COLUMN | Milkweed + Honey: Save money and grow flavor with an herb garden

You should grow herbs. Even if you don’t think you want to.

I didn’t care about planting herbs when I began gardening. I didn’t eat them! Like many Americans, I thought of herbs primarily as the dried flakes in my mother’s spice cabinet. Fresh leaves appeared on my plate rarely, and when they did, it was as an unidentifiable garnish on a restaurant plate or perhaps during dinner at a friend’s house. As a child with sensory issues around food as well as a raging case of the cilantro soap gene, I was never going to try the suspicious blobs of green nestled beside my club sandwich or on top of my baked potato.

Naturally, this herbs-in-the-cabinet mentality continued into adulthood. I shared small kitchens with a complete Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade of roommates and ate simply on a tight budget — like a “journalism degree from a liberal arts college” tight. Even as my palate and budget slowly expanded over the years, I just substituted dried herbs for fresh in recipes. The grocery store herbs were expensive and mostly went to waste when needed for one meal. I didn’t know enough about cooking to gauge whether it would make any difference anyway.

From the first year, I accidentally grew 17,043 tomatoes in a dilapidated but sunny corner of my rental yard, and growing edibles has transformed my relationship with food. I didn’t know vegetables could be so delicious and so varied. Even those I thought I didn’t like, such as radishes. It turns out that there are many types of radishes — only some of which taste like the bland-but-somehow-also-piquant grocery store kind. (Sorry to cilantro, but that’s still the true devil’s lettuce.) The varieties in the produce section are bred for things like shippability, longevity, and uniformity — not flavor. For that, you gotta grow your own or shop at boutique stores or farmers markets.

Besides flavor richness and variety, my kitchen garden inspired me to learn how to use vegetables that were new-ish to me but sounded so tasty in the seed catalog descriptions that I simply had to try them: like rutabaga, which often appears on store shelves but has a reputation somewhere between “big turnip I guess” and “lesser potato?” Turns out I love rutabagas! Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew.

As time went on, I nabbed a rosemary plant here or a parsley start there, and when a recipe called for fresh thyme, well, I actually could go out and snip some for dinner. I got fresh-herb-pilled. I had been radicalized by basil. I still respect my well-appointed spice cabinet, but the fresh stuff hits differently.

CHEAP VARIETY

Pretty much everyone benefits from herb gardens. Whether you’re stuffed in a rental with six housemates and only cook a few special holiday dishes that call for fresh oregano each year or keep an Instagram-mable half-acre cottage garden and create robust meals daily, you will save money by planting an herb or 10.

Here’s the math: A half-ounce plastic clamshell of a common herb like rosemary is anywhere from $2.50 to $6 or more, depending on the season and store. That’s the higher end of the price range for a seed packet or a potted start. But while the fresh leaves wilt after a few days if you don’t eat them all immediately, the plant(s) you get for the same price can last an entire season or several years. You can snip hundreds of dollars worth of leaves from one perennial plant! Besides money, you also waste less packaging and fuel from buying stems shipped across continents from warmer climes. And less of the plant goes into the trash or compost, as you can take only what you need and leave the rest for later (or for local wildlife).

The math is even more compelling for species that Simon & Garfunkel never sang about (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme . . .). Sage is easy to buy for a couple of bucks year-round. Meanwhile, lovage or tarragon may be common in the kitchen but not in most produce sections, and the price tag reflects that. A seed pack for these less common options is still just a couple of bucks. It doesn’t take much money to plant a far wider selection of herbs than what is on store shelves.

With food prices heightened due to corporate greed, crop failures, and beastly inflation, everyone is thinking strategically about their grocery bills. If you buy a fresh herb at least twice, you will save money by growing it yourself.

ANNUALS vs PERENNIALS

You’ll get the most savings over time from perennial plants that can withstand cold conditions. In the Portland area, evergreens like rosemary and thyme easily make it through our typical winters and look lush while doing it. Other hardy options include mints, oregano, sometimes parsley, and sorrel.

Annuals or tender perennials usually need replanting each year, but the flavor is worth it. Try basils, cilantro (if you’re possessed by a mouth demon), chives, dill, fennel, lemongrass, marjoram, parsley, summer savory, or tarragon.

You may already have what you think of as landscape plants that are edible as herbs or garnishes. Consider incorporating bee balm, borage, calendula, native fireweed, geraniums, lavender, marigolds, nasturtium, pansies, sunflowers, or yarrow into your diet this summer.

Some tender perennials and annuals can live beyond their season indoors in a south-side windowsill or under a grow light. They will not reach their full size in small pots indoors, and perennials likely will not live as long as they would in ideal conditions outdoors, but that may not matter if you use them sparingly anyway. Indoor growing is great for small spaces and out-of-season produce.

PLANTER IDEAS

Beyond being cheap, many herbs can succeed in much less space than vegetable juggernauts like tomatoes or artichokes.

Extra low on space or nervous about commitment? You can raise some herbs in a tin can or red solo cup. Common herbs like basil, parsley, and thyme can succeed in such little pots. Nervous about your ingredients getting stomped on by raccoons or pooped on by cats? Think vertically. Invest in a GreenStalk or try a DIY project like converting an old pallet into a planter. Hang pots from tree branches or on the side of a wall.

If you have more space to give them, herbs will reward you with lushness and functionality. They can complement ornamental landscaping or add beauty to your vegetable patch. Generalist pollinators like honeybees will flock to the flowers of dill, lavender and thyme.

I’ve also found many herbs to be more flexible about shade than their tags suggest. I put them all in my shadiest raised bed, and they do fine. My rosemary and thyme have been slowly growing in part shade for a few years, with no apparent stress.

They’re cheaper than dirt, so you can afford to experiment. So go on, get to planting. Dry or fresh, herbs are quite literally the spice of life.