Making Your Herb Garden Work
Making a herb garden work is half the joy of having an herb garden. Companion planting is important for your herb garden. In fact it is one of the best ways to make sure all your plants grow well. There are some plants, however that like to grow solo, and having them among your plants and herb patches will give you an extra challenge at making a herb garden work. While the best advice to take is really plant these “solo-growing” herbs far away from the rest of your garden and well on their own, it doesn't always work out this way. Some gardeners can be insistent as to having all their herbs together in one patch. So, good gardeners have developed ways to make herb gardening with over-eager and rampant growing plants work.
Mint is a popular herb, but it isn't without its difficulties. In fact, it creates difficulties. Mint likes to roam freely and when planted next to other herbs it disturbs all other plants. If you're a gardener who intends to grow only mint, give it some shade and keep the soil moist. It's a very aggressive herb and it will soon cover a lot of ground. If you want to be able to grow mint along with the rest of your herb garden, make it work by keeping it in very sunny and relatively dry conditions, just make sure that the plant is moist while it's doing its initial growing. After it's taken root, you can begin watering it less. Mint's roots spread far and wide though, and they can still affect the other herbs. Plant your mint in a bottomless pot, and then place the entire pot in the ground. This will control the direction of the root growth. Just to be on the safe side, though, you may want to give your planted mint its own row in the garden.
Another herb that will pose a challenge to making a herb garden work is fennel. This feisty herb (both in flavor and growing) will flourish in almost any kind of soil. It's only enemy is being over-watered. Again if fennel is your herb for all seasons, know that it will grow and reseed itself, and once it develops long roots, you'll have a very difficult time pulling it up. Use the bottomless pots the way you would with mint. Just like mint, grow your fennel in a row and far away. Fennel has a tendency to weaken every plant that it is next to, unless the next plant is fennel as well.
Making a herb garden work means knowing your plants and their properties well. This goes beyond mint and fennel though. Herb garden plants are very easy to grow by themselves, but there are a few rules as to which ones you can grow together. Do a little research on each of the plants you want to grow so that you can grow them well and make you herb garden work.
