10 Herbs to Grow Inside Year-Round
Basil | Bay Leaves | Chervil | Chives | Oregano | Parsley | Rosemary | Sage | Tarragon | Thyme
Basil
Growing Conditions
Basil is one of the easiest herbs to grow inside year-round. Basil is a fast-growing herb. In as little as three weeks, you can be harvesting fresh cut basil leaves for your dishes. Basil creates a lovely aroma around your herb garden and apartment. When growing Basil indoors, it's important to simulate the conditions of summertime. Provide the plants with plenty of sunshine - supplementing with grow lights if required - and keep them in a warm location.
Culinary Uses
Basil plays a crucial part in Italian cooking. It is matched often with tomatoes – think Caprese salad, marinara, or bruschetta – and used in many pasta recipes. Growing your own gives a fresh supply in your kitchen despite the season.
Bay Leaves
Growing Conditions
Potted Bay Leaf plants can be grown indoors year-round; they make a beautiful addition to your home's decor.
Unlike several other herbs, bay laurel is very slow to raise from seed, unfortunately. It is recommended you purchase a small Bay plant from a nursery.
To produce the lush foliage on bay trees, make sure to put them in a location that gets full sun to partial shade. Exposure to a south window is best when growing indoors and if additional light is needed, supplement with a grow light.
Culinary Uses
Bay leaves are used in seasoning long-cooking dishes similar to soups, stews, and braises, but it can also improve the flavor of quicker-cooking recipes like risotto, pasta sauce, etc., a simple pot of rice.
Chervil
Growing Conditions
When growing Chervil indoors, the plant prefers light shade and cold temperatures. The average height of the plant will be 12-24 inches in height. Chervil will produce a continuous few weeks of harvesting until the plant dies off and a new one needing planted. Chervil makes a great addition to a bright windowsill inside your home.
Culinary Uses
A chervil member of the parsley and carrot family is an excellent extension to your indoor herb garden. This cool-season annual herb isn't often in grocery stores and prefers lower temperatures, making it perfect for growing indoors.
The finely chopped leaves add a parsley-anise-like taste to egg recipes, cream sauces, and meats such as veal, seafood, and chicken. When dried, it blends well with chives, parsley, and tarragon to create the delicate french aroma known as fines herbes.
Chives
Growing Conditions
Chives are an easy herb to grow indoors and are not fussy when growing. Chives will grow successfully in containers and do not require any individualized treatments. They are a perennial plant, which means that they have a year-round growing season, providing growers with a taste of fresh flavor at their fingertips year-round when grown at home.
Culinary Uses
Since chives have a milder flavor, they're ideal for adding to soups, dips, baked or mashed potatoes, seafood dishes, and omelets. Heat damages their delicate flavor, so add chives to dishes at the end. To maximize their flavor, thinly slice, or chop with pantry shears before using.
Oregano
Growing Conditions
Oregano is a Mediterranean herb that grows on the mountainsides; it is a very hardy plant. These harsh growing conditions make it well-suited to growing indoors, give it bright light – the sunniest windowsill in the home, or even in a south-facing window. The most significant factor in growing fresh oregano indoors is lots of light! Whether it originates from the sun on a windowsill or from artificial lights, make sure your Oregano plants get plenty of light.
Culinary Uses
Oregano is the ideal partner for tomatoes. Fresh oregano right out of the herb garden makes a fabulous pesto or chimichurri sauce. It's an excellent marinade ingredient for meat and can give a rich flavor to roasted or confit vegetables. Fresh oregano will add excitement to your salads or soups and can be combined with an Italian vinaigrette to drizzle over foods as well.
Parsley
Growing Conditions
Parsley is a little more challenging of an herb to grow because of its exceptionally long germination stage. It can take parsley seeds several weeks to sprout. Parsley requires full sunlight, and lots of it, at least 5 to 8 hours per day. Parsley is a hardy plant and is a perfect plant to growing indoors in a herb garden.
Culinary Uses
Parsley is excellent in green juices, and many chefs use parsley as a garnish. Grow this classic Italian herb indoors to benefit its taste and health benefits.
Rosemary
Growing Conditions
Growing rosemary indoors is sometimes a difficult thing to do. Many skilled gardeners have tried and, despite their best efforts, end up with a dry, brown, dead rosemary plant. If you identify the secrets to the proper attention of rosemary plants growing indoors, you can keep your rosemary plants growing successfully indoors all year-long.
Most people aren't aware that sunshine shortage is the most common cause for a rosemary plant growing indoors to die. Frequently, rosemary plants are taken indoors without any acclimation time. They go from six to eight hours of direct light to four to six hours of indirect light. The rosemary plant cannot produce enough energy to stay alive on this amount of light and dies. Pay extra attention to the amount of direct sunlight that your rosemary plant is getting, and you can be a successful rosemary grower.
Culinary Uses
Rosemary is a seasoning in various dishes, such as soups, salads, casseroles, stews, chicken, lamb, pork, steaks, and fish. Rosemary also goes well with grains, mushrooms, onions, peas, potatoes, and spinach.
Do use rosemary in moderation. While it offers an intense and unique aroma in moderate amounts, adding too much of it to a dish can overwhelm other spices' flavors. This overwhelming flavor can happen with fresh or dry rosemary; however, it is more likely to occur with the fresh herb.
Sage
Growing Conditions
Sage grows best in medium to full sun. If you are growing sage indoors, place your container near a sunny window or skylight. Sage is a reasonably drought-tolerant herb, and even if the leaves seem wilted, little water perks the entire plant right up. Please wait until the soil is dry to give it a thorough watering; overwatering Sage can lead to undesirable conditions for the plant.
Culinary Uses
Deep-frying and pan-frying a potent herb like sage mellows its flavor. Fried sage can be crumbled over a dish to elevate the flavor. Sage is tasty when added to sauces, butter, marinades, pastries, and even bread—adding fresh sage leaves to cocktails and teas gives an instant hit of herbal flavor.
Tarragon
Growing Conditions
Tarragon is a beautiful herb with narrow, slightly twisted leaves. The Tarragon plant is a perennial and will reward you with many flavorful seasons if you care for it properly.
While most herbs flourish in full sun, tarragon seems to grow best in a lower or diffused light condition. Allow a spot of at least 24 inches height for growing tarragon inside. If your home has a window facing any direction but south, you can successfully grow tarragon.
Culinary Uses
The leaves are a valuable part of the plant and best used fresh. They add a slight anise taste to foods and are paired well with fish or chicken. Tarragon leaves also give their flavor to vinegar and lend their flavor to sauces, dressings, and marinades. Growing tarragon indoors in the kitchen herb garden is a great way to take advantage of the fresh herb.
Thyme
Growing Conditions
Growing thyme indoors needs plenty of sunlight and well-drained soil. Growing thyme inside is one of the most straightforward indoor herbs to cultivate.
Culinary Uses
Cut the leaves or add them whole to soups, sauces, and other recipes. Add the stems to stew stock to release their flavor but remember to pull them out. Create a seasoning of dry thyme by laying them in the sun for the day.
