Attractive Indoor Herb Gardens - Steps And Measures

Do you enjoy cooking or gardening? If so, an indoor herb garden may be a perfect choice for you. They are fun, useful, and easy to maintain.

If you live in a colder climate, you know how hard it can be to grow things. With an indoor herb garden, you can have all the fun of gardening year round. They also add a special something to a kitchen windowsill. The different shapes and colors of the herbs make a fantastic decoration as they fill your kitchen with a wonderful aroma.

But enough of those reasons! The real benefit of an herb garden is having delicious, fresh herbs at your fingertips. No more running to the supermarket to pick up an overpriced bundle of herbs that you'll have to throw out in a week! Instead you can simply clip off what you need and toss it right into your recipe. All the while knowing that it wasn't grown with nasty pesticides and fertilizers.

Sounds great doesn't it? That's because it is. In fact, by now your probably wondering what you need to get started on one.

Here's what you need:

• Six-inch pots. One pot for each type of herb.
• Small stones and/or bark chips. These are for the bottom of the pot. They provide room for drainage and aeration.
• Soilless potting mix. Potting mix will drain well and keep your herbs from catching soil diseases.
• Herb seeds, bulbs, or small plants. You can grow herbs from seeds or get a head start with plants from your local nursery.
• Sunlight. Herbs require lots of light. If sunlight is in short supply, supplement it with a fluorescent light.

Follow the instructions on the seed packet or plant container and plant your herbs. If you buy herb plants from a nursery, be sure to ask the staff for tips on planting them correctly.

After planting, mist your herbs with water until the soil is fairly moist.

Herbs That do Well Indoors
You will be able to grow almost all of the most popular herbs indoors. Thyme, parsley, oregano, chives, and sage do especially well.

Watering and Fertilizing
Herbs don't like a lot of water. Keep the soil moist but not soaked. Use an organic fertilizer to feed your herbs every week or so.

Harvesting
Don't be afraid to use your herb garden! The more you use it the thicker it will grow. Harvest fresh herbs like chives, rosemary, and parsley as you need them.

As for dried herbs, pick them at their peak flavor right before they blossom. Wash them with gently running water and hang them upside down in small bundles. Hang them indoors and in a warm area if possible. You can also freeze herbs for later use by boiling them for about a minute and packing them into freezer bags.

With just a little work and some easy maintenance, you'll find that an indoor herb garden will provide lots of delicious, gourmet herbs along with fun and satisfaction.

Spring Garden For Perfect Home Attraction

If you're a keen gardener, you are probably itching to get out there and do something in your garden now. If you are not a keen gardener, but you are planning to sell your home in the spring, you are probably groaning at the thought of having to appear like a keen gardener!

Yes, having an attractive front yard is really important when selling your property. This is especially true in a buyer's market. The more temptations you can provide, the more people you will appeal to - and the more buyers you will have wanting to view your house.

Having an attractive front yard does not mean that you have to plant blooms; but flowers are certainly an easy way to add appeal. If you are planning to sell your house in springtime, then you need only invest in early blooming flowers.

This means that you'll want to plant bulbs (crocus, daffodils, tulips and narcissus) and very early flowering blooms like rhododendron, forsythia, pansies, primroses and primula, to name a few.

If you do not have a bed to plant flowers into, then read on for an easy way to make one:

Decide on the shape that you want by spreading some newspapers on the ground into the proposed design. Leave the newspapers intact as you will need the sheets to be 5 or 6 layers deep.

Next add several inches of compost on top of the newspaper shape; this will smother all the weeds etc. that are dying to come up (Ha!). In two months' time you can dig it up and 'work in' the compost with a spade, then plant! Yes, sounds like easy gardening.

If you follow this procedure and make a newly dug bed, you will have to buy primroses and pansies etc., and plant ready-made blooms in place. You may not have time to plant bulbs and let them mature into bloom; it depends on your climate.

If you want bulbs, then dig a big hole as soon as all sign of frost is past. Plant the bulbs in the hole in clumped groups under a tree, or on a corner or by a bush. If you have none of these, gather up a couple of big rocks and use these as a focal point for your daffodils or crocus.

Non-green-thumbed people sometimes have trouble telling one end of a bulb from the other! You must always plant bulbs with the root area facing downwards. The root end is flatter; the top end is more of a point. If in doubt, put them in the hole sideways and let Mother Nature work it out!

If you do not wish to plant bulbs or flowers, another way to get your front yard looking spruced up is to neaten and straighten all the edges around your lawn. Newly edged lawns and pathways are very noticeable; they may also indicate to the prospective buyer that you take care of your property. Keep your lawn very short.

Hose down all the paths to give them a good clean-up, and make sure you remove all garbage bins, bikes etc. from sight. It's called curb appeal and it means that your home must look good when viewed from the curb. (Many buyers do a drive by on their own, to see if they are tempted, before they contact the real estate agent.)

Now is a good time to check your garden furniture. There is a certain ambiance reflected in seeing an old rocking chair with cushions, under a parasol with a small table nearby. Tables, chairs, parasols and benches all suggest that yours is a yard to relax in.

Ensure that your garden furniture does not need to be repaired or given an extra coat of paint. It can be done early in the year, in the garage for instance. Once this is done, just sit back and wait for spring - like the rest of us!