Growing My Own
A yard shaded by trees has lots of advantages. Until recently, and the advent of hotter and hotter summers, we survived without air conditioning thanks to the huge trees on all sides. A disadvantage, though, is that no spot in our yard is sunny for enough hours of the day to make a kitchen garden possible. I’ve been able to satisfy some of my urge to grow my own food, however, by raising herbs.
We have a wooden deck at the back of our house, in a spot that actually does get sun, furnished with several large and heavy terra cotta planters. I grow herbs in some of them, and in our New Jersey winters, which are getting milder all the time, many herbs will winter over. I had a sage plant that started out in a plastic pot from the garden center and lasted for about thirty years. I looked forward to my late-November ritual of harvesting sage leaves to add to the stuffing for our Thanksgiving turkey.
The sage plant outgrew several pots and then I moved it to a large wooden barrel. After a decade or so, the wood in the barrel rotted away and the barrel collapsed. I tracked down another barrel, filled it with good soil, and transplanted the sage plant. It continued to do well for many more years, even spawning a baby sage plant that I gave away. Eventually, though, it didn’t survive through a winter and that was the end of it.
My first attempt at replacing it with a new, small, plant from the garden center didn’t make it through the first winter. I now have a sturdy replacement that’s been with me for a few years and is getting bigger and bigger.
Some herbs that winter over are woody shrubs, like sage and rosemary. Others are perennials that form an underground root system, like oregano, thyme, and mint. They need to each have their own container because nothing sharing a container with them can survive their territory grab.
They disappear completely in the winter, but new shoots come up when the earth warms again. In fact, more and more new shoots come up every year. It’s fun to go out onto the deck in March to clean the dead leaves out of my herb pots and inspect for signs of new growth.
Basil dies as the days become shorter, and it has to be replanted every year. A spring ritual is going to the garden center when the herbs are in stock and coming home with basil, tarragon, parsley, and whatever else catches my fancy. This year I bought some woodruff just because I liked the foliage. It’s light green, almost chartreuse, and the leaves are long and thin, arranged around the stems like a stack of flower petals.
I like to keep a tarragon plant because tarragon is so good with dishes involving crab. And last year I had a very vigorous curly parsley plant that was always willing to surrender a few sprigs when a recipe called for parsley.
One spring, just for fun, I planted catnip even though we didn’t have a cat. Late that fall, when not much was left of the catnip plant but a few stems and withered leaves, I looked out the back window to see a neighborhood cat in the catnip planter. The cat was rolling about in ecstasy, clearly getting even more enjoyment from my herb garden than I could ever imagine.
We have a wooden deck at the back of our house, in a spot that actually does get sun, furnished with several large and heavy terra cotta planters. I grow herbs in some of them, and in our New Jersey winters, which are getting milder all the time, many herbs will winter over. I had a sage plant that started out in a plastic pot from the garden center and lasted for about thirty years. I looked forward to my late-November ritual of harvesting sage leaves to add to the stuffing for our Thanksgiving turkey.
The sage plant outgrew several pots and then I moved it to a large wooden barrel. After a decade or so, the wood in the barrel rotted away and the barrel collapsed. I tracked down another barrel, filled it with good soil, and transplanted the sage plant. It continued to do well for many more years, even spawning a baby sage plant that I gave away. Eventually, though, it didn’t survive through a winter and that was the end of it.
My first attempt at replacing it with a new, small, plant from the garden center didn’t make it through the first winter. I now have a sturdy replacement that’s been with me for a few years and is getting bigger and bigger.
Some herbs that winter over are woody shrubs, like sage and rosemary. Others are perennials that form an underground root system, like oregano, thyme, and mint. They need to each have their own container because nothing sharing a container with them can survive their territory grab.
They disappear completely in the winter, but new shoots come up when the earth warms again. In fact, more and more new shoots come up every year. It’s fun to go out onto the deck in March to clean the dead leaves out of my herb pots and inspect for signs of new growth.
Basil dies as the days become shorter, and it has to be replanted every year. A spring ritual is going to the garden center when the herbs are in stock and coming home with basil, tarragon, parsley, and whatever else catches my fancy. This year I bought some woodruff just because I liked the foliage. It’s light green, almost chartreuse, and the leaves are long and thin, arranged around the stems like a stack of flower petals.
I like to keep a tarragon plant because tarragon is so good with dishes involving crab. And last year I had a very vigorous curly parsley plant that was always willing to surrender a few sprigs when a recipe called for parsley.
One spring, just for fun, I planted catnip even though we didn’t have a cat. Late that fall, when not much was left of the catnip plant but a few stems and withered leaves, I looked out the back window to see a neighborhood cat in the catnip planter. The cat was rolling about in ecstasy, clearly getting even more enjoyment from my herb garden than I could ever imagine.
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