What Pots and Boxes to Use for Your Container Herb Garden
Container herb gardens are good alternatives for people who haven’t space at home for even a small outside herb garden. In fact, many herb gardening beginners start their herb gardening by using containers such as plastic ice cream or yogurt cartons or wooden boxes lined with plastic sheeting. Any of these is suitable, but I recommend using clay pots. They aren’t expensive and they’ll last a lot longer than plastic or wood. The other big benefit is that pots will help to keep the soil in your pot cool on a hot day.
Planting herb pots and containers isn’t a new thing. Hundreds of years ago the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians grew their herbs in pots or containers, and more recently the Victorians were big fans of the container herb garden.
Victorian Pot
In fact the Victorians were very good at manufacturing clay pots for their gardens, and it’s still possible to get hold of great looking Victorian garden pots in antique shops and at antique fairs. If you want to make your container herb garden rather special try and find an antique Victorian pot that you can use as a herb pot. The one shown opposite is a very superior example, but there are also lots of less impressive and cheaper pots around.
If you decide to use clay garden pots, you’ll find lots of different types and shapes to choose from at your local garden center. You’ll find that the styles range from modern to classic (like the one in the photograph), so you’ll need to use your imagination to select a pot that’s right for the herb garden you plan to create.
If you do make a visit to your local garden centre or shop on-line you’ll also probably find herb boxes (also called herb planters) for sale. These are sometimes prefilled with a selection of herbs. They are a good choice if you just don’t have the time to create your own container herb garden and don’t mind spending a few more dollars just to get started with herb gardening.
What Size Pot? How Many Pots?
When you set about creating your container herb garden make sure that you get a container that’s big enough to take a reasonable number (five or six at least) of herbs. A 12″ diameter pot is a good size to start with, although I can guarantee that after the first year with your container herb garden you’ll want to get a larger pot and grow a wider range of herbs.
Herb Garden Trough
In the picture opposite the herbs have been planted in wooden troughs up against a sunny wall.
It’s not always a good idea to put all your herbs together in one pot. Some herbs are best grown in individual pots.
Mint is a good example of a herb which should be grown in its own pot because it has a strong and vigorous root system and has the habit of taking up more than its fair share of soil space wherever it’s planted. For this reason lots of gardeners choose to plant their mint in a seperate pot alongside all their other herb boxes or pots.
When you are choosing the pot for your container herb garden make sure you get one that doesn’t have too narrow a top. Those wonderfully-shaped Ali Baba-type garden pots might look fantastic, but if you want to plant more than a couple of herbs in them they are not ideal. I use Ali Baba pots for my lavender plants. Each Ali Baba pot contains just one lavender plant, and when they are fully grown and in flower they look fantastic – and they are really appreciated by the bees.
Get the Right “Soil Mix” for Your Container Herb Garden
When your planting an herb garden in pots it’s important for the soil to have the right texture to allow the roots of the herbs to expand and air and water to get in. You can use ordinary garden soil, but soils in different locations can vary such a lot that it’s best to make up your own soil mixture or buy a specially prepared compost.
If you can, I recommend that you make your own “herb compost” for your container herb garden. The ideal mixture is a combination of good quality compost (which contains the necessary plant nutrient) mixed with a gritty/sandy material that will help with drainage and breathing. Any good quality compost will do, and I recommend mixing Perlite with it to get the ideal soil mix for your herbs. Perlite is easy to get hold of from garden centers and DIY stores, and can be purchased on-line for a good price. Use 1 part of Perlite to 2 parts of compost and mix them together thoroughly. There are lots of different views on how to make an ideal soil mix for a container herb garden, some of them quite complicated. I find that the compost and Perlite mix works very well.
Before you put the compost mix into your pot, make sure that you lay some stones or stony gravel over the hole in the bottom of your garden pot. This is done to help with drainage. I use old broken pot pieces, but stones are fine.
Fill your pot almost to the top with your soil mixture, and then plant your herbs making sure that they are at the same depth as they were in the pots they came in. Also, make sure that there is sufficient space between each plant to avoid overcrowding as they grow. These distance requirements vary from herb plant to herb plant because some herbs can grow very large and over-shadow and stifle smaller less vigorous herbs.
The video below contains lots of useful information about choosing the herbs for a container herb garden. Watch it now, especially if you are keen to create a culinary herb garden to provide fresh herbs for your recipes and salads during the summer months.
Further Information:
More information on creating your container herb garden can be found in my digital book, “The Secrets of Successful Herb Gardening”. It includes a comprehensive catalog of over 60 different herbs with details about planting distances, soil conditions and much, much more.
Create a “Mobile” Container Herb Garden
One big advantage of planting an herb garden in pots or herb planters is that you can move them around to catch or avoid the sunlight in your garden. Unfortunately, once you have planted your container herb garden with herbs you could find it quite difficult to move because of the weight of the soil (compost). You can solve this problem by buying or constructing a container herb garden trolley (often called “dolley’s”). Three examples of such trolleys are shown below. They can all be purchased from Amazon.
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Looking After Your Container Herb Garden
In general herbs like lots of sunlight and water. You should water your herbs once a day, but avoid over-watering. However, the disadvantage of watering container-grown plants a lot is that the water leeches the nutrients out of the soil mix.
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| Miracle-Gro Liquid Fertilizer |
Miracle-Gro Solid Fertilizer |
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| Miracle-Gro Organic Potting Compost |
Miracle-Gro Potting Compost Mix |
A lot of composts you can buy have a mixture of compost and added nutrients, but even so the soil in your pot or container needs to be provided with additional fertilizer regularly to make up for the nutrients that are washed away.
To make up this nutrient loss either use liquid fertilizer (ideally once a week) or lightly fork a solid fertilizer (plant food) into the soil around your herbs. If you use solid fertilizer you don’t need to use it as frequently.
I have been using the Miracle-Gro products for several years and have found them to be excellent. They can all be purchased from Amazon at either very competitive or “sale” prices.
If you shop regularly with Amazon you may also be able to get Amazon products delivered free of charge.
At the end of the growing seasons many of the herbs in your container herb garden will have grown very large. If you intend to continue growing your herbs in pots or containers the best thing to do is to throw these plants away after you have harvested them and start afresh the following year. However, when you get more experienced you will be able to take stem and root cuttings from some of your herbs and use these to create a new herb garden the following year. Another alternative is to transplant these overgrown herbs in your garden (if you have one).
More Information
The information in this article should be sufficient to enable you to make a good start with your container herb garden. My book “The Secrets of Successful Herb Gardening” will provide you with lots of extra, useful information to help you with your herb growing.
Wishing you every success with your container herb garden.
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