A little herb garden is so achievable for everyone and so vital for home cooking. It is a thing of pleasure to be able to pick a handful of herbs fresh from your own garden to add colour and flavour to wintertime menus.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
You do not need much space. In fact, herbs are just the thing for high-rise gardens as well as for those on small suburban blocks. Just two or three planter boxes will provide you with enough space to have a wonderful collection of homegrown herbs.
Parsley is such a simple herb to grow and it will flourish in the climate of Canberra. It can be used in egg dishes and in casseroles, simply as a garnish. By letting one or two plants go to seed, you will be able to have new plants coming up each year, so that you can avoid having old, two-year-old coarse leaves.
Parsley, known as persil to the French, is one of the basic ingredients in the fines herbes and bouquet garni of much traditional, provincial French cooking. The other herbs which make up the collection of fines herbes are chervil, tarragon and chives.
Chervil is a lovely little aromatic herb which tastes like wild parsley with a hint of aniseed. It will add much flavour to your homemade soups and sauces. Chervil can be planted now, into a bed that has lots of organic matter and it does grow well in a planter box or terracotta pot.
It loves the mild winter sun and some of its delicate fern like foliage can be picked just eight weeks after planting. The plants will continue to provide leaves for cooking, as long as the flower stems are trimmed off. Take care to protect for the hot summer sun, or else the plants will all simply go to seed.
Chives can be grown easily in a medium-sized terracotta pot or out in the herb garden. You can divide an existing clump of this plant which belongs to the onion family or you can raise from seed.
They will need warmth to germinate so either plant into propagation trays placed in a warm location or sow seed directly into the garden bed when the soil has wormed up in late spring.
Chives grow best in rich, moist soil, with ample sun. We have some clusters of chives growing among our roses. Make sure that the little plants do not dry out in the hot summer days or they will quickly shrivel up.
Another wonderful herb that can easily be grown in a terracotta pot is the bay tree. They are a very hardy plant and their dark green, shiny leaves will provide warmth during the winter months. If you have limited space they can be pruned back to remain quite a compact shrub. You only will need to pick off one or two bay leaves each time you are preparing a casserole or soup to add much flavour to the dish.
Omelette aux fines herbes
8 large free-range eggs
2 tbsp fresh cream
20 gms butter
1 tbsp finely chopped chives
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp chopped parsley
½ tsp chopped tarragon
1 tsp chopped chervil
2 tbsp chopped basil
salt and pepper
Break the eggs into a bowl, add the cream and whisk together.
Melt the butter in a non-stick frying pan and cook the chives and garlic over low heat until tender.
Add the chopped herbs and mix together.
Pour in the egg batter, add salt and pepper to taste, then cook gently.
This week in the garden
- Plant a row of mustard greens, radish and rocket to enjoy winter harvests.
- Plant out advanced onion seedlings and separate chive clusters, replanting into enriched beds.
- Winter savory, lemon thyme, rosemary tips, chervil and parsley can continue to be picked.
- Plant rhubarb sets and asparagus crowns into the well prepared, enriched garden beds. Weeds still seem to grow apace in winter so keep up the weeding program around your winter vegetables and garlic on sunny days.
- Continue your winter pruning of fruit trees, removing all broken and dead branches. Keep trimming off very tall branches so that you can easily harvest next season's crop.
Owen Pidgeon runs the Loriendale Organic Orchard near Hall.
