Why Is My Basil Flowering? (And Exactly What to Do About It)

If your basil has started pushing up little flower buds at the top, here’s the short answer: pinch them off, right above a pair of leaves, and keep doing it every few days. That keeps your plant growing leaves instead of seeds — which is exactly what you want.

I get asked about this all the time. Just this week a reader told me their basil cuttings were rooting nicely, but the tops were already trying to flower — should they cut the flowers off? The answer is yes, and in this post I’ll show you exactly how, why it happens, and how to keep your basil leafy, bushy and productive all season long.

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If you’ve noticed tiny dark flies rising from the soil every time you water your herbs, you’ve got fungus gnats — and the good news is they’re harmless to you and fairly easy to beat. The short version: let the top of the soil dry out between waterings, catch the adults with yellow sticky traps, and stop them coming back by sterilising your potting mix before you use it. Below I’ll show you exactly how I do each of these, why they work, and how to make sure the gnats don’t return.

Content

How to sterilize potting soil mix and avoid fungus gnats.
Video
What are Fungus Gnats?
How do fungus gnats spread on your plants?
Avoid fungus gnats in your potting soil mix.
How to sterilise the potting mix?
Let me show you my sterilization process – YOUTUBE VIDEO
Two more tips or things I have learned
Conclusion

Video

Let us start with the demo of me making my favourite potting mix.

How to sterilize potting soil mix and avoid fungus gnats.

Fungus Gnats are terrible! Have you ever had to deal with insects, tiny black flies on your herb plants and tiny white larvae on or in your potting soil, and you don’t know what to do to prevent this, then this article is for you.

Let’s start by answering the following two questions: Why are these insects (and especially fungus gnats) a problem? What exactly are fungus gnats?

What are Fungus Gnats?

Fungus gnats are small pests about 2 to 5 mm long, like many mosquitos. Although they don’t bite or sting, plant lovers don’t like them because they love to crawl and creep around on our plants and in our growing media. The larger ones also fly around, from plant to plant, and when we are around they like to fly in our face also. 

There are tons of varieties of fungus gnats around but most likely plant lovers and herb gardeners will have fungus gnats from either the Mycetophiliadae or Sciaridae family. Sometimes they are referred to as Black Fly or Sciarad fly.

Females mate within a few hours after leaving the pupa and begin laying eggs already after a few days. The tiny eggs are only 0,09 to 0,15 mm (so very hard to detect) and one female can easily lay 100-300 eggs.

These little blackflies are not only annoying but it is their larvae that hatch in moist growing media that cause most of the problems, especially to younger plants or seedlings.

The fungus gnats larvae primarily feed on organic material, algae and soil fungus. So you may think that is not a problem. True, but when there is a high quantity of larvae, they require other food sources including plant roots and stem tissue. They basically feed on your plants which creates wounds, which open up the gateway to secondary infections such as Pythium, Phytopthora and Fusarium.

Seedlings and younger plants will die, while the older plants could stop growing, causing the leaves to wilt and discolour, and uptake of water and nutrients will slow down.

The fungus gnats larvae are relatively difficult to find in the soil mix or in the stem tissue of plants. And when they feed on root hairs of newly planted crops, cuttings or seedlings it is hard to tell that the reduction in growth is caused by these little larvae.

This means that the damage to growing plants from the fungus gnats larvae goes very often unnoticed.

The chewing larvae damaging and wounding the plant provides a large possibility of diseases, which are actually the secondary cause of plant problems then and not the primary.

This leads often to confusion for the herb gardener about the cause and effect of why the plant is suffering.

In order to battle the fungus gnats larvae,we need to understand the lifecycle of a fungus gnat.

How do fungus gnats spread on your plants?

The most probable introduction of fungus gnats larvae on plants is through the use of new but contaminated growing and plant media, brought into the growing area, indoors or greenhouse. 

When the conditions are ideal, fungus gnats thrive naturally in many areas and large populations can occur in surrounding drains or properties.

These favourable conditions are low light levels, high humidity, continually moist media. Media containing high levels of organic matter also favour the spreading of this pest. The fungus gnats and their larvae are almost always to be found in the warm, moist, greenhouse environments that favour fungi and algae growth.

You simply don’t want insects in your potted plants, and especially not indoors.

How to get rid of fungus gnats you already have

• Let the soil dry out. The larvae live in the top few centimetres of moist soil; letting it dry between waterings breaks their cycle. This is the single most effective step.
• Switch to bottom watering so the surface stays dry (you already cover bottom watering elsewhere — link to it).
• Yellow sticky traps to catch the adults and stop them laying more eggs.
• BTi (“mosquito bits/dunks”) — a natural biological larvicide safe for edible herbs; follow the product instructions.
• A hydrogen peroxide soil drench (a common, well-known method) to kill larvae in the soil.

Avoid fungus gnats in your potting soil mix.

So we need to prevent these parasites from spawning or hatching in our potting soil mix. 

Bag starting mixes have components that come from outside and what happens is that there is a chance that insect eggs are laid on this soil. Actually, you should reason like this: no matter where you buy soil mixes, they will have fungus gnats eggs and when they are into the bags, there are no insects yet but there are eggs going with the components into the bags. And that is the cause of the problem.

The problem is that fungus gnat eggs will sit dry and dormant in potting soil mixes for a long time, this typically happens a lot with soil mixes with peat moss in it.

Prevention is far better than using pesticides sprays or other solutions or cures later on. And I simply don’t want insects in my potted plants, and especially not indoors.

This can be prevented by sterilising the soil before use.

How to sterilise the potting mix?

There are a couple of possibilities of killing the fungus gnat eggs in the soil. Some people bake their soil in the oven, others like to steam the slow in a steam cooker or in the microwave but to avoid that you need to have this extra equipment, I prefer the simple basic method of using hot boiling water. 

Using the microwave or steamer

To kill all fungus gnat eggs with the microwave, you need to add moist to the soil, put soil in a plastic microwave-proof zip lock bag (or use a microwave pot). I suggest making a few holes in the bag to release pressure when needed.

Next you can put the plastic bag in the microwave and microwave it for one minute a couple of times.

The steam and the microwaves will kill all fungus gnats. 

If you are using the microwave make sure that you are watching it the whole time, so you can intervene if it would be required.

If you don’t feel safe or comfortable using your microwave use the boiling water method. You may need to wait until the wife is out of the house if she doesn’t like the idea of putting soil in the microwave… after all it is the same place where we usually put the food).

When using a steamer pot, the principles are the same: add moist, heat the soil and let the steam kill all gnats and gnats eggs. This method may be ideal for small portions.

Using boiling water to kill fungus gnats eggs

In the video below I will show you the easy process I use every time I need fresh potting mix for a new plant or seed start.

Basically I do this :

• So prepare the potting mix in a hard plastic pot or tray
• I boil water and I pour the boiling water on the soil. The heat of the boiling water will kill any kind of insect eggs that are hidden in the soil mix.
• Mix it with a spoon to make sure that insects, insect eggs are cooked and killed
• Then I cover it with some aluminium paper on it to keep heat and steam in there. After mixing the soil, I like to pack the earth down a bit, just to make sure the heat remains in the earth longer so it can kill all the fungus gnat eggs.
• Next I let the heat and steam do its job killing all eggs for at least 15 minutes.
• When the soil is starting to cool down, I will let the hot water drain out of pots and let it slowly dry and cool off.
• When the moisture level of the soil is good, the soil is ready for sowing seeds or use for other plants.
• Then the potting mix is ready and perfect for seed starting, You are not going to get any problems with fungus gnats, diseases or with insects

Two more tips or things I have learned that I want to share

If there are fungus gnats larvae in the soil mix, they will continue feeding on the fungus that grows from the decomposing organic materials such as wood,… This also means that wood chips are a terrible component for potting mixes.

And obviously, never take soil from outdoors and mix it through your soil or seed starting mixes. 

Soil from outdoors is even more problematic with fungus, insects, diseases and molds. And you don’t want to import that into your indoor potting mixes.

People also ask:

Are fungus gnats harmful to my herbs?

Mostly they’re just annoying. The little black flies you see buzzing around are the adults, and they don’t do much harm themselves — they don’t bite and they don’t eat your plants. The real damage comes from their larvae in the soil. In small numbers they’re harmless, but if the population gets out of hand, the larvae feed on roots and organic matter and can weaken seedlings and young plants. That’s why it’s worth dealing with them early rather than letting them build up.

Are fungus gnats harmful to humans?

No — they’re a nuisance, not a danger. Fungus gnats don’t bite, they don’t sting, and they don’t spread disease to people. They’re harmless to you and your family. The only thing they’ll hurt is your patience, especially when a little cloud of them lifts off the soil every time you water.

Why do I keep getting fungus gnats?

Almost always, it comes down to one thing: soil that stays too wet. Fungus gnats lay their eggs in damp topsoil, and the larvae need that constant moisture to survive. If you’re watering little and often, or your mix holds a lot of water and organic matter, you’re giving them the perfect home. They can also arrive hidden in a bag of potting mix — the eggs sit dormant in the soil until conditions suit them. So if they keep coming back, look first at how often you’re watering and what your mix is made of.

What’s the fastest way to get rid of fungus gnats?

Hit them from two directions at once: the larvae in the soil and the adults in the air. Let the top few centimetres of soil dry out fully between waterings — this alone breaks their breeding cycle, because the larvae can’t survive in dry soil. Switch to bottom watering so the surface stays dry. Then put up a few yellow sticky traps to catch the adults before they lay more eggs. For a stubborn infestation, treat the soil itself with BTi (mosquito bits) or a hydrogen peroxide drench. Do those together and you’ll usually see a big drop within a week or two.

Conclusion

So basically I do this: I soak the potting mix in boiling water, and let it sit in 100 degrees of water, killing all eggs, for a while until it cools down. Then pour the liquid muddy soil into some big pots with holes, to drain, and cool off.

Then the potting mix is ready and perfect for seed starting, And I promise you, if you do this, you are not going to get any problems with fungus gnats, diseases or with insects.

Related Topics

If this topic was what you were looking for, then probably this article may interest you too:

How to get rid of aphids?

How to get rid of thrips?

Some of our member herbgardeners asked me how I seed start my herbs. So I have been planning for a while now to create a video about the simple and easy method I use for starting my new batches of herbs.

In this video I briefly explain my steps.

In short what I explain in the video:

With the potting mix ready for use, we are set to start sowing Rosemary and Oregano, two lovely herbs deserving a place in every herb garden.

I like to use a relative large size of pots to start my seeds. It allows me to keep them longer in the same pot and I don’t have to replant them too quickly. But that is of course a personal choice. Most people may use smaller pots or seeding trays. That is just fine, as well.

The process is really simple.

When everything is ready, I start by filling the plastic pots with soil. I usually fill the pot loosely with soil till the top, and then I compress gently with my thumb some soil to the sides of the pot. I do this to avoid big air pockets in the soil. Next I fill up the pot a second time, until it is completely filled with soil.

When filled the pots are ready for receiving the seeds. People are always asking how many seeds to I put together in one pot. There is no law of nature telling me this of course, but I don’t mind putting several seeds in one cup. With rosemary, I go for 3 to 6 in a pot cell, I can always divide them up later. So I put them on the soil or scrape them in just below the surface with a toothpick or some small stick, about a quarter of an inch, just make sure the seeds are covered up.

After that I press the top layer of the soil gently, to make sure the seeds are covered up and make contact with the surrounding soil.

Same procedure for the oregano: Filling the pots with soil, I thumb pack the soil into the cells to get a nice solid starting base without any airpockets, filling the pots up to the top. Again here, for Oregano, I don’t mind overseeding a bit, because Oregano seeds are really, really tiny and because we want bushy herbs to grow and to harvest, so I willl sow 20-30 seeds per cell. I will pinch the seeds and just scatter them around across the top of the soil mix. Next I tuck them in again,  and I gently compress the soil.

To finish up, I mark the pots with name and date sticks, I apply a first bottom watering for 20 minutes, and after removing the remaining water, they are ready to go in my seed starting station with grow lights.

So that is how I do it, I hope this was helpful to you and it may help you being successful with herb seeds as well,

If you have a question, let me know in the comments. Good luck with your herbs!

You want to learn more about seed starting herbs?

I have created an ebook filled with useful info and explanations: https://www.amazingherbgarden.com/herb-books/

Don’t hesitate to give me your thoughts or questions in the comments below or on our Youtube channel.

How long does it take for Rosemary cuttings to root?

I have conducted different experiments with growing Rosemary cuttings in the last months of my herb gardening.

In this article I will share my experiences, my tips and best practices about how to propagate Rosemary by growing cuttings into strong and healthy plants?

1. Different methods for rooting rosemary cuttings

Let me start by answering the question in the title of this post: How long does it take for Rosemary cuttings to root?

After all the research in books and on the internet about this topic but especially based on my own experiments and results, I can basically conclude that it takes two to six weeks for Rosemary to root cuttings, depending on the method that is used.

Ok, you may say… this isn’t helping me… but continue reading, because there is more to it.

There are basically three methods to grow Rosemary cuttings:

• in plain water (everyone’s first experiment)
• in water combined with rooting hormones
• in potting soil

And the period it takes for these cuttings to root seems to be completely determined by the method that was used for growing roots.

When I was researching the best method to propagate Rosemary cuttings, these were the questions that popped up in my mind:

• Does it matter when I take a cutting?
• How do I have to take a Rosemary cutting?
• What method to take rosemary cuttings is best to root them successfully?
• How long should the rosemary cutting ideally be?
• Should I use rooting powder to grow rosemary cuttings?
• And so on…

Let me know in the comments below what other questions would pop up in your head!

2. How to take rosemary cuttings

Ok, let’s start by answering these basic questions that are troubling a herb gardener’s mind when he or she is new to growing rosemary cuttings.

When to take a Rosemary cuttings?

Although some sources say that spring and summer are ideal for rooting cuttings, I have been growing cuttings in autumn and winter as well. The cuttings, taken at the top of the stems,  will certainly be more fresh and softer in spring and summertime, which may result in faster root growth. However the time of the year for taking a rosemary cutting is not a determine success factor.

How to take a Rosemary cuttings?

All cuttings are take with a sharp knife or scissors, to make a clean straight cut. A clean cut will prevent eventual stem rot when the stem is put into water. The best spot to cut is right below a node, because this is the spot where the new roots will start growing first.

How long should the Rosemary cuttings ideally be?

My advice on this not too long at all. Experiments have shown that shorter and fresh cuttings had a higher chance of successful root growth than longer woody and brown cuttings.

So a rather small cutting of about 4 to 5 inches (+/- 10 cm) seems to be ideal. The idea that a longer plant, taking a longer cutting, would result in a faster rooting is not correct. The reason is probably that nodes of a longer cutting are older and also more dark woody, making it harder to grow roots from. At least it will take longer. The roots seem to sprout more easily from nodes on a softer green stem. I was successful too with even shorter cuttings of 2 to 3 inches.
Shorter cuttings also have fewer needles and a shorter stem to support and feed, which may also contribute to a faster root growth.

Another way to determine how long the cutting can be is by looking at the colour and by testing the flexibility of the fresh stem you want to take a cutting from.

By taking the rosemary branch in your hand, you can feel that the top part really has a tender and flexible stem. This part of the stem is still young and hasn’t turned into a woody, stiffer stem. You will notice that the nodes in the flexible part are still soft and ideal to grow roots from in a relatively short timeframe. So as long as you take a cutting from the fresh flexible part of the stem you should have a big chance to root these cuttings.

The color of fresh rosemary shoots (and of the flexible part of the stem) is usually green (sometimes green-purple). This may help you to determine how long the cutting can be.

But again I am getting better results with short cuttings than with long ones.

3. Preparing the rosemary cuttings and start the rooting process

Now that we have an ideal cutting, here are the steps I take before the can start to grow.

1. I want to make sure the stem is cut just below a node
2. Next I will remove all the lower needles, just like a do with leave cuttings. Only on the top of the cutting I will leave some needles. Make sure that there are no needles sitting in the water because this will cause rot and fungus in the water.
3. Then I place the cutting in clean water at room temperature. I like to use a glass bottle or container to follow up on the rooting.
4. Finally I put the cuttings in bright spot , preferably in a bright shady spot not in direct sunlight.
5. I will do a daily check on my new cuttings and refresh the water every one to two days.

4. Comparing rooting speed for different methods

As mentioned above, there are three methods to grow Rosemary cuttings and I will test and experiment with all three methods to determine which gives the best and fastest results:

1. in plain water (running experiment)
2. in water combined with rooting hormones
3. in potting soil

As I am running the experiments at this very moment, this blogpost will be completed as soon as the results will come in.

In the meanwhile, the best way to get informed of the test results is by subscribing to our list via the subscribe button below.

The Herb Garden Challenge for Beginners

Let me tell you a story about how this idea for a Herb Garden Challenge for Beginners was born.

A while ago, while driving my car, I was listening to an interesting podcast. And that episode was about the creation of user experiences on websites.
The lady, talking in the podcast, suggested that it is always a great idea for websites to create an attractive “user experience” for every new website visitor.

She said that every website should try to engage with its audience by giving a real active and hands-on user experience to website visitors.

She suggested that new and interested visitors actually should be triggered to execute something…

A Challenge for Beginning Herb Gardeners?

Some sort of a challenge, she called it… mmm, I think challenges are interesting!

So I started thinking how I could create an experience for my herb garden website.

What fun and interesting activity can I offer to a beginning herb gardener who has just found the Amazing Herb Garden website for the first time…?

And then all of a sudden … a light bulb…  and this idea came to me.

I remember the beginning of my own herb gardening journey. Just like many herb gardeners, it all started with rooting and growing a mint cutting.

And I remember, it was fun and exiting back then (it still is today). You must know the feeling, I am certain.

Watching the roots sprout, watching them grow, the daily checking and caring for the cutting until it is ready for replanting it in soil,…

It still is a fun thing to do and to share with like-minded people.

And this way, my idea for this new user experience was born. And I called it the “Herb Gardening Challenge for Beginners”.

General idea of the challenge

After signing up to the challenge, the beginning herb gardener will be guided through the process of growing a cutting into a full blown healthy herb plant.

And the challenge has to be made even more interesting by sharing the experience and progress of each individual beginner on our dedicated facebook group pages.

While executing the challenge, every beginner will receive extra information, tips and techniques of things that I have learned when growing my own cuttings.

I believe that this way we can create a hands-on and interesting user experience in the domain of herb gardening.

This way, we hope to trigger beginning herb gardeners, to get them motivated and interested into learning more about herbs and herb gardening.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this idea. All suggestions, ideas and more are very welcome.

And in the meanwhile, I will get to work to have the Herb Garden Challenge for Beginners up and running by next week.

Talk to you soon.

Kurt

To the CHALLENGE Page

Share your thoughts about the Herb Garden Challenge

Leave us your thoughts what you think of this idea. If you want to, make a suggestion to improve the challenge.

Splitting and Repotting a Basil Plant from the supermarket

In this blogpost I will illustrate how I am splitting and repotting a basil plant from the supermarket into several different basil plants.

Through splitting a basil plant into multiple smaller plants, I am trying to guarantee a constant source for harvesting one of my favourite herbs for cooking dishes.

Prefer to see how it turns out? Here’s the same plant six weeks after I split and repotted it:”

Let me show you how to split and repot a basil plant, bought at the supermarket or grocery store, by demonstrating the different steps I recently took to get the job done.

1 – Getting everything ready :

the basil plant, the new plastic pots, my own potting mix and some extra cuttings I have been rooting.

2 – Drilling holes in the bottom for good drainage:

This step is really important, because basil, like other herbs, hates to have its roots in really wet soil. The roots wil rot and the plant will die. The holes in the bottom will make sure that the water gets drained.

I use plastic soup pots, because this allows me to keep an eye on the moisture level inside the pot and also to watch the development of the root system.

3 – The potting soil mix is ready

I will always use my favourite mix of potting soil. You can read all about it here: best soil for herbs – how to make your own potting mix

In this mix you can easily recognise the perlite.

4 – The basil plant from the store

This is the pot of basil that I bought in the supermarket two weeks ago, I kept it on the window sill and in my growing spot with grow lights the last two weeks. I was especially paying attention not to overwater the plant.

5 – Be careful for the root system

Hold the plant in one hand and carefully loosen the pot from the roots, and take it off. Try to keep the roots intact as much as possible.

6 – Check the root system

The roots of the plant should have a light white color to indicate that they are healthy. Dark and moist roots often indicate that they are rotting. In that case drainage was not sufficient and the plant was overwatered. This root system is still young and looked quite healthy.

7 – Decide where to split the roots

Splitting the roots isn’t really hard to do. Although you will always damage some roots, the trick is to pull open the root system with your fingers, paring the basil plant in smaller pieces. Always try to do as little damage to the roots as possible.

8 – Splitting the roots

In this picture I was splitting the root system into two parts.

And next I splitted each half a second time in two. Depending on the size of the basil plant and the number of separate plants you want, you can continue splitting the basil plant. In this example I stopped when I had four parts.

9 – Preparing for repotting the basil plants

Each plastic pot is filled with the potting soil mix. Because the soil is really dry, I added a little bit of water to handle the soil easier. With a stick I made a planting hole in the potting mix, the spot where the parts of the basil plant will get planted in.

10 – Replanting the basil plant

After placing the basil plant in the plant hole, add planting soil into the pot and around the stems of the plant just up to the right height.

11 – Add water

The next step is to add water to the pot. I have put the pots in the sink filled with water so the pots are watered from below, and after a couple of minutes I add a small portion of water on the soil from above. While doing this I tried to avoid to get water on the leaves.

12 – The result of repotting from one basil plant

After watering (and allow them to drain) the pots are ready to be moved to their growing spots.

Ready for growing new big basil plants

In my growing spot with the grow light. In this picture you can also see the mint cuttings that I have been rooting the last couple of weeks.

Now, the next step is to take care of my newbies: light, temperature and (just) watering. You can read how it went soon on this blog.

Have you ever tried this yourself?

Growing Herbs in Winter – Do grow lights work?

1. My experience using grow lights

In winter, they say the days are cold and dark. This is not different for our herbs. So I was wondering what the impact is for us herb gardeners.

Is it possible to obtain a sustainable growth in winter at all? And will herbs survive in the dark winter period?

I want to share some of my personal experiences with you, about growing herbs in winter using grow lights,  a topic that I’m sure you’ll be interested in.

2. Growing herbs indoors requires a sufficient dose of light

Maybe the greatest challenge when growing herbs indoors is providing them with sufficient sunlight. We all know that light is of the essence when growing plants. But bright sunlight and winter don’t go that well together.

I am growing herbs indoors on the window sill, and I notice (it is half october when writing this) that growth of my basil plants are seriously slowing down or even coming to a halt the last couple of days. The available hours of high quality daylight is getting too low for a good plant growth. And a plant that does not receive enough light, will not grow, regardless of other conditions. It is that simple.

It’s quite hard to grow basil indoors particularly during winter months, but I will persevere because it is one of my favourite herbs.

We know that good and sustainable growth require long periods of intense direct light. Plenty of sources mention a minimum 6 to 8 hours depending on the variety. The more light you can provide the wealthier your herbs will grow.

A lot of herbs truly thrive when they are exposed to 12 to 16 hours of light each day, what is going to be difficult in many cases.

When we are growing herbs inside, the light intensity is always a lot lower than outside.

This means that the overall used rule of thumb of minimum 6 hours of light each day (for outdoor herbs) has to be adapted to “(a lot) more” for indoor herbs.

Even with some sunshine, we get in winter now and then, on the herbs on the window sill, the indoor herbs clearly aren’t getting enough light on a daily basis to continue growing.

Some herbs can take less light and still grow fairly well. I have noticed this for my mint plants for example. It seems that mint is one of the herbs that can even thrive in low light conditions. And also Parsley and Rosemary are coping fairly well with lower light levels.

But I want to have great growth and therefor I need to expose them to more light.

3. Growing herbs indoors with grow lights

That is why I am going to improve the lighting conditions for some of my herb plants indoors by putting them under a grow light. As a test, to experience the difference.

Adding a grow light isn’t always easy and practical to do, but I am going to try it anyway with my mint and basil.

Plants in general, so this is true for herbs too, use chlorophyll, which reflects a large part of the green light and absorbs mainly red and blue light. For grow lights, this means that we require a light source that emits for the most part the red and blue light. These two colors are crucial for keeping photosynthesis and other important functions in the plant going to get sustainable growth.

I ordered a growing light, and i am planning to leave lights between 10 to 14 hours each day to compensate for the weaker sun during the winter period. The lights will get turned on and off by an inexpensive timer.

I have tested this grow light for weeks :

Are you looking to grow your own herbs?

In this short post you will find a couple of great reasons why that is NOT a bad idea to grow your own herbs indoors… here are the benefits:

1. Enjoy how herbs smell and look

Herbs are very popular because they add color, fragrance and beauty to our homes.

Herbs simply look great in or around our home, especially basil, lavender, … but many others look great too. The smell of indoor herbs can be very nice too, for instance mint and basil fills our home with fragrance and greenery every day. Try stroking with your hands across their leaves and you will smell immediately what I mean.

Herbs don’t require much space and can be grown indoors, in fact, some herbs prefer the indoors like on a kitchen countertop or windowsill. Planted in pots they are a beautiful and aromatic addition to our homes.

Herbs are gorgeous plants that have one major benefit over standard house plants… you can pick them and use them in a way we don’t do with other plants: we can use them for cooking, medicinal herbs for healing, or simply for drinks like teas.
An indoor herb garden is beautiful, different and useful.

And you will get probably lots of comments and questions from your house guests: “Ah, I see you are growing your own herbs? Interesting…”.

2. An exciting new hobby

Growing herbs is a great and interesting challenge.

While some herbs are easy to grow, some are a little more challenging, making indoor herb gardening an interesting hobby without being frustrating; we will make sure that won’t happen.

Every time you will see your new herbs beginning to sprout, you will feel satisfaction and excitement! There is absolutely something special about learning to grow and take care of herbs. You will feel connected to nature. That is why people love the Beginner’s Herb Gardening Challenge so much.

3. Always fresh herbs to flavor food and drinks

Growing herbs in your home, will allow you to harvest only what you need to flavor food and drinks, whenever you need or want.
Fresh herbs are also more flavorful than the dried herbs you can buy, and then we don’t even mention the savings you will make (herbs in the store are quite expensive).

It is a great feeling to clip a few sprigs of yourself-grown herbs whenever you need to add them to your dish.

Growing spearmint to start (mentha suaveolens, like on picture below) is a great choice, because we use it in drinks all year round. Our favourite!

4. Herbs are healthy

Fresh herbs can help boost the health content of your dishes. While it is known that lots of herbs can also be used for medicinal purposes, research shows that indoor plants may help brighten your mood, reduce stress and clean the air too.

Growing your own herbs indoors is a great way to maintain that spiritual connection to nature by growing at least a little bit of your own food.

5. Growing herbs is inexpensive

Fresh herbs can be quite expensive in the store for what you actually get.
Therefor it is just a great idea to grow your own herbs. You can grow your own fresh herbs for just a few bucks! All you need is a sunny window and some great information to get you started.

For beginner gardeners, it can also serve as an inexpensive entry into more expensive outdoor gardening.

Why do you grow your own herbs?

Now,

what about you?

We really like to learn about all the different reasons people may have to start an amazing herb garden. Share your thoughts in the comments below.