To care for your plants, you must be guided with growing 101 herbs quick helpful tips. There are various techniques to maintain the health and growth of your herb garden plants.
Caring for your annuals
Firstly, it would be better if you start with annuals seeds. These are cheaper than the grown ones. You should start growing your annuals indoors. You could use containers that are tray-like. These would provide your seeds their initial growth bed. Make rows in the soil when you start to plant the seeds, and place the seeds with enough space between each other. Have the seeds covered partially and water them in small amounts. Put the tray container inside a plastic bag, and place it in an indoor location with bright lights but not too much sunlight. The humidity allows your seeds to germinate faster. The seedlings would appear in about two to three weeks, depending on the herb seeds you have planted.
When you want to transfer the seedlings, take extra care. The leaves that have just grown are still a bit weak. Designate separate pots for each seedling. Once the plants have grown from at least seven inches from roots to tips, you can have multiple herbs planted in one pot.
Annuals are not usually infested with pests and diseases. However, if such problems occur, you could unravel the infested herbs to separate them from the healthy ones. You could also use eco-friendly pesticides. The last suggestion however is not best for herbs that are used for cooking and medicine.
Since annuals are usually moist, you may not need to water them daily. During summer, the herbs should be provided with light mulch so whenever you water them, the soil moisture is contained.
Caring for your perennials
Spacing is very important for perennials. These herbs usually have wild spreading roots especially when they are much matured. During the start of planting perennials, there has to be at least one foot space in between them.
On the other hand, perennials can also be grouped. If you are considering doing so, you could group three plants of the same kind per hole. You have to keep in mind to space them three inches apart.
Watering for perennials is needed immediately after planting. Watering during the early hours of the morning is best for them.
Despite the known strength of perennial stems and roots, they still need protective covering during extreme weathers. You could cover them with wide-rimmed containers or pots. You could also stretch poultry wires over perennial beds to protect the mulch and the plants’ roots. If you want to protect the leaves, put crossed wire loops over each plant. Then cover all the plants with plastic wraps.
Other tips
When you are into indoor container herb gardening, you need to place the plants in areas with ample sunlight or bright light exposure. For multiple herbs in one big pot, place tallest plant in the middle. It would be best to place the low rise and trailing plants on the pot sides.
You could also label your plants. It would be nice to put the date you planted them as well as their water or sunlight needs on the label. This system would help you not to forget the particular needs of your plants. For the labels you should choose water-proof materials.
These 101 tips are not much. Look around for more tips to make your garden beautiful and bountiful.
Tags: Herb garden plants, herb gardening, herbs