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.

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More