Harvesting of Herbs from your own Garden

Now I’m assuming you read my ‘top 5 easiest herbs to grow’ blog, where I’m clearly too attached to my garlic babies. If you haven’t, go now. I’m waiting.

Okay good, you’re back. So, this is part 2.

Nothing too complicated. It’s very easy.

1.Mint:

The first one I spoke about was mint! Mint can actually benefit from you cutting it back. So, if have planted mint, a good trick is to cut the tops of the mint when the leaves are small as they have the most flavour then. Don’t let the leaves get too big. Take some sharp, clean scissors or pruning shears if you have them and cut how much you need and more will keep growing form other nodes. The best time to plant mint is early in the year (springtime).

2.Coriander(Cilantro):

The next was coriander. This should be harvested whole, by which I mean you need to uproot the whole plant as pruning will not result in more growth. After a month and a half or so after planting, they’ll be ready to picked and used for cooking. A good thing to do is always plant a new batch of seeds after the previous batch, after around a week so that you'll have a continuous supply of coriander

3.Basil:

Now comes basil. This is similar to mint. Which means you can cut the tops, leaving the stems and more will grow! You should cut when the leaves are not too big, so as to retain the flavour. If you're growing the basil from seed, it will take around 1-2 weeks to germinate. After germination, it may take up to 3 or 4 weeks to start producing consumable leaves!

4.Garlic:

Next, I talked about garlic. It may be one of the easiest to grow. You can leave them in the soil for a longer period so that the bulbs inside the soil can grow big. An easy tell is when the garlic shoots start to droop or wilt a little, you can loosen the soil and take the garlic out use the whole thing, from leaves to cloves!

5.Curry plant:

With Curry leaf, you can consider this a mini tree in your pot. It will keep growing as it’s a perennial. So essentially you already have an endless supply. You can grow this plant from seed but it is quite hard as getting the seeds to germinate is hard and needs very specific environments. I feel the best way is to buy a healthy plant from a nursery and grow it at home.

Until next time,

Have a lovely day!

Gayatri Vaidya ©