If you are a person who loves to cook then you know how the use the right herbs can enhance the flavor of any dish. Potato leek soup with dill or homemade pizza with fresh basil come to my mind! It can get quite expensive to purchase fresh herbs from the local grocery store though. This really isn’t a problem for those who live in a warm climate as you can grow your own outdoor herb garden. But for those of you who live in areas that have cold harsh winters your herb growing may be limited to only a few months out of the year unless you learn how to grow those herbs indoors for the winter months.

Growing herbs indoors in winter is not as difficult as it may seem. Though not all herbs grow well indoors, herbs like geranium, basil, mint, rosemary, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, chives, garlic and oregano are easy to grow indoors. Not only will growing herbs indoors allow you to enjoy fresh herbs all year round but, these herbs will also make your home smell nice as well.

What You Need To Go Herbs Indoors

There are of course a few things you need to grow your indoor herbs. Here is a list of most of the necessary items.

• Containers with good drainage (see if you can recycle some from your outdoor garden)
• Herb seeds or seedlings (seedlings give those new to growing herbs a better chance of success)
• At least 6 to 8 hours of sunlight a day. A south facing window will provide the best sunlight. You can also use florescent lighting but, if you do so then the plants will need about 12 hours of this kind of light each day.
• Daytime temperatures of around 70 degrees Fahrenheit
• Night time temperatures no lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit
• Humidity. You can mist your plants to give them the humidity they need or keep a humidifier in the area where you are growing your herbs.

Herbs also need to be harvested in order to keep them from getting to bushy or outgrowing the container but, this should not be much of a problem as the whole idea of growing herbs indoors is to allow you to have fresh herbs all year round. You can use them for your meals of course and for natural remedies as well.

While growing herbs indoors is not difficult they do require care and attention just like any other indoor plant. But, the time that you spend will be well worth it when you see your family enjoy the food you prepare by using these fresh herbs.

Also, many children like growing indoor plants and this may be a project you and your children can do together. They will enjoy watching these plants grow and you will all take pride in producing “food” for your family. Many people begin their indoor herb growing with just three or four common herbs and find the experience so pleasant that they eventually have a semi large indoor herb garden. Whether you choose to grow just a few herbs indoors of a wide selection of herbs you will enjoy the experience of having fresh herbs that you grew yourself available to you all year round.

The weather is getting cool, nights are getting darker, life is moving a little bit slower, and things are winding down in your summer garden. But perhaps you don’t want to give up gardening just yet. Heck the weather is perfect for outdoor enjoyment right? There are still some gardening tips and strategies that you can employ to get you back outside and some dirt under your fingernails. You can add some color and life to your garden, and prepare it for winter. Depending on where you live, fall can be a very busy time in the garden. Here are some ideas:

Earthy Colors!!

Fall is a beautiful and colorful season, and you can add some of that color to your garden this time of year. Chrysanthemums (mums) come in a variety of yellows, bronzes, reds, and purples and they are a very popular flower this time of year so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding them at your local nursery. It’s worth noting, however, that mums will return each year – they’re perennials. So take that into consideration as you decide on their placement in your garden.

Get the Weeds Before They Seed

Weeds plagued you all summer and if you get a bit lazy, fall is the time when many will go to seed, sending the makings of next year’s plant invasion all over your yard. Thankfully, fall can be rainy (it has been in Ohio), and wet soil is easier to pull or hoe weeds. Get rid of those unsightly things now and you’ll thank yourself next spring.

You can also get on top of weed control in the fall by laying down several layers of newspaper or cardboard on top of your garden beds or soil once the plants are spent. Anchor the newspapers/cardboard with rocks or soil and, by the time spring arrives, the weeds will have been deprived of the light and air they need to sprout. The organic material will also start to decompose, which enriches your soil.

Take Care With Your Tools

Investing in good garden tools is just one of the ways we make the gardening process easier and more efficient. At the end of the season take care to clean your tools and hang them in the shed or garage for storage so they will not get rusty and/or broken.

Plant Bulbs

When fall is in the air, it’s time to think ahead and put spring in the ground. There are a variety of bulbs that need to be planted in the fall and it is so easy to do. Dig a hole, drop the bulb in, cover it up, and go have a glass of apple cider. Tulips, Daffodils, Hyacinths, Crocuses, and Allium (my fave!) are typically planted in the fall so they can complete their growth cycle in time to come up in spring. If you grow garlic, it will need to be put into the garden in the fall as well. Plan out the places where you want the flowers to bloom in spring and make sure it is an area with good drainage. A little work now will bring you so much happiness in the spring.

Trees and Shrubs

Now is a good time to prune back trees and shrubs, including shrub roses. It’s also a good time to plant them. In the fall, trees and shrubs are in a dormant state, and the planting and pruning are less shocking to the plant.

The growing season is winding down but there is still MUCH to do! What are doing in the garden right now?

With all the rain here lately it has meant that our seedlings and transplants took a bit longer to get outside. That was okay with us because my husband couldn’t build my raised bed until this past week either. Since we have a smaller, open yard now we decided to grow food in a couple raised beds (building them ourselves) and in pots and planters on our backyard deck. We will be growing heirloom varieties of tomato, peppers, sugar snap peas, snow peas, lettuce greens, and carrots. Yum!

The single most frustrating part of gardening for me has always been weeding. It takes only days for weeds to take root and make the garden unsightly as well as less healthy, since the weeds hog all the water. When we lived in Phoenix that black weed plastic was commonly used. You don’t see gardens that often there but weeds will ruin rock landscaping just as well as they ruin gardens. My parents used that black plastic frequently to try and curb the weeds.

Now of course I would never dream of using all that plastic for environmental reasons but I wasn’t all that familiar with eco friendlier options either. Dupont contacted me to offer me some of their Garden O.N.E® Weed Control Fabric and I was excited to give it a try. The fabric is similar in form and function to the infamous black plastic but this product is made of wood fiber and it is chemical free. Oh and it is biodegradeable as well. This is important because the plastic stuff always ripped eventually and had to be replaced to so if you will have to do touch ups anyway, why not use planet friendly materials? Both product types will do the job and prevent weeds but one will contribute to the health of the plants you want and one will not.

So…. we put two overlapping layers of the weed control fabric down so that we covered the bottom of the raised bed entirely and we let some hang out on all sides to keep weeds from growing along the side walls as well. Then we put a layer of stones on top of it for drainage. Next came the dirt… organic soil, organic peat moss, and our own homegrown compost made in our Worm Factory.

We have since moved over some seedlings we had into the bed and we still have some more to plant. We toyed with the idea of laying the fabric down on the very top and cutting holes for the plants but decided that was a bit too much work. We may still use strips of the fabric between rows and weight it down with rocks. We will see how much space is left. I am thinking we will use at least some on top though because the fabric will also help hold moisture in which can be important when it gets really hot.

Now we have a few more things to plant, a mesh fence or a lattice to put up along the back of our deck for the peas to climb on and we have a second, smaller bed we are constructing for my daughter… who wants to grow rainbow chard. That bed is even closer to the ground so the weed control fabric will be needed even more for that one.

If we someday end up back in Arizona and have a rock garden again instead of a real one I know exactly what we will using… weed control fabric! There is no greater pain in the butt than pulling weeds in 100 degree weather.

A winner has been selected at random to win the Gift card to Lowe’s. Congrats to Brit (the winner) and thanks everyone for your comments!!

We have had so much rain here in Ohio that it has made getting into the gardening spirit a bit hard. To make up for it I have been buying up indoor plants like crazy. I think my husband is worried we will be living in a jungle soon.

But I did add the first patch of color outside this weekend because I had a nifty new planter to put to work for us. I am not a fan of plastic and I have yet to get out and scope the auction scene to buy some clay pots so this pot was just what I needed. It is a recycled tire planter courtesy of Flat Tire Decor.

Now admittedly I would not put food or even one of my indoor (air quality) plants in one but I feel the same about plastic. For decorative plants and flowers they are a perfect fit and unlike plastic pots and planters you are recycling and finding a new use for something that would otherwise be considered junk. And you may know how I LOVE to recycle stuff for gardening purposes. All the planters are made from tires that have outlived their usefulness on the road. They are then converted into these baskets that can be used as planters or even for other household uses. On their web site they show them being used to hold firewood, decorative items, newspapers, cleaning supplies, fake plants, even produce. I opted to put it outside and provide a home for some lovely pink hydrangeas. We need to put a lot of work into our little city lot but that splash of color might just be what I need to inspire me. The tire planter looks pretty good IMO too. The one in the picture above is the Venice. It is a pretty good sized planter and the price tag is under $20.

In addition to these baskets (or planters) they also make welcome mats and shoes… again all from 100% recycled tires. Another plus is that these products are all made in the USA, Milwaukee to be exact. I think a $20 tire planter made in the US is a better deal than a $10 plastic planter made in China and the tire planter will probably last MUCH longer. Thats said it is not easy to let go of the fact that both are made with potentially toxic ingredients… hence the advice to not grow food in them.

What do you think? Would you use recycled tire products in or around your home?

For more info on these check out another review by garden blogger, Mr. Brown Thumb.

A Guest Post From Amanda

Learning to garden was a process reflective on my stage in life. The first time I planted a vegetable patch, I worked for hours in the soil, tilling and clearing a space. My knees and the palms of my hands were stained with dirt. I was young and I didn’t have the patience or the softness of heart to tend to vulnerable seedlings, so I bought some plants from the hardware store and planted them. And I left them. I washed my hands and trimmed my nails and came back a few days later to find that every last plant had been eaten by deer. That’s the way life worked for me as an impulsive youth. I decided that gardening wasn’t for me.

As I got older and started a family, I became interested in the idea of eating local, eating organic and above all, eating actual food. I had never cared much about my health, but now that I had a child depending on me, I wanted to live well and for a long time. I looked at the ingredient list in the “heart healthy whole grain bread” I was feeding to my one year old daughter. Included in a list of thirty-six ingredients were things like: Enriched Bleached Flour, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Calcium Peroxide, Datem, Ascorbic Acid, Azodicarbonamide. I realized that this bread wasn’t actually bread at all. It was simply a monster science product, packaged as bread. If someone handed me a bottle of Azodicarbonamide and asked me to feed some to my child, I would most certainly refuse. So, why I was I okay with feeding it to her, as long as it came in a cleverly advertised package? If I bought bread from a local bakery, or better, if I baked it myself, it would contain flour, yeast and water. Those were all ingredients in actual food.

Over the next few years, my interest in eating actual food became stronger. I started to shop locally and made meals from scratch. I bought organic, seasonal produce and became seduced by the “shop local, eat local” trend. My daughter and I would go to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning and buy greens for our smoothies and juicy, real tomatoes that killed my ability to eat a supermarket tomato ever again. Mostly, we enjoyed the company we were keeping. The market was always filled with knowledgeable, liberal people with a wonderfully positive outlook on food and the way it related to society. I started to understand the concept of buying local produce was more than just a trendy mantra. It was easy, really. All it meant was that healthy, real food wasn’t grown with chemicals we would be afraid to allow our children to ingest. Actual, fresh food didn’t sit for weeks and weeks without being eaten or get injected with dyes. It was grown at home and eaten as soon as possible after harvesting. I realized that, while I had always enjoyed being one of those farmer’s market, organic-loving mamas, I was also one of the people who believed in being as self-sustaining as possible and I could do this on my own.

I had another daughter, and the three of us fell in love with the dirt over her first summer. I would plop my fat, healthy baby right into the soil and let her explore the textures (and more often than not, the tastes) of the earth. Her little toes settled right down into the mud. My four year old was interested in digging and feeding the soil. I gave her a little patch of land to cultivate all on her own and she grew bunches of kale that were bigger than she was. I was stressed out and cooped up all winter long, so I found the process of weeding and tending and watering in the fresh spring and summer air to be an annual experience of rebirth. I loved sweating out in the sun for hours with my babies in their sun bonnets.

It took a while to master the process of growing crops from seed. It also took me a while to get used to being a mommy. There was an art of persistence, gentleness and other-centeredness in both pursuits. While I learned to rise early and to work hard for my girls, I also learned that a garden wasn’t something that you could rush and power your way through, only to grow tired of the effort before the job was done. I learned that it takes time and love and care and sweat to bring a child into the world and to help that child to grow and thrive, and the same is true for seeds. The more confident I became as a mommy, the better I was at gardening.

Now, we’re at a place where we can supply basically all of our produce during the summer and early fall. We’re still especially fond of just picked tomatoes and wouldn’t be caught dead buying one from the supermarket. We’re kale addicts, admittedly and we supply our extended family with peppers and zucchini, (as well as superb, home baked zucchini bread.) We’re a city family and we don’t have the land or the freedom or the climate to be totally self-sustaining, but we sleep well at night with full bellies knowing that we’re a positive part of the way life works. We live actual lives in the sunlight and we eat actual food and we’re just three little women in the world, but we’re totally okay with having a little dirt under our nails.

Amanda is a 32 year old mom of two living in Pittsburgh and loving it. She is married to the world’s sexiest accountant, who is totally understanding about her love affair with her bicycle. She blogs at Last Mom On Earth.