How to make Indoor Herb Gardens

Indoor herb gardens are great if you use a lot of spices in your daily cooking or making essential oil recipes. Indoor herb gardens allow you to grow your favorite herbs year round. As long as you have what we talk about in this post you can grow herbs indoors year round. For Alaska that is a great thing!  Let’s check out how to start an indoor herb garden.

Supplies

• Grow Lamp
• Pots – This one is my favorite.
• Soil
• Fertilizer – Safe for human consumption of course
• Seeds

How to begin

• Start off with and inch or two of soil in your pot. Drop in a seed of your choice and be sure to fertilize. Water the soil thoroughly. Until the herb sprouts, you will want to keep the soil moist.   I like to use the grow trays that have plastic covers to keep the soil moist until the seed sprout.
• Once the seeds have sprouted and are showing green color, mount your grow lamp in such a way that it’s not too close to burn the plants, but not too far away to be ineffective. Continue to keep the soil moist and fertilize about once a month.
• Once the plants have grown so that there is enough to harvest, carefully take clean scissors and cut off however much you plan on using. Do not take too much as you want the plant to continue to produce new growth.
• Keep the whole set up near a window if possible. Nothing beats natural sunlight, so on sunny days open up the windows and let your herbs get some actual sunlight and fresh air.
• Check local classifieds for people who are willing to do transplant trades. You would be surprised how many people are willing to trade one start of a plant for another.
• If there is an abundance of growth from your indoor herb garden you may be able to make some extra money by selling them at farmer’s markets too – for us that would be summer time only for the farmer’s market here in Alaska.
• If you have animals indoors be sure that the herbs you grow are not poisonous to your animals, whether it’s a cat or dog.
• If you end up with too much of one herb you can split the plant and transplant one half to a new indoor pot.

Starting an indoor herb garden is really simple and can be quite fun. It allows you to practice your gardening skills on a small scale and gets you ready for full scale growing of herbs outdoors and in the elements if your weather permits that.  Growing indoors has the advantage of being available year round when you rely on fresh herbs for cooking or baking.  Do you have an indoor herb garden or are you interested in starting one?  Share your secrets in the comments!