Herb gardening is a wonderful way to grow various types of food for your kitchen, have certain types of natural medicine on hand, or simply enjoy the ease of growth and beauty herb plants often provide.

Most people grow herb gardens in their kitchen, to use as flavors in various foods and dishes they cook throughout the year. Many herbs though, can also be used in salads or teas, and since many herbs have very pleasant smells of their own, they can be used for general household air fresheners too.

Most herbs are quite easy to grow and they're perennial plants too, which means you can have blooming, producing plants for many years after planting just once. Herbs will often grow quite well in container gardens, or you can plant them straight into the ground outside too.

In fact, one favorite herb garden design is known as a wagon wheel. Some people go out and find actual wagon wheels to do this with, and it does make the design more attractive when you can. Simply lay a wagon wheel on the ground outside in the location you want your herbs to grow. A good choice is usually close to the kitchen, so you'll have salad and soup ingredients on hand as needed.

With your wagon wheel laid on the ground, you will simply plant a diferent herb into each "pie" slice of the wheel, bewtween the spokes. You can plant more than one type of herb in each space of course, depending on how much of any given kind you think you'll use throughout the year.

Another favorite way to plant herbs is in containers that will sit inside on the kitchen windowsill, or on the porch or patio. Herbs grow wonderfully in container gardens, and several things can be planted together to help improve growth and flavor if you'd like. You can also create herb container gardens based on usage instead. Plant an herb tea garden in one container for instance, an herbal soup garden into another container, and an herbal salad garden or medicine garden in containers of their own.

Some herbs are invasive though, so you must be careful when trying to plant them outside particularly. Mint for instance, will quickly over run almost any garden area you plant it in. It's best to plant mint into their own containers, and even if you plant to put them outside at some point, you should leave them in the container and plant the entire thing into the ground instead of putting the plant into the ground alone. This will help you be able to control the growth and expansion of the plant, and ensure it does not choke out other important plants you have growing.

Tags: Herb Gardening

Fertilizing an organic garden is easier than most people think. Just as you can improve the flavor of vegetables by planting certain plants together, and you can help repel common pests, insects and diseases by planting certain plants together, you can also fertilize your garden naturally using specific plants too.

One of the best fertilizers you can use in a garden of course, is compost. And compost is made with all natural, organic materials such as grass clippings, shredded leaves, sawdust, fireplace ash, and even shredded newspapers. You can also toss in fruit and vegetable matter from the kitchen to help your compost become even more rich and fertile for use in any area of your garden.

Besides compost though, you can actually just put certain plants into your garden area to help fertilize the soil, and provide additional nutrients your plants need.

Alfalfa for instance, is a wonderful hardy plant which can survive in almost any conditions, yet it's very high in a large number of vitamins and minerals that are beneficial to your soil in general. Alfalfa will provide your soil with nitrogen, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium for instance, plus it's long strong roots will help break up hard, rocky, clay like soil too.

German Chamomile is an annual growing herb which will reseed itself each year if you leave some of the flowers unpicked each season. This herb helps contribute calcium, potassium, and sulfer to your soil. It's also excellent for improving the taste of cucumbers, cabbage, and onions. A perennial version is the Roman chamomile, and it will grow in almost any kind of soil with full sunlight.

Clover is an excellent addition to any garden. It has long been considered a source of "green manure" and can be a companion plant to almost anything. In fact, it's particularly useful for increasing the soil fertility of grapes. Clover will attract many beneficial insects to your garden too.

Comfrey is another herb which has wonderful medicinal healing properties, plus it provides your garden soil with calcium, potassium, and phosphorous. This herb likes to grow in moist areas.

Kelp is a natural seaweed which works wonderfully both as a fertilizer and a pest repellant. You can put a natural kelp supplement pill into the soil near any plants to help them grow more beautifully, and you can even drop one into a flower vase to help your cut flowers live longer. Put kelp into a tea mixture for spraying, and it feeds the plants through their leaves while also repelling a variety of common garden pests and bugs too.

Tags: Organic Gardening, Plant Foods, Alfalfa, Natural Fertilizers

Creating raised garden beds is a wonderful way to get a garden started easily. When you plant your flowers or vegetables in raised garden beds, you don't have to pull weeds first, turn soil, or dig out a lot of rocks and other debris. Instead, you simply choose the location you want your garden bed to be, lay down your bed retainer walls, and fill it with dirt.

Raised garden beds are popular because they're easy, but also because they allow you to start growing seeds and small starter plants earlier in the season. A raised garden bed will become warmer earlier in the season than a ground based garden bed, and that allows you to start your gardening earlier in the year.

The first step to creating your raised garden bed is to choose the materials you'll use for the walls of the bed. There are a wide variety of materials that can be used to create your garden bed. Rocks for instance, can be piled together into a rock wall design. Bricks can also be used to create a more formal looking garden bed too. Wood or railroad ties are easy, attractive and sometimes even free too.

Regardless of what you choose to create your garden bed with, you'll need to gather enough materials to make the bed as high as you'd like it. Some people like to create garden beds just a foot or two tall, while others create tiered garden beds which have multiple levels ranging from a foot or two in height, to four or five feet at the tallest level. How you design yours is completely up to you of course, and your budget.

Once you've decided on the materials you'll use to create your raised garden bed, the next step is to choose the location for the bed. Where you place your garden bed will depend on how much space you need, and how much sunlight you'll need too. If you're building a raised garden bed to plant a vegetable garden for instance, you'll want to place the bed in a location which gets at least five to six hours of sunlight each day.

Now that you have your materials and location chosen, it's time to build the bed. And all you need to do is simply lay out your material in the design you want for the garden bed to create the bed frame. Once the frame for your garden bed is ready, then you just need to fill it with soil. Put enough soil into the new garden bed to bring it to at least one or two inches below the top of your garden bed frame.

All that's left now is planting. You can plant small starter seedling plants in your bed, sow seeds directly, or put more mature plants in, whichever you prefer. After planting your plants in the new garden bed, surround them with some type of mulch material such as tree bark or dry grass clippings, so the plants and bed won't dry out too quickly during hot spells.

Tags: Flowers, Raised garden beds, Vegetables