6 Mistakes New Herb Gardeners Make

Growing your own herbs can be very rewarding and enjoyable, but a few little things can make it frustrating as well. Learn ten mistakes new herb gardeners make and how you can fix them for ultimate garden success this year!

Something special about starting

Mistake 1: Growing from seed. While there is something special about starting a plant from seed and watching it grow, there is a lot that can go wrong when starting seedlings.

Seeds require a proper environment for germinating and being kept growing indoors before it’s time to plant outside. For the same price (or less) as a packet of seeds, you can pick up your very own starter plants.

This allows you to start with a healthy plant and avoiding the disappointment of not having plants to grow in the spring.

Mistake 2: Too complex, too early.When growing herbs, it’s always best to grow what you love; after all you’ll be eating them! At the same time, we’re aiming for success when growing too.

Basil is a perfect trainer herb

For a first time gardener, basil is a perfect trainer herb. It’s a quick grower and it bounces back really well when not watered enough. This flexibility allows you to figure things out with a plant that can take a little abuse. The fact basil is so versatile on recipes and a well-loved herb is yet another added benefit.

Mistake 3: You mean there’s more than one kind of mint? As in life, it’s important to read carefully when choosing your herbs.When you shop for groceries, there’s no such thing as ‘just an apple’ there are many varieties available to you, same goes for selecting herbs.

Multiple options available to you

We’ve got plenty of thyme, no seriously, we actually have lots of different varieties of thyme; creeping thyme, silver thyme, lemon thyme, upright thyme, to name a few. When selecting herbs with multiple options available to you, know the flavour your looking to get and pick correctly.

Otherwise you could want to make mojitos and grab apple mint instead of spearmint by mistake.

Mistake 4: Help, my soil isn’t feeding me!A well-prepped garden with fresh soil can go along way. Using soil that is tired, with no nutrients left to offer you herbs isn’t conducive to success. Spent soil that hasn’t been worked, had compost added or been worked to turn up fresh soil doesn’t give your herb a warm welcome to its new home.

In your garden, turn over the soil and working in some digested compost is a more fitting home. In pots, avoid garden soil, yes you heard correct, avoid garden soils like topsoil or black earth! These soils are heavy and take forever to dry out after a rain.

Using a potting soil or ProMix will be lighter and fluffier, perfect for herb growing. Add in an occasional watering (twice a month) with 20-20-20 water soluble fertilizer to recharge the nutrients your plants will take from the soil and you’ve made a bed fit for a (herb) king!

Mistake 5: Prevent a Garden Invasion! Some herbs provide complimenting flavours to our food but forget their manners when planted in your garden. Herbs like mint and oregano are voracious growers and get down right aggressive (even invasion) in a garden.

To keep the rest of your garden plot safe, consider growing these herbs in pots and burying them in the ground. The added measure of control a pot puts on the roots of these herbs can keep them from moving in to the rest of your garden and prompting taking over.

Of course the surest way to protect your garden from this threat is to grow them in pots grown above ground.

Mistake 6: Watering herbs like houseplants. There are a lot of differences between indoors and outdoors (duh) and those differences make growing plants outside very different than indoors.

While herbs and house plants inside might do flourish with a good watering once a week, that just won’t cut it for plants left in the garden. Most herbs will require moderate and regular watering’s, especially in the hot summer months.

If you’re growing in pots, make sure the pot has adequate drainage; this will prevent your herbs from drowning after a long rainy period. The downside with growing in pots is your herbs will need even more water than if they’re planted in the ground.