Sunday, April 20, 2008

Signs of garden herb life: chives, parsley, chervil

The first signs of herb life are now appearing in the garden, and winter weather only subsided a few weeks ago.

When the chives went to seed last year, I crunched some of the seed heads over this pot and covered it with old stalks to simulate the proper "regrowth" environment. It may be witchcraft, but there was a result. Chives aren't that good in the first year, so I expect these will be a lot better next year if anything becomes of them:


This is the main "crop" of chives in its third year:


Chervil and parsley look quite healthy and survived the winter:


And the other parsley is poking through the chicken wire (this particular spot was raided by a rabbit last year, before the plant was mature; the chicken wire helped with that):


This seems pretty good to me for mid-April.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

cool. you must have a green thumb! =D

droppig by from richard's blog.

mattbg said...

Actually, what I try to do is focus on growing things that grow easily :)

If it's not something that will grow naturally within my climate/soil conditions, I don't bother with it. I'm just getting started (over the past few years)... but hoping to add a lot more this year.

Wherever weeds will grow, plant perennial herbs.. that's my goal :)

Richard said...

Chives grow easily - actually, if you do not actively thin them, they will grow just like a weed.

mattbg said...

Chives do seem to be quite prolific... which is fine with me :)

The parsley and chervil must have self-seeded themselves, since they're annuals as far as I know.

It'd be pretty great to grow cilantro as a weed... I wasn't successful in growing it last year. Not sure why: I don't think it's supposed to be particularly difficult!