This post brought to you by Organic Choice. All opinions are 100% mine.
Last month I wrote about scaling back on our gardening efforts, and going from an entire raised bed plot to just a small herb garden on our back porch. Well, one month later we definitely have that herb garden. And do you want to know a secret? It took 10 minutes to create. Seriously!
With a little help from Miracle-Gro Organic Choice, and with some plants that were already growing, we planted this garden on Tim’s lunch break and weren’t rushed in the slightest! It was pretty awesome. Here are the steps if you want to recreate what we did.
1. Get your supplies. Select a container that will hold the herbs you want to plant, the actual plants (if you are hardcore you can buy seeds. We are NOT hardcore, so we bought the plants. You will also want Organic Choice potting soil and plant food. These are perfect for edible gardening; you can find the at major retailers!
2. Put a layer of potting soil along the bottom of your planter.
3. Add your plants!
4. Add more potting soil all around the plants until they are securely in place.
5. Follow the instructions on the bag for the amount of plant food you will need. A little goes a long way!
6. Give your new garden some water and some sun. You are finished!
About 10 days after we started our garden, I decided to make a delicious meal using mint, basil and cilantro.
I started things off with a delicious mojito. The plan was to serve it alongside our dinner, but let’s be real: I drank that bad boy while I was cooking! 🙂 Click the link for the mojito recipe I used.
Then I made a fresh fish dish that called for basil and cilantro. It was really easy, and the fresh herbs packed a BIG flavor punch. Wow…once you start cooking with fresh herbs, it’s really hard to go back. Good thing I have a ready supply on my back porch, now!
Tilapia with Fresh Herbs and Mango Salsa
This recipe can be found here. I just cooked the fish in a skillet instead of firing up the grill (in case you haven’t noticed, I prefer to save time whenever possible!).
If you’d love to give your meals a flavor boost but don’t want to plant a major garden, you can definitely do something small like we did. Miracle-Gro Learn And Grow is a great site to get tips and learn about gardening on whatever scale interests you. I noticed their site even has information on how to grow herbs indoors, which I thought was pretty cool!
What are you growing this year? Any favorite herbs that you absolutely MUST use fresh? For me, it’s basil!