Thyme and chives

Two herbs that are essential to have on hand to pick, thyme and chives do well together in a big tub with full sun. Both are over the late winter dormancy now, and the thyme is full of flowers which bring bees when the day warms up. I divided the thyme from a big seedling pot from a nursery, and got one upright plant, with the rest low spreading. The chives grow happily in the middle.

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Rosemary

Having rosemary to pick is kind of a kitchen essential, and a bonus is that it’s a beautiful and perfectly behaved plant. Mine is flowering now, in mid winter, and attracting a few bees. Rosemary is very hardy, grown in a large pot, and long lived. About the only attention it needs is deciding which sprigs to pick in order to keep the shape right.

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Dandelion salad herb

Apparently we have the French to thank for breeding a dandelion salad herb cultivar. I got mine as seeds from a local merchant. We like the occasional dandelion leaf addition to green salads, and friends have commented favourably on it, but it’s definitely for those who don’t mind a bit of bitterness. You can blanch the leaves under a pot to reduce the flavour, but who’s organised enough for that? Growing dandelion I would have said this hardly needs instruction. It stretches the boundary between weed and herb if you’ve got…

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Salad burnet

I was glad to see our virtuoso local chef Chui Lee Luk single out salad burnet the other night as one of her favourites. It’s an excellent plant for a sunny balcony, as it’s happy in a pot, very hardy, available to pick all year, and hard to find in the shops. The leaves are very pretty and have a cucumber aroma, with maybe a little coriander leaf in there too. Only pick the young leaves while they are the paler green, as the older leaves get tough. I think…

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Rooftop gardening herbs

Herbs are good plants for roof top gardening, as they are so tough and stay ready for picking when needed. On my rooftop terrace in inner city Sydney I grew them in big pots and troughs across the open North side, I had oregano, salad burnet, and parsley, lemon grass, thyme and chives, rosemary, and sage. In smaller pots against the East facing wall I grew mint, basil and coriander. The first eight are set and forget plants; the oregano seeds and spreads from year to year, and the salad burnet needs a…

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