im replanting my moms herb garden for mothers day. its become a pretty big mess over the years with running spearmint and oregano and weeds and such. its not too practical but im striping the soil out and replacing it to avoid herbs popping up where i dont want them. i was just wodering if anyone had any suggestions for our garden. i think im gonna put some perrenial flowers around the borders too just to make it more colorful. peace, bob
try planting the mint and oregeno in pots so that they dont spread. strwberries are a plant that spreads like that too, but you can never have too many berries. lavender can have a very attractive flower and there are a bunch of varieties that give off a good scent. im a fan of lavenders and of lemon scented herbs. chamomile is a good one too. hit up a couple of nurseries and go to the herb table. get a coupel of everything.
That is about the most fantastic, awesomely wonderful thing I've heard in a long time. Talk about a gift that will keep on giving! I agree with Wayfaring, you can put the invasive plants in containers. I've seen some folks get real creative in the containers they use. I've seen everything from old bath tubs to pieces of PVC pipe to custom made planting boxs made of brick to ... well, a lot of stuff. As long as there's real good drainage. In my herb garden, I dug trenchs and buried strips of plastic or fiberglass that now reach from about an inch above the ground to about 6 to 8 inchs deep. For my horseradish, they are about 12 inchs deep. Those measures combined with real thick pine straw mulch has keep most of it within their areas. What gets out I dig up and relocate back to bare patchs within their area or pot up and sell. I would save (in small pots) the mint, oregano, etc., until you are ready to re-plant. They clearly do well there in your garden. My only other suggestion would be to plant what you (or your Mother) like. If the idea is to use the herbs for cooking - go with sage, basil, rosemary, chives etc. If ya'll lean more toward teas - go with a couple different mints, lemon balm etc. Most likely you'll want a mix. Also, like Wayfaring said, go to nurseries to select new plants. Pinch the leafs or break off a small piece and smell or taste it. That way you're sure you're getting good specimans. Some herbs (basil, sage, lemon balm and a few others) grow well from seed. Some are very hard to grow from seed (rosemary), and some impossible (french terragon). If there are plant varieties(apple mint and/or orange mint - both are great) or seeds (flavored basils) you want but can't find locally, let me know and I'll recommend sources. Once again, I think you're doing a great thing, and I hope this helped. Peace, poor_old_dad
sweet thanks alot guys. i appreciate your advice very much. i know my mom would like the cooking herbs so im gonna go with that but i just got some bee balm and some echenicia. i might get another mint of some type too. thanks again. peace, bob
you can visit my site to see some pics of our gardens ,might give you an idea or 2...sunshine,,green healing thoughts http://familytreeherbs.com/home.html
I'm glad I found your post... I've wanted to start an herb garden for so long, since I have recently started reading about herbology. I will just have to remember to take your advice and get only a COUPLE of everything..... if it were up to me, I'd probably get about 10 of everything.
