Grow Herbs, not Vegetables

Save a trip to the supermarket

This is one of my very rare bits of gardening advice, which is not my specialty at all. But very opinionated. So enjoy.

I live in San Jose, so consider that this advice might not apply at all to your location.

Introduction

“Grow your own food” they said. “It’ll be so economical and healthy!” they said.

“BS” I say. If you live in an urban or suburban area, it’s easier and cheaper to just buy veggies during your regular shopping. Farmers’ markets are a great source of authentic food, and there are a number of produce markets (near me, at least). The upscale markets (Whole Foods, Sprouts, Trader Joe’s) also have good produce.

Secondly, the really great producing plants are stuff nobody wants, anyway. Squash is garbage and you can’t give it away (I told you this was opinionated).

Tomatoes: those are great if they happen to grow for you. I’ve had rotten luck with them, and they’re also things you can get at the farmers’ market or produce market.

Strawberries: Give me a break. You get a half dozen things the size of kumquats, and meantime, fresh strawberries are everywhere.

On the other hand, if you can go to a U-Pick farm, those are the best strawberries in the world. Much better than you could grow yourself.

Finally, unless you’re a large-scale farmer, you’ll spend twenty times as much producing veggies as you would just buying them.

The Convenience of Herbs

Over the years I’ve made a lot of recipes that call for fresh mint / parsley / basil / cilantro / thyme / rosemary / whatever. You never have that on hand, dammit!

So you either use dried herbs (inferior) or you run down to the store, buy $2 worth of it, and throw most of it away after you’re done. Instead of doing that, you can grow the herbs you often need, and they’re always on hand. It’s convenience and good-tasting food that you’re optimizing for, not health or economy.

Martha Stewart has what she calls a Windowsill Herb Garden. That would be nice if your windowsill gets sun, and you can get water to it. Mine are all in the garden with irrigation of some sort (drip, mostly). In California you have to irrigate a lot of things or they die.

Here are some of the herbs I’ve got growing right now. At the end, I have some notes on things I’ve grown in the past.

Thyme

OMG. This is enough thyme for the entire city of San Jose, and it’s a perennial.

Rosemary

Rosemary is practically a weed. Once you know what it looks like, you’ll see it everywhere.

(That’s a battle rope up at the top. You can search YouTube for “battle rope workout” if you want to see what it’s for. This is not the topic of today’s post.)

Basil

Basil is incredible. It is an annual so you have to plant it every year, but it grows fantastically well for me. You’ll get better pesto than you’ll find in any restaurant or in the frozen food section at the supermarket. Put it in the freezer in ice cube trays, and you can have it all winter.

This is the recipe I use, except I use walnuts and just throw it all in the blender. I’m sure Marcella’s method is better.

Cilantro

I had bad luck with cilantro last year, and I found out that it doesn’t want full sun like I give the basil. So now I have it in a shadier place, and it seems to be doing better.

Mint

Mint is incredibly invasive, so you have to grow it in a container. This is spearmint.

Other Herbs

These are herbs that I’ve grown in the past, with varying degrees of success.

Italian Parsley

This grew really well last year. I’m using the container it was in for basil this year.

Sage

I don’t find a lot of uses for sage, so I’m not growing that anymore.

Oregano

This grew well, but I read somewhere that oregano is one of the few herbs that are better dried than fresh. So now I just buy a bottle at the supermarket.

Dill

I didn’t do much with this, but it has its uses.

Tarragon

Some French recipes call for this. I find the taste sort of disgusting.

“Unusual” Herbs

There are a lot of herb plants in the garden store that I’m curious about, but I’m not sure what exactly I would do with them. Let me know if you use these, and for what.

• Summer Savory

• Lavender

• Lovage

• Borage

• Lemon balm

• Chervil

• Marjoram

Conclusion

I think the garden exists to give you better food than you’d be likely to get otherwise. “Likely” is a function of time and convenience for me, not just money. So forget the squash plant that’ll produce more stuff than you can ever give away. Grow herbs.