How To Start an Indoor Herb Garden

Herb gardens are a great idea for anyone to cultivate. Apart from being a positive, productive personal hobby, herb gardens will provide you with a constant supply of fresh herbs that you can use to transform your cooking into a sensation, or add to your potpourri to make for an amazing smelling home. Additionally, it is a hobby that comes with little cost to nature, and will also eventually save your money from not having to buy the herbs from stores.

However, not everyone may have the space required to build a large, proper herb garden. Even if you do have space, maintaining a full size garden can be quite taxing to your energy and it can be quite expensive too, with all the fertilizer and the pesticides that you will have to use. Also, many people reserve their garden for showy flower plants and decorative plants, and there isn’t really enough space left for the useful herb.

If you are short of space, or simply do not want a full sized herb garden, you should look into an indoor herb garden. An indoor herb garden works really well for the following reasons:

Herbs work great indoors. Most herbs are hardy, sturdy plants that can handle all the rigors of indoor living – unavailability and irregularity of light, for example.

Indoor herb gardens can really make your home smell amazing, especially if you planted some great smelling herbs.
They can really add to the décor of your house, with their unique, green look.
If you are looking to create a fantastic herb garden indoors, here are a few tips that should get you well on your way:

Potting

Properly potting your herbs is the first step to ensuring a good indoor herb garden. Here is how you can pot your herbs properly:

1. Start with some organic potting soil that is suitable for vegetables. This is the best soil to grow your herbs in.

2. Use a large container with holes to for proper water drainage. This is important to ensure that your herbs are not waterlogged.

Herbs grow really fast, so you have to plan ahead and buy as big a container as you can fit in your home.

3. Fill the container up to about 3 quarters with potting soil. Take care not to compress the soil too much.

4. Take the herb plants out of the packets or containers they came in. Loosely shake off the soil from their roots, and take care not the damage the intricate rooting system.
Place the roots on the soil in the container.

5. Each herb plant should be placed at a regular distance from the others, so that the root systems do not interfere with each other.

6. Fill up the rest of the container with potting soil, taking care to leave about an inch of container unsoiled to help with watering.

Lighting and Watering

The proper amounts of lighting and watering are important for the proper growth of any plant.

Lighting is an important aspect, and for indoor plants, it can be quite an issue. To ensure that your indoor herb container garden is receiving enough light, keep the container in a spot of your home that receives strong sunlight 6 to 8 hours every day.

One characteristic that indoor herb plants often develop is long, thin slanted stems and few leaves. This shows that the plant is receiving insufficient light in only one angle. To combat this, keep your plant in a stronger patch of light, and rotate regularly, so that the stem develops straight.

Watering is also another important aspect. You should be careful not to overwater, however. One way you can tell if your herbs need watering is as follows: insert a finger into the soil, up to the knuckle. Draw back the finger and observe if the finger is moist or dry. A dry finger means that you have to water the container. Put in enough water to make the soil moist again. Only water your herbs when it is necessary.