Written by the Tidings Staff | 06 September 2010

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Remember too that fresh circulating air is very important for indoor herbs. So if the plant’s home is next to a window, you can leave it open a little bit for an hour or two each day (arctic environments excepted). Any room that's not stale and stuffy will do very well. Just be sure not to expose the plants to any direct draft, especially during the cold winter months.

When you buy your potted herbs and bring them to the place of honour in their new home, give them a chance to acclimatize gradually. You'll note that the plants indeed produce two kinds of leaves, this is in response to strong or weak light. You can judge a plant’s happiness by its leaves; those that are thick, strong and narrow are the result of abundant light. These leaves, accustomed to a lot of light, do not have to be as efficient to produce "food."

Another small trick for happy plants is to rotate the containers fairly often. Naturally turning everything in the same direction will give all sides an equal chance for the best exposure to both sunlight and fresh air. It's easy to measure if this technique is effective. If one side of the plant grows slowly or withers, the rotation is inadequate.

Many people believe, incorrectly, that herbs grow best in poor soil. That’s sometimes true where flavours are stronger when your culinary herbs grow outdoors in a garden. But in the confines of a pot, even periodic feeding with liquid fertilizer or, best and easy, sprinkling crushed eggshells, not only look sprightly but also help the active growing process. If you choose this supplemental route, a feeding once every couple of weeks should suffice. There are some slow release feed pellets that you can buy at garden centres, but this is not a necessity.

For ease of growth and guaranteed satisfaction, it's important to buy your herbs from reputable suppliers, often a garden supply rather than the supermarket. In all cases, choose plants that looked healthy and robust and avoid the straggly ones. And save yourself some aggravation and never buy seed packets that are out of date. (Starting with potted plants is infinitely easier than from seeds.)

As to containers, these are easy to select either from empty pots at home or the invariably wide range at garden centres and nurseries. Prefer to choose things from around the house? For that matter, you can use just about anything from an old bucket to that old teapot with the broken handle or no top. At the other end of the spectrum, and if you have adequate window space, you can get great results by bringing window boxes inside. The trick is to place your herb pots in the box with soil right up to the rim. While this seems odd, herbs enjoy the surrounding earth and tend to breed lusher growth than when in stand-alone pots. The extra soil prevents pots from becoming plant-bound, and the moisture remains more even. There is no doubt that it looks impressive.