Our apartment building's small urban garden is divided into three raised beds, officially dubbed the herb bed, the strawberry bed, and the veggie patch. Actually, several types of plants are mixed in each bed. Herbs are often good companion plants for strawberries and vegetables, and other plants can be helpful companions for herbs.
This is a photo-tour of the herbs in our garden.
Photo #1: Here on the far right of the herb bed, we have three types of lavender growing.
The tallest, the one towards the right with the silvery toothed foliage, is "Goodwin Creek Gray," a French lavender hybrid. It will blossom purple, and ultimately grow to 3' high.
The middle-sized one (to the left) is Grosso, another French lavender, which will grow up to 2.5 feet high and flower deep violet.
The smallest one is Provence, which will grow to 2' and also flower purple. This, and a second just out of sight, actually went in earliest, April 28, but were severely pruned by birds who just loved it. They have been growing back since we put up the bird netting on May 23. This one is further along than the other, which was eaten almost down to the ground.
The seedlings coming up are Sacred Basil. I will be thinning them down a bit on Wednesday, and more later as they grow (throwing the thinnings into our salad). They will eventually grow 8" to 12" high and, with the tangerine gem marigolds dotted around, fill in the space nicely while the perennials grow to full size.
Not shown, in the lower corner, is a small hill of lemon cucumber, which we hope to train straight UP.
Photo #2: To the right of the "lavender patch" is the "rosemary patch." These two babies will grow to three, maybe five, even up to six feet tall.
On the right in this photo is an Italian basil that I picked up at the nursery for immediate basil gratification while I wait for the seedlings to grow. The seedlings here are Sacred Basil.
A purple petunia is in full bloom beside the basil, and there are a couple more tangerine gem marigolds.
Above the basil, and above the rightmost rosemary, thyme is growing among the strawberries. There are also seedlings of borage dotted along the strawberry bed.
Photo #3 is of the sage section. The first sage we put in was the pretty little golden sage down in the lower left corner of the photo. The birds pecked it down to nubbins, so I added the leggy (wooden legs) garden sage, which the garden store gave me for free. The birds ate half of that, too, before the netting went up, but there is still plenty left -- and the golden sage is growing back, too.
Down at the lower right are a couple more lemon cucumbers.
The basil seedlings in this section and on to the left are "Summerlong" basil.
The flowers are white petunia, blue petunia, and tangerine gem marigold.
In photo #4, the far left end of the herb bed features one peppermint plant and one oregano from the nursery, more summerlong basil seedlings, and a borage seedling. Filling it out are a pink petunia and more tangering gem marigolds. Just peeking in from the left you see a glimpse of my favorite flower in the bunch for its huge and continuous parade of blooms, a cosmos.
Also peeking in, lower left, is another hill of lemon cucumber.
All of the flowers in the garden are edible, although not all have been equally popular for eating. The petals of the big yellow marigolds guarding the veggie patch are delicious in salads, but the tangerine gems don't taste as pleasant to me, so I haven't tried including them. The cosmos petals are even tastier than the marigold, but with far fewer per blossom there's not much I can do with them that will feed twenty people at a community meal. I just nibble a petal now and then. I use just a couple of pansies and/or petunias at a time, as a garnish on top of the big salad.
I dotted borage seeds all over the garden, because besides being edible, it's a good companion plant for just about everything. Now I've got too many borage coming up, so borage thinnings are going into this week's salad, too.
The next photo is of the healthiest cucumber in the garden -- and it is surrounded by good companion plants: nasturtium, borage, and marigold.
I am going to plant several other kinds of cucumbers over the next month, spacing them so that (God willin' and the creek don't rise) we'll have a continuous harvest of cukes from the end of July to the first hard frost. I am planting dill around the future cucumber hills, which is a good companion for cucumber in the growing and in the eating.
I think that's all the herbs in the garden -- unless you count mizuna (last picture) also called potherb mustard!
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Comments: 8
It was group choice what went into our garden; I will admit to a lot of heavy lobbying. based on research into the easiest and most productive plants and what went well together. I also argued successfully for flowers that were edible, or at least not poisonous. The cosmos is one of the easiest and bloomiest flowers you can find. The blooms on the tangerine gems last a very long time and keep coming, and I don't do a darn thing to them except water them. The pansies and petunias are easy plants, too, and as long as we keep picking the spent blooms off, they should keep blooming through the summer.
What flowers do you have on the patio?
The one problem I've found in mixing herbs with other plants as we've done is that, once established, herbs don't seem to want as much water as flowers and seedlings and veggies do. I'll have to keep my eye on that.
I haven't figured out yet how and where to snip the herbs so that they bush out and produce the most. Any tips on that?
You might want to rethink your plans to plant dill amongst your cucumbers. While the dill will chase away the bugs, it will also cause the cukes to go soft and spoil shortly after harvesting them. I planted dill with cucumbers several years ago and noticed the spoilage problem. (I think those cukes made poor pickles, too.)