FREE PAVERS, OR HOW TO BUILD AN HERB GARDEN

My husband loves me, like crazy, Really loves me, like came home from work and built me a raised bed for my herbs loves me. Sometimes I get ahead of myself…last week someone posted on the nextdoor app, “free pavers.” Like Pavlov’s dog I began to drool. I will confess to being an unrepentant scavenger. “Free” to me is as irresistible as a litter of puppies. Immediately my thoughts turned to all of the tasty treats the extended growing space would make possible – I needed an herb garden, tomatoes had taken up all of my current growing space.

Understand it would have to be placed smack dab in the middle of the lawn but heck, grass is overrated, inedible and difficult to grow in our soil, herbs are easy.  So here’s the dirty little secret about herbs – they are weeds! They grow like weeds as well. With few exceptions, weeds, OOPS!  I mean herbs, can survive in less than optimal soil, light and moisture. Many of them will happily flourish in conditions that would make a dandelion tremble in fear and send crab grass into death throes.

There is something almost magical about cooking with fresh, frozen, dried or salt cured herbs from your garden. In the dead of winter  the fresh taste and fragrant aroma of a dish prepared with your own herbs can take you from “ugh” to “AAHHH” in mere seconds.. A quick trip down the spice aisle in the grocery is enough to make you giggle with glee – A jar of dried herbs will cost anywhere from 3-5 dollars! That may seem pretty inexpensive until 6 months later they have lost most of their flavor and have to be replaced – the essential oils just seem to dissipate into thin air along with your cash. I won’t even approach the “fresh” herbs in the produce section – a few basil leaves will set you back about $3.50 and heaven help you if you don’t use them the day of purchase. I have seen them turn into what I am fairly certain is  a bio hazardous green slime overnight.

So after a few trips to a kind neighbor’s house, a trip to  Big Lots for a few bags of garden soil,  some muddy sweat and sore backs, I have an herb garden…..that just might have a tomato plant in the middle of it….but that’s another story for another day.

For the down and dirty on growing herbs check out my gardening tags, I promise fresh herbs will be the easiest things you’ve ever grown!