Herbs

Those cheap pots of basil are not really plants, they are a bunch of herbs with roots attached. Here is what happens when you try to keep one alive, and the one step that actually helps.

One good summer produces more herbs than any household can eat fresh. After composting an embarrassing amount of parsley, I worked out which ways of saving a glut are actually worth the effort.

For two seasons I picked herbs the wrong way and wondered why my plants went bald and woody. Cutting properly turned out to be the single biggest change I made, and it costs nothing.

I ran the same herbs on a kitchen windowsill and in a bed outside for a season to see which setup was worth the effort. The results were more lopsided than I expected.

I planted one small mint in an open bed and spent the next two years getting it back out. Here is how far it travelled, what digging it up actually involved, and the rules I follow now.

After a few seasons of growing herbs I was too proud of and never cooked with, I cut the list down to five. Here is what earns space in my beds and pots, and what got quietly dropped.