Gardening for kids

How to grow your own herb garden

Herbs are fun to grow and your kids will love having their own garden to tend to. Herbs are easy to grow from seed, requiring little patience as some herbs, like cress and rocket, should start to sprout in as little as two days!

What you need:

• pots, troughs, window boxes or other vessel
• potting mix
• 'blood and bone' or compost (or other fertiliser)
• seeds or seedlings
• water
• sunshine

Activity:

Find a sunny spot in the garden – most herbs need lots of sunshine.

Fill your pots almost-full of potting mix. Add a sprinkle of compost or blood and bone and mix in well.

To sow seeds, follow packet instructions.

To plant seedlings, make a well in the pot that is as deep as your seedling. Gently prise the seedling from its container (you may need to tap on the bottom of the container to loosen the roots). Give the roots a little room by carefully loosening the soil around them. Plant into your pot, making sure the new soil stays level with the soil the seedling is planted in. Press down firmly around the plant to compact the soil a little.

Once your herbs are in, give them a good watering to help them settle into their new soil.

When planting herbs together in the same pot, remember to keep ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ herbs separate. This will make it easier to keep the conditions right for each herb group. Wet herbs like moist to wet soil conditions and dry herbs like well-drained soil. You’ll need to water wet herbs more regularly than dry herbs.

Wet herbs

Common mint, peppermint, thyme, chervil , lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon verbena, watercress and sorrel.

Dry herbs

Rosemary, lavender, oregano, basil, garlic chives, dill, parsley, sage, thyme, coriander and tarragon.

Make some little name tags so you remember which herb is which (eventually you will know them by sight, but probably not yet!). You can use the plastic tags that came with your seedling trays or make your own by writing with a paint pen on sticks, mini-blackboards, old spoons from the kitchen, bits of plastic or just about anything you can stick into the ground.

• Herbs, like vegetables, need plenty of sun to thrive so make sure you choose a sunny spot for sowing your seeds.
• Make sure that the soil you use is good quality - poor soil will just lead to disappointment when sad, straggly seedlings pop up - if they pop up at all! If in doubt, buy a bag of soil.

Not sure what herb goes with what food? For more herbs and print out our handy herb guide: 

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