homey

the herb box

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Last year, my Dad built us a raised garden bed for an herb garden. As I’ve said before, I’m pretty much horrible at keeping plants alive either inside or out, but after we fixed our drip irrigation it was thought that this was a pretty fool-proof system.

* Do you see how awesome this is… he even made it level on our sloping yard!

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And it worked really well all last year! Well… until the mint took over, and I forgot to harvest the parsley and it grew to be 6 feet tall. Oops. But it did get watered regularly thanks to the soaker hose that lines the box!

But the best part about a raised bed? The plants are super easy to replace! So off to Lowe’s I went on Sunday to pick out the replacement herbs for this summer (and beyond?), and came back with these six plants for under $20.

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This year we’ve got Italian parsley, cilantro and lemon thyme….

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… sweet basil, regular basil and mint (this time it’s planted in a pot so it won’t take over).

With all of these herbs, and my Herb Savor ready in the fridge, I’m thinking this will be a bountiful year of fresh herbs! As long as I can avoid paying for tiny bunches of them at the market, I think I’ll be happy!

Are you an herb master? If so, what’s in your herb garden??? (I may need ideas if any of these poor plants don’t make it through!)

7 Comments

  • Catherine

    It’s up and down with us. I manage to get decent size plants from planting seeds but they always seem to die after 8 or 9 months. We have cilantro, basil, mint, dill and sage right now.

  • Amanda

    I want an herb garden like that SO badly! Hopefully next spring I’ll be able to set one up so I can have fresh herbs next year!

  • Laura

    When we moved into our rental, the front yard had an herb garden with thyme, rosemary, oregano, chives and sage. The rosemary is doing great, and the oregano is like a weed. I miss the sage, which was taken over by everything else. The chives still poke up from time to time.
    I’m terrible with basil and cilantro!

  • Michelle

    Jeeze, Kim, you literally never cease to amaze and inspire me. We have a raised bed for our herbs as well, however, the string of triple digit temps (with no sign of slowing down) isn’t helping at.all. :( Also, that herb-saver contraption?! Genius.

  • Mrs. Puma

    I wish I had an actual outdoor space for our herbs rather than pots on the screened in porch. We’re growing sweet basil, cilantro, chives, rosemary and mint. We had some basil before and it died, so we recently got a new starter and it looks much better. The mint & chives are super easy to grow, they are just little survivors no matter what it seems.

  • ep

    Frankly, I am so jealous of this! I have been wanting to this for so long, and have been so unsuccessful. :( Glad you have fresh herbs though :)