While I love the wide and encompassing world of herbs, it must be said that not all of them are created equally. Herbs can bring exciting flavors, delicious aromas, and added nutrition to our kitchens so it’s worth determining which ones are the best options for your needs and growing those first and foremost. Once your favorites are in place, go ahead and push your boundaries to experiment with new options, perhaps bringing home unfamiliar and exotic herbs to play with.
After many years of gardening, I’ve been able to pinpoint which herbs are most worthwhile for me to grow and I remain loyal because they never fail to deliver-unless the grasshoppers get them. Now, the herbs listed below are my standbys but that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be yours. Maybe you love to use a lot of parsley or dream of making your own lavender sachets every summer. Take my top choices into consideration but I encourage you to replace or add to the list the herbs that will provide you with the most use and joy!
To start us off, we have rosemary. This one is first because I prize many different characteristics of this plant. Not only does it smell lovely (at least to me), makes my roasted potatoes sing, and looks great in the garden, sometimes the Arp variety will even overwinter for me for years at a time. Besides potatoes, this herb is great with meats and I like to work it into baking recipes as well. Lemon rosemary scones can be the perfect springtime treat. Hailing from the Mediterranean region, this plant can handle our hot and dry temps admirably once its roots are established and provides a nice upright shape in the garden. When it comes time to harvest, it’s easy to take a spear or two, quickly rinse them off, and hang them upside down to dry or use fresh in the kitchen.
Next comes dill. This plant has it all. You can use both the foliage and the seeds in your cooking, it creates a bright green and feathery backdrop for other plants in the garden, and provides flowers the pollinators delight in. Plus, it will often reseed itself, saving you the trouble and cost of a fresh purchase and planting. You can use dill in salads, on fish or chicken, in egg dishes, and of course pickles. I try to make a few batches of refrigerator pickles each summer for fresh snacking and, in my opinion, the more dill the better!
Admittedly, I have to really work to keep thyme going for very long as mine tends to like to die out each winter. Yes, I’ve tried different hardy varieties and putting bricks near it to absorb solar heat in the winter but still, it struggles. Does this stop me from being sure to include it in the herb garden each year? No way! I will always want thyme on my grilled cheese sandwiches, fresh in my salads, sprinkled on eggs from time to time, and added into my stews. So, yes I will buy new each year until I get a good overwintering and be grateful that I have some fresh thyme available again, no matter the trouble.
Oh, mint! I have such a soft spot for this herb. When I was young, there was a ton of it growing by a creek that I would play near occasionally and the magic of the smell and taste will never leave me. As a gardener, this delight must be curbed by good sense as it doesn’t take anyone new to gardening long to realize mint belongs in containers, period. Some newbies will insist that they are fine with it growing free but, they just need some more time for this nature lesson to set in. If you plant your mints in containers, you can revel in them all you please without the worry of rampant, rapacious spreading and colonization in the yard. While spearmint and peppermint are the old guard, there’s plenty of fun cultivars out there to enjoy such as pineapple, chocolate, strawberry, and orange mints as well. I will often pop off a couple of leaves in the morning to put in my water bottle for the day, throw some in salads, use as garnishes, and mint’s particularly delicious in Middle Eastern dishes.
Chives are an asset for their fluffy growth habit, lovely purple flowers that attract pollinators in spring, and their light onion flavor. I will use them in the usual ways such as on egg dishes, in cream cheese spreads, and in salads. They’re tough enough to overwinter and a very easygoing plant to keep without many needs besides decent waterings from time to time.
Finally, there’s basil. The smell of basil screams summer for me. It instantly makes me long for a margherita pizza and caprese salad. This one’s a bit of a stinker because it wants to flower so fast which means you need to stay on top of pruning. Be sure to cut back any flowering structures before they can bloom or the plant will thin out, get more bitter, and will be less than ideal moving forward. Basils are very tender, so when the weather turns in the fall, they’re some of the first to go but the flavor and aroma they bring to our summers is irreplaceable.
Most herbs are happy to grow in containers and with regular water and a bit of fertilizing for the annual and biennial varieties, will perform very well.
When you go out to harvest your herbs, you’ll want to shoot for early morning after the dew dries but before the heat of the day sets in. This is the time when the plants have the most flavor. You can harvest perennial herbs until about a month before the first estimated frost date.
It’s best to pinch off the buds of most herbs so the plants keep their energy focused on growth rather than reproduction. When you harvest, you can remove up to one-half of annual herb plants but only one-third of perennial herbs at a time to guarantee a good recovery.
You can preserve them through hanging, oven, or microwave drying and then store them in clean, labeled jars once all moisture is absolutely gone. Freezing is also an option.
To get more gardening and preserving details on herbs simply do an online search for ‘CSU Extension herbs’ and you’ll find our publications sharing all the good information for us longtime herb lovers and neophytes alike!