How to start a herb garden from scratch without any experience. Or a clue :-)

[Lottapianos]

DP and I are hoping to be moving into our new house in September. We will have an outdoor space for the first time ever! It's a yard which is totally paved so no grass but I am desperate to grow my own herbs - I love cooking so use loads of them but I'm sick of paying 80p a time for more than I need which then gets thrown away. Ideally, I would like to grow parsley, coriander, mint, dill, rosemary, thyme, basil and maybe some salad leaves like rocket.

Please talk me through it in very short words What do I need to buy - I know I need pots but how big? Do I need one pot per herb or can some grow together? Do I plant seeds or start with actual plants? When is the best time to plant?

All advice welcome - you will save me a fortune at the supermarket!

I'm sure someone with more experience will come along soon, but I'd suggest buying plants from the gardening centre at this time of year.

I have a couple of tubs that look like window boxes, made of terracotta coloured plastic and have two herbs in each, plus a big tub with mint in it. I have chives and parsley in one tub and basil in the other tub. I'd like to grow rosemary and coriander too but haven't hot round to it yet.

The parsley and chives come back each year.

HTH

Which direction does the garden face?

I would buy some small herb plants from a garden centre and pot them up in larger pots that will keep them well off the ground. Herbs are quite hardy, they should be fine.

Sorry, I'd put a couple in each pot with plenty of space around each if you want them to grow bigger.

How long is a piece of string?

I buy my potted herbs at the farmer's market where these people sell them for about £7 for 6 little pots, more online of course. pepper potherbs

Rosemary and Thyme are tough mediterranean herbs and will like a well drained compost, so put them in together (maybe with some oregano and sage) in a biggish pot and mix some grit into the potting compost (1/3 to 1/2 grit to compost). So you need a big pot depending on how many plants you get, and some potting compost and some grit and the plants. Nice to put these into a half barrel all together.

Mint needs a pot of its own and likes to be on the dampish side; it will grow to fill whatever space you give it. Just into potting compost. It will disappear completely in winter and reappear in spring.

Dill is a bit like mint, perennial, and likes a bit of space, and is very tall so a pot on its own that is stable enough not to blow over easily. Parsley is perennial too, but mostly that's grown fresh every year. It's a devil to germinate from seed so get plants. Can go in with dill but might look a bit odd, maybe better in a dedicated pot or even better a series of pots as you need a good amount.

Coriander and basil are hot-country plants that die at the end of the year (or when you eat them, whichever is soonest). You need LOADS of basil plants to be worthwhile and they also need to be pretty warm to grow well. Series of pots for these. Coriander grows like a weed, sprinkle some seed into a pot and stand well back BUT it does tend to flower a bit quick. Get a new pot starting when you are eyeing up the current one.

Rocket is also a quick germinator and you have to catch it before it goes over. I grow cut-and-come-again lettuce and rocket in a wide shallow pot designed for alpines as they don't need much depth, but you do need to water them.

I planted up a herb garden and it's worked really well

I put everything in a very narrow border, apart from mint which needs a container or it takes over. The chives are doing well, oregano is very happy and really useful. I covered the border with lots of rambling thyme plants, they've worked really well.

my favourite is actually the bronze fennel. Not because I'll actually use it, but it looks stunning.

I also planted a curry plant. It smells great and has done well.

The plants are in the sunniest bit of the garden against a wall.

Just a word of warning, when I did this no matter what I tried the neighbourhood cats all came and shat all over my herbs. Maybe I planted the wrong stuff. I tried different remedies but the cats won in the end and that was the end of my herb garden. Maybe you could add a plant they hate.

rosh the cats love my garden but bit my herb garden. I blame the curry plant

nice initiative..ur hubby must be a lucky man to have u as a life partner..gd going..keep it up.

Read my blog www.londonherbgarden.co.uk

But seriously, invest in perennial plants where you can ( rosemary, thyme, lavendar, mint, russian tarragon, marjorum, sorrel) and sow seeds sucessionally for annuals (coriander rocket and basil) and harvest them as soon as they are ready. Its a good time to take woody cuttings so see uf any friends or neughbours can offer you some to save money.

Some extra thoughts from me:

jekkas herb farm is my favourite online shop for herbs. Even if you don't buy there, you can look them up & see what you fancy.

Get French tarragon, it tastes vastly better than Russian. You will have to buy it as a plant though as apparently it's really hard to get it to germinate.

Sow mint in a pot on it's own. It's very invasive & will compete for space & eventually crowd out anything else planted in with it. Same goes for horseradish.

To deter cats, you can start with things in small pots. Repot only as they need it (cats are attracted by expanses of soil so don't offer them any). Remember, some plants will die back in winter (tarragon dies back to below soil level) so you will have to protect these.

Coriander will bolt (go to seed) very quickly if it's allowed to dry out. So will dill and chervil.

Wild rocket is massively fertile, so beware! If you let it go to seed you will be picking it out of the floor of your yard, and your neighbours, for years. Trust me I have personal experience on this. (twice)

Oregano is also surprisingly fertile, although the seeds don't scatter themselves as freely.

IME 'soft' herbs like basil & parsley can get totally infested with greenfly, it might be worth growing a small amount on your windowsill just in case. Some years they are fine, other years, terrible. I don't like to use pesticide on edible plants personally.

If you can afford it, get glazed stoneware pots. They will protect the plants from winter frosts MUCH better than plastic. I wouldn't bother with cheap terracotta though, it tends to crack at the first sign of frost. If you are on a budget, decent plastic ones would be your best bet. Shop around & you might see some cheap, I got my stone pots 75% off so it is possible.