Healing Herbs

My medicinal herbs that I grew from seed are finally taking root and growing really well. During my reading I discovered that most plants reach their medicinal effectiveness at two years of age. So that and the fact that these plants are still so tender and young has made me decide to hold off on digging my garden just yet. I think I'll pot these up and tend to them until they get mature enough to hold their own in a garden. Plus, it will allow me to over winter them in the garage so I won't have to do this all again next year!

What you see here is lavender, feverfew, allheal, elecampagne, and evening primrose. Many of my medicinal herbs didn't germinate when I started these so I'm starting over with skullcap, burdock, and astragalus when the weather gets a bit warmer.

I also have some great cooking herbs going in pots around the yard.
Here is rosemary and the remnants of cilantro. You'll also see the beginnings of some basil there in the middle. It froze during the winter and I had to plant again. By mid summer this barrel is completely overflowing! I dried a lot of rosemary and basil last summer, and it's still good today!

Here's another pot of kitchen herbs: flat leafed parsely, oregano, lemon thyme, and sage. They're still small, but by mid summer you won't be able to see the inside of this pot! We've already been harvesting some of these herbs for cooking...the smell is amazing!

This poor little pot looks pretty pathetic! In the front is garlic chives. I'm hoping they'll take good root and multiply. The two little plants in the middle are hot pepper plants. They were on the verge of death in peat pots but appear to have come back to life in the warm soil of the pot. I also scattered some dill seeds in the soil, but they haven't germinated yet.

Pots are pretty inexpensive and look really pretty scattered throughout a garden. Mixing in garden soil with some of our compost really saves on filling them, too. I'm looking for some creative ways of recycling other objects as planters (have you seen my bookcase onion bed?)
And it's not because I'm "Green"....I'm just CHEAP!