The Best Way to Take Care of Your Herb Garden Is to Use Them

I garden for one reason: the sheer pleasure and benefit of always having what I want to eat on hand. Not outside my door like “There’s a store on the corner so I live in the city” but like “I can always bring carrots, onions and some celery from my yard at 10 pm”. if I want to cook.

This is the meaning of planting fresh greens. It’s hard to justify buying fresh herbs when you often only need a sprig. Before, when I bought them, they always spoiled before I used them up; they were expensive and it felt like a waste. Now that I have them in my garden, I add fresh herbs to everything. I am so committed to this idea that when I visit another city for more than a few weeks, I take a cheap planter with me and plant a few herb bushes in it to keep at the front door for emergencies with dill or basil. (Yes, these are real things.)

In the herb world, you have hardier perennial herbs like rosemary, oregano, and sage, and you can’t kill them even if you try. Then there are your tender herbs – basil, cilantro, parsley and dill – which I would say are your highest goal, excellent herbs. They are also herbs that are known to thrive and need to be repotted over and over throughout the season, unless you follow some gardening wisdom: use them or lose them.

Once planted, all of these tender herbs will grow on one main stem and grow leaves from that main stem. Without intervention, they will continue to grow, but will not grow , and will eventually form a flower and go to seed. As soon as this flower blooms, the plant will grow, and there is little more to do than transplant it, starting over.

Work begins long before that – shortly after you plant. We want your grass to branch out into many stems instead of just one. This creates a stronger plant. To do this, you need to cut the main stem just above the node. For plants like basil, this is how we keep the plant from producing seeds. This also means that you get a harvest of basil every few days.

For bushier plants like dill, parsley, and cilantro, you can take a less careful approach by simply cutting them back. That’s right, take your scissors and just cut them two to three inches above the soil line as usual. This will promote their fuller growth and prevent seeds from appearing.

By using these methods, you will have your herbs for much longer and in greater quantities. This also means that you must use these herbs, so here are some ideas on how to do so.

Basil

Our Italian friend is the culinary equivalent of “less words”. The next time you find yourself looking around the kitchen questioningly with basil in hand, grab a tomato and some mozzarella and make a caprese. If you want to think about it, pesto is always a solution because you can make it quickly, incrementally, and keep it in the freezer for the rest of the year. Basil dries well, but I’ve never been forced to use dry basil, not even once.

Dill

Easily my favorite child in the herb family, I can always find room for extra dill in the kitchen. Any vegetable is enhanced by topping it with chopped fresh dill, and it’s the perfect seasoning for fish or seafood. Since you’ll be making the pickles gradually as your garden spits out food, it’s handy to have fresh dill around. Dill dries excellently and is one of my most used dried herbs. Throw it in sour cream for instant immersion. Even if it’s not used for flavor, it’s a really nice visual garnish to sprinkle on just about anything.

Parsley

These flat and curly relatives are underrated in the culinary (and criminal) sense. Most people think of parsley as a gaudy, mostly visual accessory, but I’m willing to fight them to the death for this representation. Parsley has a slightly sweet, grassy freshness and a showy flavor. I so want to die on this hill that I grow both curly and flat parsley. While the taste stays mostly the same, the texture of each is unique and I have completely different ways of using each. Curly parsley adds richness to pasta salads and is the only parsley I even consider for tabbouleh. Flat parsley is a more dignified herb destined to be placed between thinly sliced ​​potatoes or mixed with summer salad greens. Add it to soups or make parsley butter , a spring green drizzle that pops up on the plate and adds a touch of sophistication to your dish.

cilantro

To fulfill their purpose, most cilantro must be paired with tomatoes, garlic, and peppers in the pursuit of salsa. On the plus side, it’s easy to make a quick salsa from the garden in the summer. But cilantro, like parsley, can be much larger. It has a great crunch, especially in the stems, which I strongly encourage you to see as part of an herb and use. My favorite use for a handful of cilantro is as a green topping for pasta salad; crunchiness is the perfect foil for pasta.

Blitz is everything

When in doubt, the answer is to turn these herbs into Green Goddess dressing, chimichurri sauce , or herbal oil . In all three cases, you take the herbs around you and grind them with onions, garlic or shallots, vinegar, and oil (or just oil). Brazilian chimichurris are more crumbly and are meant to be used as a sauce for fried squirrels. Green Goddess is a thicker emulsion and is a rare treat for summer, whether in the right salad or as a crudit dip, even if it’s as simple as sliced ​​cucumbers.

Mowing weekly will help keep your herbs going throughout the season. They will eventually run anyway, and in some cases, like dill, this will happen during the pickling season. Replacing them less often and increasing your yield will make summer easier and also encourage you to make better use of herbs in your daily diet.