Your Herb Garden. Barbara Segall

Your Herb Garden

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FEBRUARY

During the last days of winter, decorative herb flowers such as primrose and cowslip offer delicate shape and colour to brighten the evergreen herbs at this quiet time in the herb garden. Slow though the plants may be at this season, you have a potentially busy time ahead. Activity is centred around preparing the ground for sowing and planting later in spring and planning the framework of non-plant features such as paths, seats and fencing. Weather is the main factor that determines how busy you are able to be. There is no point in attempting to work the soil in cold and frosty weather or after heavy rain. Instead, take advantage of every opportunity that mild weather provides to get out and prepare the ground. It is hard work, but healthy, strong-growing plants are the reward. Good preparation includes weeding, digging and, if necessary, enriching the soil, as well as improving its drainage. Now is also the time to start a compost heap, so that at the end of autumn you will have your own herbal compost ready to add to the soil.

If a new herb site is to be cut out of an area under lawn, wait until after the last snow or frost before you clear the turf and begin preparing the ground. As a general rule, it is more practical to start from scratch in autumn.

Once the ground is prepared, begin to put in place the permanent framework of the herb garden you have planned on paper. Paths, seats, statuary, sundials and fences are known as the hard landscape features. Your choice of these will be governed by the size of the herb garden and the cost of materials. At first these features may look stark, but in a short while the herb plants – the soft landscape features – will soften the edges. If the weather keeps you indoors, remember you can keep company with overwintering aromatic plants such as canary balm, lemon-scented eucalyptus and woolly thyme.

tasks FOR THE month

START SMALL

Removing turves and digging overground which was once under lawn is hard work. Keep the physical effort to a minimum by starting with a small circle or rectangle to use for a few basic culinary herbs.

CHECKLIST

Prepare existing and new herb beds

Start a compost heap

Choose permanent herb garden features

Make early seed sowings

PREPARING AN EXISTING HERB BED

If your new herb garden site is part of an existing border or vegetable plot, the initial preparation is relatively easy.

Mark out the site carefully.

Next, the site will need weeding to remove long-term or perennial weeds such as dock, dandelion and thistle. They have long tap roots and also seed themselves freely each year. Other perennials such as bindweed, couch grass and creeping buttercup with underground stems or runners, are difficult to remove completely, as they regrow from small pieces of root.

Loosen individual dock, thistle and dandelion plants with a fork and work at them until you have removed as much as possible of their tap root. Similarly, loosen the soil and dig out weeds with creeping stems.

Fork over the soil and check that you have removed all visible pieces of their creeping root systems.

Seedlings of short-term annual weeds such as chickweed and hairy bittercress are easier to remove, but they must be tackled before they flower – which begins very early in spring – and self sow. Use a hoe to chop the leaves away from their roots. The leaves and stems can then be forked into the soil, where they will eventually decay and increase its fertility.

If the soil has been used regularly to grow vegetables or flowers, it will need enriching with well-rotted home-made or proprietary compost to replenish lost goodness. Dig this in, then fork the area over to break the newly-exposed soil down into a crumblier texture.

Once the site is weed free, you will be able to transplant herbs that are overcrowded or whose position you wish to alter.

CUTTING A NEW HERB GARDEN FROM A TURFED AREA

If the new site is to be cut out of the lawn, mark out its shape, but wait until after the last snow or frost before clearing the turf and preparing the ground.

Use garden twine and wooden pegs to mark out the first side of a rectangular bed.

Then measure the second, third and fourth sides, using a set square or builder’s square to make perfect right angles where each side meets.

Lay a straight-edged batten on the ground to act as a cutting guide. If you have an alternative use for the turf, use an edging tool to mark it into even sections to a depth of 5cm (2in).

Then use a spade to lift each section and remove it carefully. Store in shade and re-lay it into a new site within 24 hours, before it dries out.

If you don’t wish to re-use the turf elsewhere, you can incorporate it into the new herb site. Before you begin, remove any perennial weeds such as dock, thistle and dandelion.

Double digging

Make a trench to one spade’s depth at one end of the marked out herb bed.

Put the soil and turf from this first trench into a wheelbarrow and keep it aside to add to the last trench you dig.

Fork over the trench to another spade’s depth, add manure and work it into the soil.

Work across the site, moving backwards. Remove turf and soil, turning turf over so that the grass is face downwards, and replace it in the first trench.