Container Herb Gardening is an excellent choice if you don't want the dirt inside your house but still have no place outside in the garden, so this guide will tell you how to perform this very special art. You can grow every Herb in a container annuals, biennials and perennials. What matters is the container itself. Though you can probably grow herbs in every container you can think of there are some things you should consider before choosing the right container:
First of all you should make sure that the container is not much higher than 5 inches since herbs don't have roots that grow that deep. Secondly you of course should look for a wide opening since you want to grow a lot of herbs most of the time. You can skip this if you just want some herbs for decoration but if you are going for cooking herbs you will need flat containers with wide openings.
Now the next thing to look out for is the drainage. You should really make sure that you purchase a container with wholes on the bottom or lower on the sides since we don't want the herbs to mould. Plastic and wood containers are fine but usually a little bit fragile to rain and frost so i would suggest you go for porcelain or lacquered ceramic pots. Also you could consider buying a light colored pot since dark ones heat up very fast and that is not good for the herbs.
When you choose the location for the container herb gardening be aware that most herbs need 5 hours of sunlight during the summer so place the pots accordingly. If you hang them somewhere its fine as long as its not directly under the roof. If you put them somewhere you should be aware if the drainage is not blocked by anything. Put the pot on something to prevent that. Now put something permeable under the wholes so that the soil doesn't get lost.
For the soil mix most people like either the gardening pot soil or just ordinary soil mixed with compost and sand. For container herb gardening you almost always add sand to the mix and you can also add some moss.
When you put in the herbs make sure that you cover them only lightly with soil and that they have enough space to grow. Besides you should do this in early spring when there is no more frost. Make sure the herbs get enough water, the very young ones need a lot of water but the older ones (if you have perennials) don't need that much. Just experiment a little bit with that you will see if the herb had enough water the day before or not. If you just planted them you should give them water daily else its fine to just water them every other day. Though you have to check if that is enough if you live in a very hot climate or the summer is irregularly hot.
The last thing to know for the container herb gardening is the winter protection and for that a lot of people just put about half an inch of mulch on the herbs once the first frost shows.
You now learned how to do the container herb gardening properly, select the right container, place it well and take care of the herbs.
