Planting herbs - a good plan is needed
Herbs are currently booming for a reason. After all, the aromatic plants are not only a diverse and extremely healthy enrichment for the kitchen. Many old and new ideas are also currently spreading for creative self-made things in the culinary and personal care sector.
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In addition to using them as seasoning, you can use herbs for exquisite delicacies such as liqueurs or your own vinegars, for example, or for home-made cosmetics and care products such as soaps, bath pearls and essential extracts.
Examples of possible herb uses:
- Cooking seasoning
- Refining delicatessen
- Homemade cosmetics and care products
Instructions for planting a herb bed
To create a herb bed according to your usage plan, you should follow the steps below:
- Selection of herbs
- Plan for the type of bed
Selection of herbs
On the one hand, this decides what you want to do with your aromatic plants. If they are to be used primarily in the kitchen, they should of course correspond to your personal taste and cooking habits. If you are looking for special uses in the form of healing extracts or soap-flavoring, the appropriate varieties with healing effects or an intense fragrance are the choice.
Plan for the type of bed
Above all, do you want abundant and aromatic yields? Then a functional herb bed with an easily accessible and practical structure or in the form of a raised bed is suitable. Would you also like an aesthetic added value for your garden? Then we recommend various herb bed shapes, which you design with stones, structure ideas and additional decor.
What to consider when planting
Basically, of course, you can plant the herbs that appeal to you and taste the most. However, in order to cultivate it successfully, you should still have a few rules in mind. This mainly applies to:
- The choice of location
- The neighborhood of the plants
When it comes to the location, it is best to orientate yourself according to the needs of the herbs that should find their way into your aroma oasis. Basically, a sunny place is good for most herbs, but especially of course for Mediterranean varieties such as lavender, oregano, basil or thyme. Native herbs such as fennel, chamomile, mint or parsley can also thrive in partial shade.
Of course, the location requirements also determine which herbs you can best combine with each other in the bed. But there are also certain individual tolerances or intolerances at the vegetative level. Perennial varieties, for example, do not like to be adjacent to annual herbs if this means that the soil is rearranged every year. In addition, annual and perennial herbs have very different water requirements.
The following combinations of the floor coverings and the above-ground characteristics complement each other particularly well:
- Rosemary, thyme and oregano
- Basil, chives and parsley
- Lemon balm and pimpinelle
- Sage and oregano
Instructions for 3 herb bed ideas
- Herb snail
- Raised bed
- Plant stones
Herb snail
The herb snail is particularly suitable for Mediterranean, heat-loving herbs, as it is classically structured with heat-storing natural stones. At the same time, it allows the planting of herbs with different soil and climatic requirements due to the descending structure.
You need for the herb snail
- Natural stones
- Potting soil
- sand
- rubble
- compost
Create a small hill with a maximum diameter of 2 m and a height of 80 cm, which you structure with a spiral wall made of flat natural or field stones. Fill the gaps with a mixture of potting soil, sand and rubble, such as limestone. In the lower part you can make the substrate a little more humus-rich with compost - for local herbs such as chervil or parsley.
Raised bed
The raised bed has two main advantages: It relieves the back during processing and harvesting and allows a generously enriched and heat-insulating substrate. It is therefore particularly suitable for nutrient-hungry herbs such as chives and wild garlic, basil, lovage, lemon verbena or mint.
You need for the herb raised bed:
- A finished box or wooden material to build yourself
- Potting soil
- compost
- sand
For the herb raised bed, as with vegetable or flower raised beds, you can either use a prefabricated raised bed box or play the craftsman yourself. Instructions for self-construction are in their own chapter - and are widely available on the web. However, in contrast to raised vegetable beds, the filling should not be quite as nutritious - because the varieties that require more nutrients are comparatively frugal compared to many types of vegetables.
Therefore, do not use layers of horse manure etc. when mixing the soil and simply make do with a little compost. A little drainage through sand should still be guaranteed.
Plant stones
You don't need to go to great lengths to create a herb bed made of plant stones - the typical half-ring-like stones can be very easily stacked on top of each other on a slope that is as sun-oriented as possible, leaving individual troughs free for different types of herbs. You can of course also fill these with individual substrate compositions depending on the nutrient requirements.
Similar to the herb snail, southern herbs should be planted in the higher troughs because of their increased need for sunshine.
