Let's check out the herbs...

As most of you know, I'm very keen on cooking these days, and it is always nice to be have on-hand a selection of fresh herbs with which to enhance our meals. So here goes with a tour of the culinary herbs currently in my garden...

In the Autumn I moved some of my herb plants into my coldframe to protect them a bit from the anticipated frosts, but because the Winter has been very mild, this has so far turned out to be largely unnecessary. However, Winter is not over yet, and I expect they were glad of the shelter during last weekend's heavy frosts...  See if you can identify the herbs in this picture:-

Micellaneous herbs in the coldframe

The best of the herbs outside the coldframe are the Rosemary plants, some of which are still looking like they did in high Summer, which is particularly gratifying since they suffered very badly in last year's snow:

Rosemary

The Thyme is not so luxuriant. The leaves are sparse, pale and very tough now:

Thyme

The straggly Marjoram is nearly hidden beneath a covering of fallen leaves. I like the way how in this photo a narrow shaft of sunlight illuminates a couple of sprigs:

Marjoram

The Purple and Variegated Sage plants are looking fine still. These ones are from cuttings I took in Autumn 2010 and planted out in pots in Spring 2011:

Purple Sage



Variegated Sage


The plain Green Sage always goes a bit spindly in the Winter. Many of the lower leaves go yellow, then brown, then drop off completely, but new leaves keep appearing at the tips. The little rosettes at the ends of the bare stalks look almost like flowers:

Green Sage

The Chives are just beginning to peep through now. In the Spring I divided and re-potted them, and applied a layer of gravel to discourage the growth of moss. It seems to have worked:

Chives

The Bronze Fennel is already putting up feathery new leaves at the base of the slowly dessicating stems from last year's growth (must cut those old stems off soon...):

Bronze Fennel

The Winter Savory that I grew from seed last year is looking....Wintery! It has robust woody stems now:

Winter Savory

In the pots of Mint the first new shoots are already coming up, which warns me that I will need to re-pot this herb soon. I usually divide and re-pot the Mint every year to keep it vigorous, but I wasn't expecting to have to do it just yet:

Mint

The Greek Oregano is looking a bit "moth-eaten". Something has nibbled the surface off most of the leaves:

Greek Oregano

The tips of the tender young shoots look much better though:

Greek Oregano

The herb with which I have most difficulty is Parsley. It seems I can never grow enough of it for our needs! Perhaps if I show you only a close-up photo I can pretend that I have lots of it:

Parsley


Last, but by no means least, there is the Bay. I have two little Bay trees, trained as standards, on my patio for ornamental purposes, but down by the back fence is this fine specimen - their parent - which is for culinary use:

Bay

As you can imagine, we're never short of fresh Bay leaves!

So the situation seems to be that most of the herbs are doing fine, and I look forward to seeing fresh new growth on all of them within the next couple of months (possibly earlier in view of the current warmer temperatures).

More (prettier) pictures of herbs can be seen on my "Herbs" page, at the top of the blog....