Easy to Grow Herbs | Garden to Kitchen: Garden Home VLOG (2019) 4K

[Music] [Music] what would life be without herbs they add so much spice to life as it were I'm starting with just some of the basic things that we've pulled from the garden like rosemary I know very few people who do not love the flavor of rosemary it's a woody herb from the Mediterranean which tells us a lot about how we should grow rosemary and and really a lot about how we should grow many herbs and we're just going to focus on some of the more common herbs today some of those that are really easy to grow the garden home vlog is made possible by the following sponsors Gilbert H Wilde and son son patience Arkansas parks and tourism Ralston family farms first community bank and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for more information log on to PL and smith.com now back to p allen Smith and the garden home vlog what I like about rosemary and the one that we have is called Tuscan blue Tuscan blue is great to cut any time of year and as a beautiful blue flower the blooms are the very early spring for us and the bees just love it so it's a good pollinator plant what I like to do with it is use it in lots of different ways I love to make a in winter rosemary wreaths which are gorgeous in the house for aroma particularly around the holidays another thing that you can do with with the an herb like this that's woody the woody stem is to strip the leaves off and skew vegetables or meats and put them on the grill and you get that essential oil that's the part of the herb that we're we're smelling is that essential oil and the stem is just full of it so just imagine pieces of chicken maybe eggplant or peppers and that sort of thing grilled with this skewer of rosemary in it another thing that I love about rosemary at least in my zone eight a garden and south of here it makes a great hedge and it's an evergreen so it it's very nicely whenever we go through and do a lot of cutting of rosemary try to think well how can I use it so if we're grilling a lot of chicken or something like that we'll always have it nearby to throw on the grill to let that essential oil infuse the meats or vegetables but other herbs that you can use for creating a hedge include basil oddly enough one of my favorites in the past I've used a tiny leaf basil called a boxwood basil it's a beautiful little border around tiny gardens they're great for containers as well but boxwood basil is one that you can can certainly grow from seed there's a wide range of Basil's that we've grown just the standard old sweet basil which is which is very very easy to grow and grows very quickly in the heat remember basil like the rosemary is going to want full Sun we've also grown one called African basil that is probably the most floriferous meaning it produces a lot of blooms of all the Basil's it has a dark leaf to it and a stem that's dark but lots of purple flowers that are ideal these flowers are ideal for pollinators and I actually kind of grow it more as an ornamental every part of this plant is edible and it's one that works so beautifully I think with coleus and roses and things like that in the garden so basil is one that you can pick up a pack of seed and so the seed with rosemary you probably want to start with some little little plants and little transplants they grow very quickly rosemary also is a great herb for growing in containers and I should mention that I'm just reading over a lot of questions from you all this morning and I noticed there were many questions about can you grow these herbs in containers and you certainly can what I find is that the larger the container the better over the years we have created all kinds of herbal containers small large and troughs we also accent with flowers or integrate them among flowers which makes them very attractive also think about where you place your herbs make it handy to the kitchen so I love to have a couple of containers clustered maybe by back door where you can just go out and cut some rosemary cut off some basil whatever you you happen to need it's fantastic to have it at hand so to speak the other thing that I would suggest if you want to go beyond containers and clustering them in different sizes or one large container with a mixture of herbs like the pizza pot we we've done over and over to show kids how to get involved with growing things they all love pizzas where you can take a strawberry jar and grow all kinds of herbs in it or just a container with many of the elements that one might apply to a tomato paste such as oregano and garlic and that kind of thing growing in a pot but taking it a step further you may want to go to a raised bed for years in our downtown historic district cottage we have raised beds and I have lots of herbs growing in those this is ideal because what's wonderful about a raised bed and also a container is that you get good drainage typically and most of these herbs having come from the Mediterranean region really enjoy having that some moisture but not standing in water that's usually the kiss of death for most of them we did a project several years ago which we just used ordinary concrete blocks and just made a rectangle filled it with soil and that was the basis for a raised bed garden and it works beautifully you have certain herbs like this lavender really like calcium rich soils so think about a concrete block and what it's made of it's mainly lime or limestone makes the soil very sweet sticking little lavender plants in those cells is a good place to grow live plus you get it up again it's a good drainage that's important this is a lavender that I talked a lot about called Provence I found that it does the best for us in my zone 8b garden and I think that it really tends to take the heat very well but I've never had long-term positive results planting this plant directly in the grounds that's why I'm suggesting either containers or raised beds for for lavender it's in other parts of the country like have many friends in California they seem to be able to throw these things out in their window it hits the ground and grows but sadly not here what's wonderful about lavender of course is its aroma one of the things you can do if you don't even grow lavender is you can buy the lavender blooms and create sachets and put those in the pillowcase between a pillow and the pillowcase which will make you sleep much better at night also taking the essential oil of lavender and putting it in the rent cycle of your your bed sheets and pillowcases and things like that will give that wonderful fresh lavender aroma so there are a lot of ways to enjoy these these plants and the essential oils that they produce one of the herbs that I reached for regularly is is mint I just particularly in the summer I like mint and on many many things I love middle-eastern food I like mint and yogurts and things like that to put on lamb and so forth one of the questions that I have have seen as many of you are interested in how you can route some of these herbs and I found that time as you can see here will route very easily in a in a vase or a bottle you want to just strip some of the lower limbs off and have a bare stem like this and we found that by using herbs decoratively using them in bouquets on the table where they're all green but different textures and of leaves and aroma make they make a beautiful display you'll often find the little roots beginning to come out on the side of the stems this happens with with the time and it certainly happens with mint oh this smells so good this is a spearmint leaving this in water you don't ever want to have the actual leaves in the water so strip off the leaves and I'm going to pull that one out and then just drop those in a little little vase you can put them in the windowsill and these little guys will root now mint can be a thug in the garden right so you one of the ways to plant it is plant the mint in a container in the ground and that will help contain it to that space it doesn't spread all over your flowerbed trust me here a little bit a minute goes a long way and if you do plant it in your garden be prepared for it to take over or plant it in a way that it is contained and there are lots of different kinds of menses you know there's there's there for peppermints but lots of there's orange and chocolate mint so it's fun just to experiment with these the other thing I want to point out are the some of the other savory herbs that I don't have displayed here such as oregano it makes a beautiful ground cover and it's a herb it is extremely easy to grow another one that I like to grow is fennel it's delicious on fish it's decorative as well I love to use it with late flowering lilies the particularly the bronze fennel it's beautiful with roses in the garden so think about these herbs not only as ways to enliven a meal but also ways in which they can in live in the garden one of my favorite little land naps that has occurred over time is that we have a patch of dill that continues to come up every year from seed that drops they come up volunteer and they have these beautiful bright green chartreuse colored abilify our humble shaped flowers umbrella shaped flowers those are great in flower arranging and of course I love dill the flavor of dill is fantastic with relishes and pickles and all that kind of thing but also they have a decorative and aesthetic use I think and when you're doing flower arranging and so forth if you love ethnic food like I do then that may direct what you grow for instance coriander is fantastic or cilantro as a fresh herb is delicious and I love guacamole with some cilantro in it you want to plant that very early and my part of the world when it gets hot it tends to bolt but then the seeds are coriander and those seeds can be collected and saved and ground and used in other dishes another herb to think about is that whole range of onions right so you could start with chives that classic herb garden onion if you will they're all members of the onion family so they have the gorgeous purple blooms but what I like to do is take the little buds before the blooms open and those buds are ideal for placing on salads get a little little burst of flavor there in a salad you can also take the the bloom if it isn't too mature and tear it apart and sprinkle that on a salad along with say some nasturtium leaves because esther shams and the chives seem to bloom about the same time so that's a beautiful combination for a salad another thing to think about in the in the onion family is to grow garlic we plant garlic in the fall and we also plant another crop in the early spring and the greens of garlic you can you can take these cloves of garlic that you buy at the grocery store you can plant those cloves and they'll they'll leaf out and produce another bulb for you with lots of cloves but you also get the greens and those grains are really good to cook with so every part of that garlic plant is edible and even when it puts up a stalk with a little bit of a with that round bloom on it those really tender early buds are good to sprinkle on them on a salad we have an old-fashioned walking onion it's a great multiplier and I've used it for years to boarder beds in our vegetable garden I can't tell you how many people I have given a start of that onion too if you have it you will never go without fresh green onions and we gather onions from this particular plant twelve months out of the year so it's very handy to have it puts out an interesting flower again the flowers are edible and the green foliage is edible the white green onion itself that's underground is edible and another member of this family I'd be remiss too if I didn't mention is the Chinese garlic chive this has a beautiful bloom in the late season typically late August early September for us these long drifts of it will put up spikes with these white flowers and the pollinators love them again those flowers are delicious and beautiful on salads every part of that herb is edible and as the name implies it truly does have a very garlicky flavor to it so it's a good one to have around we've grown it for years at Moss mountain farm and loved to harvest it and and use it in all kinds of soups and things all the way through the winter I do love the flavor of garlic and I'm sure you do too but another flavor that I love is lemon and you'd be surprised the number of herbs out there that have a very citrusy sort of flavor to them lemon thyme for instance is beautiful in containers it has a little bit of variegation to it which makes it like even more attractive in containers lemongrass if you're into various oriental types of food it's nice to have lemongrass around because I know a lot of Tyra said I enjoy our call for lemongrass and then of course there's lemon balm which is a member of the the mint family so beware lemon balm has the most lemony kind of leaf too that you can imagine and long before lemons were readily available in the 19th century ladies would line the pans of cakes losers to a yellow cake and that essential oil from the lemon balm would infuse the cakes give them a lemony type flavor to them which is kind of interesting so don't forget about a little bit of lemon in your in your herb garden as you're considering it the other family of herbs that we really can't forget brings us around to one of my favorite holidays which is Thanksgiving and that's sage sage officinalis is the sage that we tend to eat it's a cooking sage it has the gray leaf but it also comes in a variegated form a tricolor leaf sage has the same aromatic quality same flavor that we enjoy with our turkey and dressing at Thanksgiving but that's a wonderful plant and it's not used enough throughout the year but I like it a lot on meats and things like that even even through the summer so and it also has a beautiful blue flower on it or purple flower so consider it but what's amazing about sage is that it's in the salvia family and that's a woody sage that we use salvia officinalis its woody like the rosemary but there are other members of the family the salvia is that you all know and we grow a lot of them at Moss mountain farm everything from Mexican sage with its Velveteen blue flowers to one called black-and-blue there are lots of different Reds that we grow Wendy's wish is a pink one we grow and if you're trying to attract pollinators and you love hummingbirds in your garden then some of these salvias or sages are an absolute must so what I like to think about with these herbs is how can I effectively kind of mix them among vegetables and flowers in a garden where I can create some real diversity and really heighten the activity sort of the fantastic ecology if you will of the space you're working in you're selecting these these plants that are super uber bloomers and planting lots of those and juxtaposition with things that require pollination and so you attract the pollinator that then jumps from the blooms of a flower to the blooms of a fruit and you know what the benefit there is and then of course the the honey that they can produce by drawing the nectar when you start talking about the honeybee but anyway this whole idea of of creating a little ecology no matter if you have an apartment Terrace or a small patio clustered containers or a small sunny backyard where you can do a few raised beds integrating these plants I think goes a long way to helping the planet one theme of herbs are just kind of fun I wrote an article about this some time ago or the five top herbs I would have around for cocktails or drinks so you might check out that that article the link is posted here below so check it out there's some of the best to have around particularly late in the afternoon when it's time to have a little little drink well I hope you found this little 101 on herbs helpful I'd love to hear your comments you may have some experiences with herbs and ways to grow them it could be helpful to our friends out there so please share them with us and look forward to neck time where we'll be talking about something right from the garden

Channel: P. Allen Smith

Views: 56,859

Keywords: Garden Home VLOG, p. allen smith, garden home, Gardening, vlog, Moss Mountain Farm, Homesteading, p allen smith garden home, Organic, garden to kitchen, 4k, easy to grow herbs, 2019, garden tips, cooking tips, plants, herbs, rosemary, basil types, growing herbs, growing herbs in containers, raised bed gardening, lavender tips, rooting mint, essential oils, allium varities, Mediterranean herbs, Need help, own food, garden home vlog, perfect combination of beauty, common herbs

Id: S9pK6ueFq_E

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019