Indoor herbs?

[EricT]

Hi all. Let me start by saying that I am fairly ignorant about gardening, but I've been able to keep houseplants alive for years and years.

Can you all recommend some herbs that I can grow indoors without too much effort? I would just like to have some fresh herbs around, the grocery stores here have a pitiful selection that are way overpriced. I'm mainly interested in things like basil, rosemary, thyme, etc.

[Anneke]

Basil gets leggy and dies off after a while. Rosemary and thyme I have grown successfully, but not long term. Eventually they both crave the sun, start dying off or get sick (fungi, white flies, etc). My most successful indoor crop is the good old bay tree. Nothing kills it! Currently experimenting with lemon verbena; just repotted it tonight for wintering indoors...

[Tropicalgal]

I'm not very good with indoor plants...
Kill them mecilessly... have only silk plants indoors now...
Much more humane...
I have been reading up on container plantings for herbs...
Plan to try it next year...

[Andrew Hope]

Can't you just use artifical light?... Pot growers do it so why can't we for our herbs?

[mudbug]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hope

Can't you just use artifical light?... Pot growers do it so why can't we for our herbs?

No one is saying you can't. But a "grow light" is different than a regular light bulb and there are different types of grow lights which emit different different parts of the spectrum each utilized by plants in different ways. Nothing is as good as actual sunlight.

Originally Posted by EricT

Can you all recommend some herbs that I can grow indoors without too much effort?

EricT,
Just try five herbs you want to use and get a grow light. Experiment... If you can plant outdoors many herbs will last even thru winter. For me, I can harvest sage, oregano, and thyme even when there is snow on the ground.

[BoatChef]

I actually have a fairly large window in my galley with an approximately 3 inch sill. I would love to have fresh herbs growing there but I cant find the perfect pot. I am thinking a long pot with maybe five or six plants but it has to look very nice. Any suggestions?

[mudbug]

BoatChef,

You can use one pot or many. Or you can put individual pots nested inside a larger container. If you want it to look nice, go to your local nursery and see what they have to offer.

[Jacaranda]

I've successfully grown great bushes of basil on a windowsill in a tiny apartment in the East End of London for the last four or five years - just by buying a pack of fresh basil from the supermarket in early spring and shoving a couple of the stems into a pot of damp compost. They usually take root within a week; the plant shouldn't get too leggy if you keep it in the sun and remember to pinch off the flowers as they form.

Mudbug's suggestion of separate pots inside a bigger container or jardiniere is very sensible - that way you can grow plants that need lots of water, like basil, right alongside plants, like thyme, that don't.