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Starting Your Herb Garden
How to Grow Herbs
First decide on the size; this will depend on the number of varieties you choose to grow. A kitchen garden can be planted into individual 12×18″ pots, or into windowboxes where you can easily snip them with abandon when you fire up the stove or dress a salad. You will find that herbs yield abundant harvests all season if you tend to thier basic need for good fertile soil and adequate moisture.An important factor in growing successful herbs is good drainage. A light well drained soil is best for starting seeds indoors, be careful not to cover the seeds to deeply with soil. Keep the seeds moist during germination and water with a fine spray to prevent washing away of the soil.Select a south or west window when growing herbs indoors. You can use grow lamps or fluorescent lamps to supplement the light. When planting, mix 2 parts potting soil and 1 part coarse perlite, there should be an inch of gravel on the bottom of each container to ensure good drainage. Highly fertile soil will produce excessive amounts of foliage with poor flavor.

Harvesting Herbs
Drying and Storage of Herbs
Most herbs are at their peak flavor just before flowering, so this is a good time to collect them for drying and storage. Cut off leaves at the stems, with cold water rinse off any soil and dust, wash herbs thoroughly, then place them on absorbent towels or hang plants upside down in sunlight until all water evaporates. Strip leaves off the stalks once plants have drained and dried, remove all blossoms. Herbs MUST be completely dried before storage. Herbs with high moisture, such as mints and basils need rapid drying or they will mold. To retain some green leaf coloring, dry in the dark by hanging plants upside down in bunches in paper bags. Hanging leaves down allows essential oils to flow from stems to leaves. Tie whole stems very tightly in small bunches, individual stems will shrink and fall. Hang in a dark, warm, 70 to 80 degree F well-ventilated area. Leaves are ready when they feel dry and crumbly in 1-2 weeks. Once you are sure that the herbs are completely dry, place them in the airtight containers, and store them in a cool, dry place away from light. Never use paper or cardboard containers for storage as they will absorb the herbs aromatic oils.

Slugs have been the bane of gardeners since gardening began. They thrive in cool moist soil, the very same soil that the seedlings and young tender plants they eat thrive in. Unfortunately there is not really anything out that will eliminate slugs altogether. There is hope with several techniques that can be employed to protect your garden from these pests, and minimize the damage these beasts can wreak on your garden. First try Snail tape, it serves as a barrier. It is tape of elemental copper backing mat holds a natural mild electrical charge that slugs and snails will not cross. This tape only works well on a raised bed or container garden. Lay this tape on the outside edges of your garden. Another option for those who like to organic garden, and recycle, are a barrier of various organic materials: crushed eggshells, ash, soot. Smooth a line a few inches wide around the area you want to protect. Apply a two-inch wide line of this around it. Another way is to use these next hints together. Tapping slugs as the first thing I ever learned about gardening from my grandfather. Place beer containers all around your garden, then gather up a few tubs, like margarine or yogurt containers. Bury these between your rows, so that the edges are about an inch up off the soil. This will keep beetles out, since beetles eat slugs, we want these beetles safe. When the slugs climb in they get stuck and die without any food. Baiting is broken down into several categories. There are many commercially available with baits and poisons, most contain aluminum sulfate, they might be worth looking into but are not the only option. Slugs like to eat where it is dark and moist, try placing lettuce leaves between your rows, then each morning go out with tongs and a bucket of salt water and flip over the lettuce and gather the pests up, or use a few squares of wet cardboard or old wet carpet strips, same thing each morning go out and turn over and collect the slugs. Collection will not eliminate the slugs, but combined with baiting it will help a lot. Also, slugs do have natural enemies. Frogs and toads love slugs.

What techniques have you used to minimize these awful pests?

Greetings!

Allow us to present to you 2B Seeds’ Ask the Gardener blog. Here, we’re going to be giving out top notch, professional gardening advice, matched to the changing growing seasons, and perfect for the improvement of your home garden.

2B Seeds Founders, Dan and Linda Busch, have been working in the professional gardening world nearly all of their adult lives, and this is where they will be reaching out to their customers who need to ask the advice of a professional gardener. Got a question about sowing seeds, zonal conditions, pest control, harvesting your vegetables? Simply comment to us on any of the informative gardening posts you’ll find here to ask your question and we’ll get back to you with a prompt, professional answer.

We’re so looking forward to hearing from you!

*As an aside, we’re transferring over some questions from our old Ask the Gardener web page for incoporation into this blog. We feel that our blog will be such a fantastic way for folks to have a conversation with us, and wanted to get the ball rolling this way!