Why do you want to grow herbs, anyway?

Herbs are plants that have mutliple uses. Every plant that exists offers something. Even weeds support the soil, sometimes improving it, holding it in place with their root systems, keeping moisture where they grow, some hold moisture inside leaves, and all of them are alive. But many plants offer a little more by being useful for making food we can eat, flowers we can smell, shade we can sit under, wood we can build with or burn to keep warm. You can't complain about all of that good production.

What sets an herb apart from other plant life is it's ability to give us something we can use in mutiple ways, for longer periods of time, and with more variety in application. There may be some more technical, botanical terms to apply as well, but I am interested in practicality here, not terms.

Most of us know about culinary herbs (used in cooking), and there are medicinal herbs, aromatic herbs, and cleaning herbs (used in poultices to draw out poisons from wounds and infections), as well as in washing and household tasks.

Many herbs are no longer popular because someone came along and created a commercial (chemical) substitute for it, or may have been forgotten due to lack of availablity. Some really old food recipes are no longer popular because the herbs required for them were not at hand to people who immigrated to the Americas. For us, that means we have a lot of discovering to do, experimenting with our noses and palettes what others who are long gone knew on a daily basis. Today, every seed catalog or rack includes some herbs. There are a whole lot more to explore. Half the fun is in growing them ourselves, having plenty of it to use and experiment with.

Let us know what your favorite herb is and why. We will explore herbs one at a time, but we can talk about all of them. See our polling place and tell us your favorite herb.