The Complete Herb Guide: How to Grow, Harvest and Preserve 14 Kitchen Herbs

The one everybody plants and the one everybody cuts wrong. Genovese is the pesto basil, Thai basil holds up to heat in a stir fry, and lemon basil is worth a pot of its own.

Stick a cut basil stem in a glass of water on the windowsill and it will grow roots in about a week. One bunch from the grocery store, the kind you buy for four dollars in March, becomes a whole summer of plants for free. Strip the lower leaves, change the water every couple of days, and pot it up when the roots are an inch long.

Full sun and warm soil. Do not set it out until nights are reliably above fifty degrees. Italian types can reach three feet, so give them room.

Genovese is the pesto basil and the one to grow if you only grow one. Sweet Italian large leaf gives you more per plant. Thai basil holds its flavor in a hot pan, which regular basil does not. Lemon basil is worth a pot of its own for fish and shortbread. Dark Opal and other purple basils make a stunning pink vinegar.

Start when the plant is six inches tall or has six leaves. Cut just above a node, the point where a pair of leaves meets the stem, and the plant branches from there. Take from the top first, never more than a third at a time, and pinch off flower buds the day you see them.

Chop it and freeze it under olive oil in an ice cube tray. Do not dry basil. It loses almost everything.

Pesto, caprese, and torn over a pizza after it comes out of the oven, never before. Basil lemonade. Compound butter rolled in parchment and frozen. Stirred into tomato sauce off the heat so it keeps its perfume.

Cold, long before frost. Basil takes chilling injury once nights drop below about fifty degrees and the leaves go black at the edges. When you see a fifty degree night in the forecast, cut all of it.

The first green thing up in spring and the last one standing in fall. The purple flowers are edible and make a beautiful pink vinegar.

Chives are the first thing up in our garden every spring, often pushing through the last of the cold while everything else is still asleep. Old gardeners plant them at the base of roses and apple trees because the onion smell confuses aphids. Whether or not that works, you get a free crop of pink pompoms out of the deal.

Full sun, about a foot tall, forms a clump that gets fatter every year. Dig and divide every three or four years or the middle dies out.

Common chives are the thin round ones with purple pompom flowers. Garlic chives are flat leaved with white flowers in late summer, taste faintly of garlic, and self sow hard enough that you will be pulling seedlings for years.

Snip individual leaves down at the base rather than shearing across the top. A haircut leaves you a clump of brown stubs for the rest of the season.

Chop and freeze loose on a sheet pan, then bag, or freeze in water cubes. Dried chives are hay.

Anything with eggs or potatoes. Snipped raw over soup, into sour cream, folded into butter. Do not cook them long, heat takes the flavor straight out. Pull the blossoms apart over a salad, or steep them in white vinegar for two weeks and get a bright pink chive vinegar.

Very little. If it flowers and you want leaves, cut the flower stems out at the base.

Two crops in one plant. The leaf is cilantro, the seed is coriander, and they taste nothing alike.

If cilantro tastes like soap to you, that is not pickiness, it is your genes. A variation in a smell receptor gene called OR6A2 makes some people read cilantro’s aldehydes the same way they read dish soap. Depending on ancestry, somewhere between four and fourteen percent of people have it. You are not being difficult and you will probably never like it.

Full sun to part shade and cool weather. Direct sow, because it resents being moved. Sow a short row every two or three weeks in spring and again from late August on.

Look for slow bolt types, which buy you a few extra weeks. Calypso, Santo and Leisure are the common ones. Delfino has feathery leaves that look nothing like cilantro and take longer to bolt.

Take outer leaves while the plant is low and bushy. Once it starts to stretch upward it is on its way to seed, so cut the whole plant at soil line and use it.

Freeze it chopped under oil. Never dry it. Or let the bolted plants finish and collect the round seeds for coriander, which stores beautifully.

Salsa, tacos, curries, pho, and always added at the very end because heat destroys it. The seed is a different ingredient entirely. Toast coriander seed in a dry pan and grind it for curry, chili and spice rubs.

Heat. It bolts the second summer arrives, and nothing stops that. Plant it early, plant it again in fall, and make peace with the summer gap.

Grow it for the fronds, the seed heads, and the swallowtail caterpillars that will show up and eat some of it. Plant extra and let them have their share.

Plant more dill than you need and you will get butterflies. Black swallowtails lay their eggs on dill, fennel and parsley, and the caterpillars are the striped green ones that look like they were designed by committee. They will strip a plant. Let them. That is the trade, and it is a good one.

Full sun, direct sown where it will stay, because the taproot hates transplanting. It gets tall, so put it at the back or stake it.

Bouquet is the standard and gives generous seed heads for pickling. Fernleaf stays compact and does well in a pot. Mammoth gets tall and is grown for seed. Dukat is the leafy one if you want fronds more than heads.

Snip the young feathery leaves any time. For pickling, cut whole heads just as the flowers open and the seeds are still green.

Freeze the fronds, chopped or whole. Let seed heads dry on the stem in a paper bag and store the seed in a jar.

Pickles first, obviously. Then potato salad, salmon, cucumbers in sour cream, yogurt sauces and homemade ranch. The seed goes in pickling brine and rye bread.

It runs to seed quickly in heat. Succession sow, and let a few plants self seed so you get volunteers next spring.

Beautiful, useful, and the herb most likely to die on you in the South. Not because of cold. Because of wet.

Lavender is in the mint family, same as basil, rosemary and sage. And the oils peak just before the flowers open all the way, which is why commercial fields harvest at bud stage and why the bundle you cut too late never smells as strong as the one you cut early.

Full sun, lean soil, and sharp drainage. A raised bed or a gravel mound beats good garden soil every time. English lavenders handle cold best, Spanish and French types handle heat and humidity better.

English lavenders are the culinary ones and the most cold hardy. Munstead and Hidcote are the classics. Spanish lavender handles our heat and humidity better but is not what you want in food. Phenomenal and Provence are the ones people here have the best luck keeping alive through a wet winter.

Cut flower stems just as the lowest buds on the spike begin to open. Shape the plant after flowering, but never cut back into bare old wood, which will not resprout.

Air dry it. Bundle the stems tightly, hang them out of direct sun, and strip the buds into a jar once they are crisp.

Use English lavender and use less than you think. It turns soapy fast. Shortbread, lemonade, honey, and sugar left in a jar with a few buds. Everything else it does is sachets, wreaths and making a room smell like summer.

Rich soil, heavy mulch, and overhead watering. Give it grit and neglect and it will outlive you.

Mint family, lemon scented, and the easiest tea herb there is. Crush a leaf on your way past it and you will plant more.

Melissa, the plant’s botanical name, is Greek for honeybee. Beekeepers going back to the Romans rubbed lemon balm inside an empty hive to make a swarm want to move in, and crushed it on their hands before working the bees. Walk past a flowering patch on a warm afternoon and you will hear it before you see it.

Sun or part shade, about a foot and a half tall, not picky about soil.

Plain Melissa officinalis is all most people need. Aurea is variegated and prettier in a pot. Lemonella has a stronger lemon note if you are growing it mainly for tea.

Shear the whole plant back by a third whenever it gets leggy. It comes back fast and the new growth is the best of it.

Dry it for tea, which it takes better than most soft herbs, or freeze it in water cubes for iced tea and lemonade.

Tea, hot or iced, which is what it is best at. Lemonade. Tossed through a fruit salad. Steeped in honey or made into a simple syrup that keeps a week in the refrigerator.

It spreads by root and self sows hard. Put it in a container or a bed you are willing to hand over.

Oregano’s gentler cousin. Sweeter, softer, and better than oregano in anything with eggs or cream.

The genus name Origanum comes from two Greek words meaning mountain and joy. It was woven into wedding crowns and planted on graves, the same herb for the happiest day and the hardest one. For something most people only meet in a jar of Italian seasoning, it has carried a lot.

Full sun, six to nine inches tall, very happy in a pot. It is hardy only to about zone 9, so in most of the country, mine included, it will not survive winter in the ground. Grow it in a container and bring it in.

Sweet marjoram is the real thing and the one worth growing. What is sold as Italian or hardy marjoram is usually a marjoram and oregano cross, tougher but coarser.

Harvest before it flowers, when the flavor is strongest. Cut stems rather than picking leaves.

It dries well, unusual for something this tender, and it also freezes fine on the stem.

It belongs anywhere oregano would be too loud. Eggs, cream sauces, mushrooms, poultry, sausage. Add it near the end of cooking, because its flavor is delicate and cooks off.

People plant it expecting oregano’s toughness. It is not that plant. Treat it like an annual and you will not be disappointed.

Spearmint for tea and juleps, peppermint for anything sweet, chocolate mint because it is fun. They all behave the same way, which is badly.

Mint does not actually cool anything. Menthol latches onto a nerve receptor called TRPM8, which is the exact same receptor that fires when you touch something cold. Your mouth is not being chilled, it is being told it has been. It is one of the few times you can catch your own senses lying to you on purpose.

Part shade suits it better than full sun, and it is not fussy about soil. Plant it in a pot, or in a bed with an edge it cannot cross, or plan on mint forever.

Spearmint is the tea and julep mint and the one most people mean. Peppermint is stronger and better with chocolate and anything sweet. Chocolate mint really does smell like it. Apple mint is fuzzy and mild. Whatever you plant, plant one, because they all spread the same way.

Cut stems often and hard. Frequent harvest keeps it from flowering, and flowering is when the flavor drops off.

Water cubes for tea and drinks. It also dries better than most soft herbs if the leaves are for tea rather than cooking.

Iced tea, juleps, mojitos. Tabbouleh, where it belongs alongside the parsley. Peas, lamb, and a yogurt sauce with cucumber. Muddle it rather than chopping when it is going into a drink.

It runs underground. One plant becomes a colony in two seasons. Contain it from the start.

The one herb that is genuinely better dried than fresh. Greek oregano is the one with the punch. Common oregano can be almost flavorless, so buy a plant you have smelled.

Oregano tastes better when you are mean to it. The compound that gives Greek oregano its bite, carvacrol, builds up when the plant is stressed by sun and drought. Rich soil and regular water give you a big lush plant that tastes like nothing. The sad looking one wedged in gravel at the end of the bed is the one you want.

Full sun, dry feet, up to two feet across. It is tough, it is hardy, and it will come back bigger every year.

Greek oregano is the one with the punch, and it is worth seeking out by name because plain Origanum vulgare can be almost flavorless. Smell a leaf before you buy the plant. Syrian oregano is what goes in real zaatar. Golden oregano is pretty and weak.

Cut stems right before the flower buds open, which is when the oil content peaks. You can take a hard cut mid summer and get a second flush.

Dry it. Hang bundles, strip the leaves when crisp, and store them whole in a jar. Crush between your fingers as you cook.

Tomato sauce, pizza, roasted vegetables, Greek dressing, marinades for lamb and chicken. This is the herb you add early rather than late, and dried rather than fresh, which is backwards from everything else in this guide.

Rich soil and too much water make a big plant with weak flavor. Keep it lean.

Flat leaf Italian for cooking, curly for the plate. Not a garnish, an ingredient. A whole cup of chopped parsley is what makes tabbouleh taste like anything.

Chewing parsley after garlic actually works, and it is not just masking. And here is the one that surprises people: parsley is a biennial, so the second spring it shoots up, flowers and dies, doing exactly what it was built to do. The Greeks tied it to death and rebirth for that reason, and then put it on the plate anyway.

Light shade, steady moisture, deeper soil than you would think. Seed is famously slow, two to four weeks, so do not give up on it.

Italian flat leaf is the cooking parsley and the one to grow. Curly holds up better as a garnish and has more bite raw. Hamburg parsley is grown for its parsnip like root, which is worth knowing about even if you never plant it.

Take the outer stems at the base and let the center keep producing. It handles frost and will often hold into winter.

Chop and freeze, in oil for cooking or water for soups. Drying is a waste of it.

Tabbouleh, where it is the main ingredient and not a garnish. Gremolata with lemon zest and garlic over braised meat. Chimichurri. Stems into the stock pot. A handful chopped over almost anything at the end to wake it up.

The second year it bolts and sets seed, because it is a biennial doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Start new plants every year.

A shrub that happens to be a seasoning. Given a spot it likes, it becomes a permanent part of the garden and you cut from it in February.

Rosemary is not Rosmarinus anymore. In 2017 botanists looked hard at the DNA and moved it into Salvia, the sage genus, so the correct name is now Salvia rosmarinus. Rosemary is a sage. Every plant tag and cookbook is still catching up, and you can start an argument at a garden club with it.

Full sun and drainage above all. It can pass four feet. Winter hardiness is the real question with rosemary. It holds to about zone 7, which is where I am, and a hard winter takes unprotected plants even here, so look for Arp or Hill Hardy, plant it against a south wall, and skip the heavy mulch.

In zone 7 the variety is the whole ballgame. Arp and Hill Hardy are the ones bred to take our winters. Tuscan Blue is a beautiful upright if you are willing to lose it in a bad year. Prostratus trails over a wall or a pot edge.

Cut soft green tips any time of year. Do not cut back into old bare wood, because it will not push new growth from it.

Freeze whole sprigs flat in a bag. It also dries well. Frozen keeps more of the oils, dried is easier to reach for.

Potatoes, roast chicken, lamb, focaccia. Pushed into a loaf of bread before baking. Infused into oil or into a simple syrup for lemonade. And rosemary salt, which uses up an armful at a time.

Wet roots in winter, which kills more rosemary than cold does. Raised, gritty, and on the dry side.

Rosemary roots from cuttings more willingly than almost anything else out there, and one plant will give you a whole row. We walk through it in Turning One Into Many, our guide to an endless rosemary garden.

Holds its leaves through our winters, which means fresh sage for Thanksgiving straight off the plant. Purple and tricolor sages are just as edible as plain green.

Salvia comes from the Latin salvere, to be saved or to be well, which is a lot of name for a plant that mostly ends up in Thanksgiving dressing. Do this once: drop whole sage leaves into hot butter for about thirty seconds until they stop sizzling, lift them onto a paper towel and salt them. They go glassy and crisp, like a leaf shaped potato chip, and they will not make it to the table.

Full sun and drainage, a small shrub about two feet across. It gets woody and sparse after three or four years, so start a replacement from a cutting before you need it.

Common garden sage is the workhorse. Berggarten has broader, rounder leaves and stays tidier. Purple and tricolor sages are just as edible and look better in a bed. Pineapple sage is a different plant for a different job, tea and hummingbirds, not dressing.

Take leaves or short stems any time. Give it a shaping cut in spring, into green growth rather than bare wood.

Freeze whole leaves or sprigs flat. It is also one of the few herbs that oven dries well.

Thanksgiving dressing, and it is worth growing for that alone. Brown butter with squash ravioli. Sausage, pork, white beans. Whole leaves fried crisp in butter for about thirty seconds and salted.

Humidity and crowding bring on mildew. Give it air on all sides.

French tarragon is the one you want, the anise note behind bearnaise and a good chicken. It sets no viable seed, so anything sold as tarragon seed is the Russian kind, which tastes like grass.

French tarragon almost never flowers, and when it does the seed is sterile. So there is no such thing as growing it from seed. Every French tarragon plant alive is a cutting or a division of another one, going back and back. The plant in your garden is, in a real sense, a piece of the same plant everybody else is growing.

Full sun and excellent drainage. It struggles with Southern summers, so give it afternoon shade and never let it sit wet. Many people here grow Mexican mint marigold instead, which takes the heat and tastes close enough.

French tarragon is the only one worth growing and it is sold only as a plant, never as seed, because it does not set viable seed. Anything labeled tarragon seed is Russian tarragon, which is coarse and tastes like grass. Mexican mint marigold is the heat tolerant stand in most Southern gardeners end up with.

Cut stems in the top third through the season. Cut it back hard in late summer for tender regrowth.

Freezing beats drying, which loses it almost entirely. Tarragon vinegar holds the flavor longest of anything.

Bearnaise. Chicken, eggs, green beans, fish. A vinaigrette built on tarragon vinegar. Its anise note goes further than you expect, so start with less.

Buying the wrong plant. Always buy French tarragon as a plant, never as seed, and crush a leaf before you pay for it.

Tiny leaves, enormous range, and it goes in nearly everything. English thyme for cooking, lemon thyme for fish and shortbread, creeping thyme for between the pavers.

Thymol, the oil that gives thyme its smell, is one of the active ingredients in Listerine and turns up in a lot of natural cleaners. The Greeks burned thyme as incense and handed it to soldiers as a symbol of courage, which is a big job for a plant with leaves the size of a grain of rice.

Full sun and gritty soil. Forms range from flat groundcover to a foot tall. It is hardy and mostly evergreen, so you can cut in January.

English or common thyme is the cooking one. French thyme is finer leaved and sweeter. Lemon thyme is worth a separate plant for fish and shortbread. Creeping and woolly thymes are for walking on between pavers, not for the kitchen.

Cut stems with scissors rather than pulling, which lifts the shallow roots. Shear it lightly after it flowers to keep it from going woody in the middle.

Freeze whole sprigs and strip the leaves off frozen with your thumb. It dries well too.

Stock, braises, beans, mushrooms, roast chicken. It is the herb that goes in early and cooks all afternoon. Lemon thyme in shortbread, or under the skin of a fish before it goes in the oven.

Wet soil and old age. Every few years, replace the woody centers with cuttings, which root easily.