Begin an herb garden in winter

Con­sid­er­ing what a mild win­ter we have expe­ri­enced so far, the thought of frigid air, howl­ing winds and piles of snow def­i­nitely feels daunt­ing. This is also the time of year when gar­den­ers become rest­less. The mem­o­ries of some of the garden’s real­i­ties like weed­ing and dig­ging have soft­ened and we all might be a lit­tle guilty of over-romanticizing the every­day chores of tend­ing to a garden’s needs.

Usu­ally by Feb­ru­ary, I have already pur­chased so many seeds I could feed all of Delaware County … if I planted and suc­cess­fully cul­ti­vated those seeds, that is. When that green light for seed-starting on March 20 comes, inevitably I have not the space, time or equip­ment to start my vari­ety of herbs, veg­eta­bles and flow­ers. A won­der­ful project for the rest­less gar­dener to start right now is his or her herb gar­den. While I am the first to admit that over-wintering herbs like rose­mary and basil has its chal­lenges, start­ing them from seed with lim­ited and inex­pen­sive equip­ment is quite easy.

The main dif­fi­cul­ties with mature rose­mary and basil plants inside (I use those as exam­ples because they are favorites and noto­ri­ously finicky inside) are air cir­cu­la­tion and light, prob­lems much more eas­ily addressed on seedlings than full-grown plants. Another won­der­ful aspect of start­ing some of your herbs early is to keep them at a man­age­able size, you will have to prune and har­vest from them. Enjoy­ing fresh herbs grown at home in the dead of win­ter is the per­fect way to jump­start your 2012 gar­den and hold you over until you can go play in the dirt.

First and fore­most in seed start­ing, in my opin­ion, there is no tool more valu­able than a heated pad to set the ger­mi­nat­ing trays on. At around $20, it can seem to be a super­flu­ous gim­mick con­sid­er­ing peo­ple have cul­ti­vated seeds for thou­sands of years with­out them. I believe in embrac­ing mod­ern ameni­ties and this one is def­i­nitely worth it. Seeds ger­mi­nate faster and more effec­tively in warmer soil. The vol­ume of seeds that actu­ally ger­mi­nate and grow when started in a tray over a heated pad is astounding.

It greatly aids in the ger­mi­na­tion of tough seeds like pars­ley and rose­mary which both have rep­u­ta­tions for being dif­fi­cult to start from seed. Another very effi­cient tip in start­ing seeds is to cover the tray of moist­ened soil with plas­tic wrap; this cre­ates a green­house effect as well as form­ing con­den­sa­tion which drops back on to the soil recy­cling water and keep­ing the tray from dry­ing out.

Once the seeds have ger­mi­nated and bro­ken the sur­face of the soil, the next pri­or­ity is light. Flu­o­res­cent lights pro­vide suf­fi­cient light at a spec­tac­u­lar value. The key to suc­cess­fully grow­ing under arti­fi­cial light is being able to adjust the dis­tance between the light and the plants. This can be accom­plished with adjustable shelv­ing, or adjust­ing the light fix­ture itself. You want the light fix­ture about 2.5 to 3.5 inches above the top of the plants. If the light is closer than 2.5 to 3.5 inches, it is likely the plant will be burned. If the light is fur­ther than 2.5 to 3.5 inches from the top of the plants, they will put all their energy into grow­ing tall enough to reach suf­fi­cient light result­ing in leggy, thin plants. Plug­ging the lights into an auto-timer with 12 to 14 hours of light is ideal.

Once your seeds have become small seedling plants with a set of ‘true leaves’ (the sec­ond set of leaves on the plant), air cir­cu­la­tion becomes a cru­cial ele­ment to suc­cess. The most com­mon place to start seeds is in the base­ment. This has its chal­lenges because base­ments often have poor air­flow. Luck­ily the easy fix is set­ting a fan close to your seedling trays. Set the fan on a low speed, too high could cause the tem­per­a­ture to go down too much. As the plants grow larger, it may be nec­es­sary to raise the speed of the fan. This lit­tle tip makes a world of dif­fer­ence in the suc­cess of start­ing herbs indoors.

When water­ing your herbs indoors, it is best to use a spray bot­tle and mist the soil, not the leaves, lightly. Water on the leaves is a quick way for mold to grow—a com­mon prob­lem with seedlings.

Start­ing herbs early inside over the win­ter is rel­a­tively easy, reward­ing and fun for the starved gar­dener. There is enough time between now and spring that mis­takes can be made with­out foil­ing your sum­mer gar­den plans.

Hav­ing home-grown fresh herbs to sea­son a pot roast with a win­ter storm wreak­ing havoc out­side is a treat any gar­dener or cook would be thrilled to have. With these tips in mind, even the most basic gar­dener can suc­ceed in this deli­cious pursuit.

Com­mu­nity Gar­den Program

Join the Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­den­ers and OSU Exten­sion for a pro­gram from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Feb. 4, at the Colum­bus State Col­lege, Delaware Cam­pus. Our keynote speaker will be Bill Daw­son, Grow­ing to Green Coor­di­na­tor at Franklin Park Con­ser­va­tory. He will speak about the Fun­da­men­tals of Com­mu­nity Gar­den­ing. Other top­ics for the day will be Soils and Com­post, Com­pan­ion plant­ing, Suc­ces­sion plant­ing and an expert panel group. Call the Exten­sion office at 740–833-2030 to reserve. Price is $15 which includes lunch, cof­fee and water. Grow­ing a com­mu­nity, one gar­den at a time.

Stephen Jones is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gardener.

Posted by Master Gardener on Jan 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.