Food Waste Friday: Growing Your Own Herbs
If you’re an experienced gardener, you can go ahead and skip this post. I am not an experienced gardener, and I’m certainly not here to offer gardening tips to people who already know a lot more about not killing plants than I do.
I’m just here to encourage those of you who are inexperienced with plants to maybe give a small herb garden a shot! After all, you cannot possibly be as bad at growing things as I am. I could be classed as a serial killer for plants. Here are three reasons why I keep an herb garden anyway.
Even if I buy new herb plants every other week, it’s still cheaper than buying the clamshells of cut herbs from the grocery store. In fact, a lot of grocery stores even sell a limited amount of live herb plants, so it’s not even an extra trip. It also means I don’t have to deal with the plastic clamshell the herbs are sold in.
The herbs stay fresher longer if they’re still attached to their roots. Yes, I will eventually kill them, but if you’re buying a clamshell of cut herbs, they’re already dead and you’re just waiting for them to go moldy. Buying them live at least buys me a few days.
Some herbs are remarkably easy to keep alive even for those of us with thumbs that make plants wither and die. For example, green onions: you don’t even have to replant them in dirt. They’ll live–even regrow from just the bulbs–if you only put them in a cup of water.
Don’t be discouraged! You don’t need a large space or a green thumb or any special tools to keep live herbs in your kitchen. As you work to reduce your food waste and plastic packaging usage, consider an herb garden for fresher, tastier herbs.