Second trawl of the seed catalogues - herbs

We have a couple of herb beds at the plot but also grow herbs in tubs in the garden. This way we can pick some fresh when cooking as well as having a supply to gather from the plot.

I’m really not sure how our herbs will have fared over the past few weeks. Now most of the snow has thawed some have been revealed to be in a very sorry state.

Some such as the rosemary and bay still look very much alive but may be just teasing us into false hope.

Others such as the parsley although still sporting some green are well and truly flattened.

I haven’t given up on any of the perennial herbs just yet as most winters they look as though they are dead only to shoot into life come spring.

Each year though we grow some herbs that we treat as annuals and it was these that I was concentrating on during my second trawl of the seed catalogues.

We haven’t had luck growing basil in the ground and so I sow this successionally in terracotta pots which are kept in our garden greenhouse. Last year as well as the green leaved variety – I also grew some dark purplish leaved varieties. This year I have ordered Purple Basil and Sweet Basil. I grew a purple leaved variety with a greenish tinge to the edge of the leaves last year but it was a free packet of seed from somewhere and I can't find this variety in any catalogues.

I love the taste of coriander (cilantro) but it so quickly bolts and so my attention was drawn to the description of a variety called Leisure which is supposed to have been bred to produce a lot of leaf and bolt much slower so I’ll give that a try.

I’ve also ordered some Greek oregano and I was also going to try Sweet Cicely which is a perennial and supposed to be a natural sweetener. The seed sounds as if they are extremely challenging to germinate so, as I only really want one plant, I’ll try to find it as a small plant.

We sow parsley seeds each year, treating it as a biennial – we grow both flat leaved and curled parsley. Parsley is always useful – the flat leaved is supposed to have a stronger taste and better to use in cooking whereas the curled parsley lends itself to use as a garnish. We have some of each parsley seed left so will try sowing that and if it isn't viable will buy some new.

Other perennial herbs will be replaced if necessary once I am sure they are dead and gone and no doubt I’ll find some other herbs to tempt me during our rounds of the garden centres and nurseries later but for now those will start my collection.