The Benefits of Adding Perennial Herbs to Your Garden

Herbs are an easy and cost-effective addition to your vegetable garden. Instead of buying them from the store, you can simply snip fresh herbs for your favorite dishes. Plant them once and enjoy harvests for years to come. They are inexpensive and often mature enough for use within the first season.

Herbs are adaptable to various soil types, making them suitable for different garden settings. Plant them in a sunny spot in your garden, in containers on your deck, or even indoors by a window. Most herbs require at least six hours of full sun daily. Some herbs tolerate cold weather, allowing for harvests well into late fall and early winter in many regions.

Perennial herbs offer additional benefits, such as attracting pollinators and resisting pests and diseases. They are an excellent choice for any home cook’s garden. So, grab your garden tools and start planting. While annual herbs like basil and cilantro are popular, perennial herbs offer a greater return as they come back year after year.

Mint
Because mint grows almost like a weed, you’ll want to plant it in a container first. Then, submerge the entire pot to ground level to contain its growth. Mint comes in many different flavors including spearmint, chocolate mint, and apple mint. It’s excellent in iced tea, cocktails, and baked goods.

Rosemary
Fragrant, woodsy rosemary can take a few years to fully mature, so you want to be patient. But once it’s ready, it typically blooms in late spring and can come back for a decade. It can also make a lovely houseplant. It doesn’t require a lot of water or fertilization either. The telltale earthiness works so well in hearty, savory dishes like stews and braised meats.

Cilantro/Coriander

You might’ve heard both these terms before and been a little bit confused. To clear things up, cilantro is the leaf, while coriander is the seed that forms after flowering. Cilantro is a cool-weather annual but if it’s left to drop seeds, they’ll sprout again next spring or when temperatures cool down in the fall.

Garlic Chives

As you might have guessed, garlic chives offer a mild garlic flavor. Both the leaves and white flowers, which appear in late summer, are edible.

Lemon Balm
The lemon-scented mint-like leaves of this perennial herb make it a nice addition to your garden. Remove the flowers so they don’t go to seed, or you may find that this plant will take over your entire garden. It’s mostly used for brewing a cup of delicious tea.