| Our first Garden of the month was submitted by Carol of Palm Beach
Gardens, Florida. It is a side-yard herb garden. It was planted because as
Carol said, "Fresh herbs from the grocery store are so expensive, but I love to cook
with them. It is so nice to go out into the garden and clip the freshest herbs
possible to cook with. You never know how old the herbs are at the store and whether
they used pesticides or herbicides when growing them." The garden took Carol four
week-ends of preparation before she set down landscaping cloth, planted the herbs, then
added the mulch. "It was basically a weed-patch before I started working on it.
The worst part was getting all of the pieces of torpedo grass out. You know
that if you do not pull out all of the roots it will just sprout up again", she
added.
What is Carol proudest of? "I did it all myself, the herbs are growing like
crazy (I even give some away when I trim them because they are doing so well) and I love
to cook with them!"
The details:
Cost -- About $175 for the manure, peat, herbs, landscape timbers,
landscape cloth and mulch.
Size -- 7' by 9.5'
Time Investment -- 4 week-ends to prepare, 1/2 to 1 hour a night to
trim the herbs, pull any straggler weeds and water.
Plants Used -- Salad Burnett, Tri-color Sage, Garlic Chives, Rosemary,
Marjoram, Purple Ruffles Basil, Italian Oregano, Coriander, Globe Basil, Oregano, Italian
Parsley, Curly Leaf Parsley, Tarragon, Annual Basil, English Lavender, Dill, Red Onions,
Lemon Grass, Yellow Long-stemmed Rose Bush, Apricot Climbing Rose, one red and one yellow
tea Rose.
Biggest Challenge -- Pulling out the weeds to prepare the garden for
the herbs. |
