If I Could Only Grow One Thing, This Is It

[00:00:00]If you could only grow one thing, what would it be? After more than 20 years of growing my own food, I know exactly what I would choose and it's probably not what you're expecting. By the end of this video, you'll know which single plant can make the biggest difference in the way you cook and eat and exactly how to get started right now. Herbs are the easiest way into growing your own food because there are so many ways to use them, no matter how you already cook or eat. There's an herb out there for every taste and every diet. There are types that do well in shade and lots that do well in full sun. You can plant one that comes back every single year on its own, so you plant it once and it just keeps showing up. You can plant one that flowers and then drops its own seeds and it grows new plants back the next year without you having to plant it again.

[00:00:44]There are herbs for cooking, herbs for tea, herbs that people use for calming down at the end of the day, including me. Just the smell of lavender and mint are a couple of my favorites. But, I've got a long list of them growing right now and I'll show you most of them throughout this video and most are growing with hardly any effort on my part. So, 20 years ago I went through a health crisis that meant I had to stop eating anything with artificial flavors or chemicals in it whatsoever. So, I had to figure out how to cook with fresher ingredients and herbs are what got me through that. My food tasted better, I felt better, and I haven't lived anywhere since without at least one herb growing. So, I have to say that garlic almost won for the one single thing I would grow and it's a close second to herbs. It takes almost no daily care and you can grow a lot in a small space. You plant it in the fall, walk away for the whole winter, and then dig it up by summer. Then, you have garlic you can put away for a whole year. But, garlic makes you wait months before you get anything back where herbs can give you something the very same day you plant them and that's why they're still my answer. If you grow anything before herbs or instead of herbs, you're missing out on the next level flavor that herbs can give them and the confidence that comes from actually picking something that you grew and using it right away. So, look at these tomatoes growing next to a grow bag of basil. There is nothing like the flavor combo of fresh garden basil and tomatoes and garlic. Herbs actually like being picked and trimmed, and so the more you do that, the better they're going to grow.

[00:02:13]If you just have one pot sitting where you can easily access it, you'll be able to get a lot of herbs just from that.

[00:02:19]And if you're already wondering how any of this could fit your own space, that's exactly why I made a free class for you that walks you through the framework I used to build a garden around real time and real space. It's free, and I'll leave the link here and in the description below. So, here's how to actually start growing herbs today. Step one, pick an herb you already cook with.

[00:02:39]If you make pasta or pizza a lot, basil is your answer. And it's also wonderful in eggs or blended into pesto. Even if you put fresh herbs on a takeout pizza, it makes it taste that much better.

[00:03:02]Parsley is perfect if you're someone who makes eggs or pasta salads.

[00:03:17]Chives go beautifully on a baked potato or scrambled into eggs.

[00:03:30]And if you cook a lot of Mexican food, cilantro belongs in your tacos, your rice, and your salsa.

[00:03:45]Lavender, peppermint, chamomile, and lemon balm all make amazing tea. You can use fresh leaves to make it.

[00:04:01]Step two, go pick up a starter plant from your local nursery or even the garden section of a grocery store. You can absolutely plant seeds, too, but starting from an already growing plant means that you can be harvesting from it that same day instead of waiting weeks for seeds to come up. Step three, plant it in quality potting soil. I like to use Happy Frog just because I've been using it for years and my plants have been thriving in it. I have my herbs growing in self-watering planters and in grow bags and in a couple of old pots that came with the house when we moved in. I also have some that I've tucked in the ground like my lavender here. Most herbs want at least a few hours of direct sun, though some like mint or parsley will tolerate a lot less. The most high-maintenance of all of them are the ones in grow bags because they need to be watered daily if it's not raining very much.

[00:04:47]That brings us to step four. Water when the top inch of soil feels dry, but not necessarily on a strict schedule. Herbs don't love sitting in soggy soil, so let it dry out a little bit between waterings.

[00:05:00]Self-watering containers are amazing because you don't have to worry about it. Also, you can water with a little organic fertilizer like fish emulsion or grow bag. I've had good results with those and I can link them so that you can see what they are. So, step five is the most fun part and that's harvesting a lot to keep encouraging the plants to grow more. This keeps them growing healthy and producing more for you. Each kind of herb has its own way of being harvested and it's really simple when you start doing it and easy enough that kids can do it.

[00:05:34]>> Thyme, yes, let's pick.

[00:05:38]Ooh.

[00:05:40]>> Here's a mistake that I've made many times before and I still do it, but I feel like mentioning it might save you a lot of trouble. It's really easy to get excited at the nursery and come home with four or five or more different herbs at once, and then half of them end up struggling because it might be too much all at once to take care of. I try to start with one at a time or make a list ahead of time so I can try to stick to it when I'm there. Once the plant is thriving and I've got a rhythm with it, that's when I can add another one. So, instead of relying on something packaged to flavor food, you're building flavor from something you actually grew yourself. One sprig of rosemary on chicken, one handful of basil in a sauce, and the whole meal changes. It seems like a small thing, but it has genuinely changed the way I eat and it's made me a lot more aware of what's actually going into my food in the first place. And then once you've got more herbs coming in than you can eat fresh, drying them is so easy. I just put mine in an inexpensive dehydrator on my countertop, and then once they're dry, I crumble them into jars for the winter.

[00:06:40]You'll never buy a little jar of dried oregano or basil from the store again, and the flavor is so much better. One more thing I want you to know about herbs because it changes how you think about that first pot you're about to get started, is that some herbs are perennials, which means once you plant them, they just keep coming back on the on their own year after year. So, in the wintertime, it looks like they're dying off, but that just means they're going dormant and then they grow back in the spring, and that's without you doing a single thing.

[00:07:07]Some of them are chives, lavender, lemon balm, oregano, rosemary, thyme, mint, or sage. And then some of them are annuals like basil, and that means that they last for one season and then die when the first frost happens, but before they die, they flower, which brings the bees and the butterflies around, and then they drop their own seeds, and then they grow right back the following season as new plants. I have lemon basil doing that in my self-watering planter, and regular basil in one of my raised beds growing with my zinnia flowers.

[00:07:40]Cilantro does that very well. I have new plants always growing around the back of my garden after planting it once in a grow bag. So, maybe that one pot you start today isn't just dinner for tonight. For a lot of these, it's something that keeps giving for years.

[00:07:56]So, after 20 years of growing food, it's still herbs. I always imagine what it would be like if every single household grew herbs. We'd all be eating a lot better. I know that.

[00:08:06]Don't forget to watch my free 19-minute class on how to get growing in a way that supports you. And I'd love for you to join me in my garden tour, so you can see how everything in my small garden fits together alongside my herbs. I'll see you over there.