Want to have your fun and eat it too? How about picking up a selection of herb seedlings and planting them in containers? You can plant them on your deck, on a sunny porch, right outside your kitchen window. Or as Garden Club member Cena Hampden demonstrates here, it’s easy to plant them in window boxes that allow you to reach right outside and harvest fresh herbs to snip on your pasta or add to your salads.
by Cena Hampden
Cena is the Greenhouse Co-Chair of the Garden Club of Irvington. She is responsible, with Dori Ruff, for ensuring a bountiful and healthy crop of annuals that our members grow all year in the Lyndhurst Greenhouse and sell at the plant sale held on the day before Mother’s Day. In this spring and early summer of Covid-19, Cena is turning her attention to delectable edibles that she harvests by reaching out her front window. She writes:
This year’s renewed interest in planting edibles moved me to think about how I could participate in the trend. Each summer, the window box spanning the front of my house has sported an array of colorful flowers. Lacking a yard with sufficient sun and protection from critters (not to mention my lack of desire to cultivate another garden) I can hardly keep up with what I have. So I eyed my window boxes.
I moved the window box liners to the patio.
I emptied half the old soil into a wheelbarrow, and with a small trowel mixed it with potting soil purchased at Reader’s Hardware in Dobbs Ferry. I set aside the other half of the old soil to use in the garden or to mix with new soil to fill other pots. Working on each liner in the wheelbarrow, rather than on the ground or on a potting bench, I was able to avoid extra cleanup of spilled soil.
Small in scale with foliage of different shapes, textures and variegated leaves, herbs seemed especially suitable. In addition to oregano, thyme and sage — perennials I can transplant into the garden — I chose parsley, coriander, rosemary and arugula (not sure it qualifies as an herb, but it adds peppery flavor to salads).
For greater ease, I selected seedlings and plants rather than starting from seed. The seedlings came from Home Grown Nurseries, run by Nick Storrs who grows in the propagating shed at Lyndhurst adjacent to the one used for annuals by the Garden Club of Irvington.
After ordering online I was able to pick up the seedlings at the Hastings Farmers Market. The perennials were purchased at Westchester Farms. After only one week the growth was noticeable. I’m especially happy with the variegated oregano and thyme.
Now for the fun part! I can harvest the herbs while I’m indoors, and thanks to a generous roof overhang I won’t even get wet in the rain. I also look forward to those beautiful parsley caterpillars (black swallowtail butterflies) who will be sharing the produce.
THE GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA