Essential Survival Gear Catalog

A kitchen herb garden is just a garden that is full of herbs that you use in your kitchen. Most people keep these somewhere near their back door so that they can dash outside for a couple of sprigs while they are cooking.

Pull down a few of your favorite cookbooks and read through the ingredient lists when you get ready to plant your culinary herb garden.

These are some wonderful herbs for your kitchen garden:

• Chives: These are one of the easiest herbs to cultivate and cook with. Chives are also among the easiest herb plants to maintain. You can lop off the tops of the herb and it will keep on growing. Chives can certainly wake up the other flavors in your foods.

• Dill: Dill is one of those utterly foolproof plants that you just cannot go wrong with. Your dill herb is a self-sower, so if you are providing the full-sun and well-drained soil it likes and you do not want more and more dill plants, cut off the blossoms before they go to seed. The whole plant is edible, from the seeds to the stems, including the leaves and blossoms. Add some dried dill seed to your tuna or chicken salad.

• Cayenne Pepper: This hot and spicy herb will grow to about three feet high, so be mindful of placement when you plant it. If you live in a climate that has frost during the colder time of year, you will want to bring your cayenne pepper plant inside. When starting out with cayenne pepper, you don’t have to pick-up it, you can start with seeds inside and then plant the young pepper plant outside. As your herb grows and begins to bear its fruit, keep an eye on it so that you don’t let it over-ripen.

• Tarragon: I like the fabulous flavor of tarragon. I make a delicious mayonnaise-based vegetable dip with tarragon that never fails to please. Start with a young herb and cut leaves and stems whenever you need them. Your tarragon leaves can be cut and frozen in a freezer bag to use later in your sumptuous dinners.

• Cilantro: This star of Mexican cuisine can add a bunch of flavor to your next salsa, tacos or Mexican chicken dish. It can do well from seeds and can be grown year-round in temperate regions, which is fantastic for those winter pots of chili. Cilantro will also grow well indoors during winter. As you prepare to try your cilantro in cooking, harvest leaves from the bottom first because they have the best flavor.

• Welch Onions: Although these onions are little, do not count them out, because their mild taste is reminiscent of scallions. Like pearl onions, I use these in dinners to add a bit of visual appeal. These onions grow in clumps, so be sure to leave plenty of room in your container.

Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.

Here is more information on Fresh Herb Gardening. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.