, they make the plate (or the cocktail glass) look pretty, and they’re so easy that it really does fall into that “normal part of running a household” category that Michele talks about in her book.

I live in a condo, so there’s no truckload of mulch coming my way, but I heed Michele’s advice by emptying and refilling that pot with high-quality potting soil once a year. Keeping it watered is no problem—I mean, it’s right next to the door. It’s ten steps from my kitchen faucet to that pot. I don’t need a whole free Saturday every week to manage this thing.

Here’s what I grow and how I grow it. What do y’all grow? Tell me in the comments, and maybe we’ll all learn a few useful hints from each other.

Basil: This one can’t live outside just yet. I actually grow basil year-round on the kitchen windowsill in a big jar (like a jumbo peanut butter or a big tomato sauce jar). A grocery store near me sells the hydroponic version, with a tiny root ball attached. I drop it in the jar, keep some water at the bottom of the jar, and snip it off when I need it. Eventually the whole plant gets depleted (it’s better to cut a branch off instead of picking off individual leaves), and I toss it out and get another one.

Even if you buy your basil plant in a little plastic pot, it’s convenient to drop the pot, roots, and all into a jar—easy to water, no mess.

Parsley: Good on almost every vegetable, in salad dressing, on pasta, or just about anywhere basil or cilantro is called for. Parsley doesn’t so much mind living outside once it’s spring, and it’ll re-grow as I cut it. But I won’t be upset if it dies back entirely and I end up replacing it a couple times throughout the season. Curly parsley is a little sturdier and more resilient than flat-leaf, if you have a choice.

Cilantro: Love it, but it is shorter-lived and more picky about temperature. Too cool and it will sulk, too warm and it will bolt. (meaning, go to seed.) I buy the “slo-bolt” varieties when I can find them, but at three bucks a plant, I don’t mind replacing it more often.

Spearmint: Mostly a cocktail ingredient, but in the summer you might find yourself making a watermelon or tomato salad that benefits from a little mint. Or maybe this Moroccan carrot salad with mint and dates that I had at a restaurant last week and totally want to add into the rotation. Spearmint can and will take over the pot, so I kept it in the plastic pot, then tucked that into the container, to slow the roots down a bit. Eventually, though, the roots will be everywhere and I’ll have to dump the whole pot out again and start with fresh soil. Which is totally fine and a good thing to do once or twice a year anyway.

Rosemary/thyme: I think both are handy to have in small quantities. I went with rosemary this year, and there’s a tiny bit of thyme still straggling along in the pot from last year, which might or might not revive.

Not worth growing (for me!):

Oregano: It’s better dried. Also, it takes over the pot. Didn’t use it last year, not bringing it back.

Chives: Never could grow enough of them to really use them in any quantity, and there are always loads of onion-like options in the house already.

Sage: Took up a lot of room, just didn’t use it often.

Everything else: There are so many other herbs! Dill! Tarragon! Whatever! But I don’t seem to reach for them that much, so I’m not growing them.

Bottom line: Herbs! Quick, easy, cheap, good. If they’re not part of your life, maybe this is the year to make it happen.

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Paid subscribers are going to (surprise!) draw herbs

Would you like to fill a sketchbook with little drawings of whatever’s growing in your garden? That’s exactly how I started out learning to make art, so this is a return to my roots, so to speak. Today, paid subscribers are getting a video of me drawing the herbs you see above.

Every week I send out a little art lesson of some kind. If it can be done in a sketchbook, we’ll get to it eventually. Last week I sent out a video of myself drawing live, in San Francisco, at this lovely spot:

Join up and you get access to the full archive! Here’s how:

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The bit at the end

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