Herbs That Love Shade

If you have a ton of shade in your yard, on your balcony, on your porch, and you still want to garden, then this video, it's for you. Today I'm going to show you some of my favorite herbs and how they absolutely love growing in the shade. In fact, they'll grow great in any shady spot if you have a lot of shade and a very little bit of sun. These plants, they're going to work for you. Now, I've been talking about this whole idea of growing in shade for years. I've had clients. When I first started my business in 2015, almost all of them lived in a city. And most of my first clients had very small yards with homes right to the side of each and every one of them. So I had to make it work. I had to find a way to get them a successful garden, even in the shade, or else my business would be over. So I figured it out over the years that there are things I can guarantee you will grow in the shade no matter what. And I outline most of these in my book. Leaves, Roots, and Fruit. There's a reason why the leaves come first. All right, so leaves are the easiest to grow in the garden. Leaves have the least demands when it comes to gardening. And some of that comes from, like, tending them less. Some of that comes from them taking less time in the garden. But most of that comes from the fact that they just demand less sunshine. So think about it. If you're walking through a forest, if you've gone on a nature walk and there's just this huge tree canopy above you, right? Like, everything is shaded underneath your feet, what do you see when you look down? Do you see lots of flowers? Do you see lots of color? Do you see lots of fruit and nuts? No. But you definitely see a lot of leaves, right? You're going to see all kinds of small leafy greens growing all along the pathway. And they're telling you something. They're telling you that leafy plants can grow in the shade. And now we want to turn our attention to the things. Not that we could step on, but the things we can eat. And most of the leafy greens that work well in a shady place are going to be your herbs. So let me break it down for you. All right? So first up, we have all the herbs that are in the apaca apaci family. That's Latin, and I know it sounds fancy. I'm not fancy. It's the carrot family, okay? So in these plants, they all are in the carrot family, also known as the umbellifer family. Kind of sounds like umbrella, right? They all have this flower that kind of looks like an umbrella. And three of the most common herbs that I love to enjoy in the kitchen from the garden. And I'm sure you do, too, maybe, except ding. One is cilantro, dill, and parsley. They're all in the carrot plant family. Now, I know some of you listening may hate the taste of cilantro, so just pretend like I didn't say that word. But cilantro, dill, and parsley all have similar growth habits and desires for thriving in the garden. First, they love cooler temperatures, so they're going to love it when the temps range from 35 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. They also love it when it's not too sunny and bright. And if you've ever tried to grow cilantro or dill and it went straight to flower, it started to bolt right away. The reason was likely because it was too hot and too sunny. These plants like mild temps. They just like hanging out in the cool, okay? And so if you've got a shady area, if you've got a completely covered porch, a completely covered deck, cilantro, dill, and parsley could be your new best friends. They don't take up a lot of space. Each of these plants, you could have four to six in one square foot. And if you want to think about the growth habit of a carrot, right? A carrot sends down a taproot and then goes tall with its leaves. You know, you've bought one from the store before. Parsley, dill, cilantro, they have the exact same growth habit. They're going to send down a little tap root, and then they basically just grow tall just right here in this one little section. And so you can pack in a ton of cilantro, parsley, and dill. You can plant it from seed. And these three plants absolutely do not mind the shade. In fact, right now, in my garden space, my two back beds are completely shaded almost all day long. We're still coming out of spring into summer, and we have woods right behind our house. So my two beds in the back, they've got shade on them all day long. And let me tell you, the parsley, the cilantro, the dill in those beds are popping, especially the parsley. It never died, came back from the winter. And. And I am talking, I've got handfuls of parsley in those beds. And they're growing in all shade, so no sun, no problem. You can grow cilantro, dill, and parsley. In the shade, I promise. Now, let's move on to another grouping of herb plants, and that is going to be from the mint plant family. Now, this is the largest herb plant family you're going to pull from. In fact, about 90, 95% of the herbs we grow in the kitchen garden that we use in the kitchen all come from this one plant family. So this is going to include oregano, rosemary, basil, sage, thyme, marjoram. I forgot one. But mint. Yeah, of course, mint. So all of the lemon balm, anise, hyssop, they're all in the mint plant family. And they all have very similar growth habits and growth needs, but some like shade more than others. So I'm going to break this down for you. These are the most popular herbs to grow. They're the easiest to grow, and these are the ones that don't mind shade. Now, mint, believe it or not, actually likes the light to be light, not too much heavy sunshine. I will have clients or friends who say, I just can't grow my mint. It's on my porch or my outside table, and it just won't thrive. And I don't know what's happening because there's tons of sun out there. And I'll say, that is what's happening. There's tons of sun out there. So mint actually loves a little bit of shade where it's growing. It likes the temperatures to be a little bit cooler. Mint is that kind of underground, you know, ground cover that would grow under trees. And so mint will thrive in a shady spot. So if you have a shady spot, you might want to try out some mint Also. Thyme. Thyme grows in very low light areas. Thyme is like a creeping plant. You can grow it as a ground cover. You could grow it in between your raised beds, in between rocks. It is very easy, very okay with not a lot of water and not a lot of sun. So, I mean, can we call this plant low maintenance? Absolutely. In fact, probably the only way to kill it is to give it too much sun and too much water. So thyme is another one. It loves low light, and it loves it when the temperatures have a range from probably 3545 up to 85, 95. It can handle the hotter temperatures. It just doesn't want to be too wet. Next up is sage. Sage loves shaded areas, too. It will do okay in bright sunshine, but generally it's going to go to flower a lot sooner if you've got an area that's covered with trees or covered with, you know, a Building whatever is shading that area, your sage can still thrive in that space. In fact, my sage in the back of my beds right now, nearer to the shaded part of my garden, and they're thriving. And my ones up at front, they're doing well too, but they're actually starting to go to flower. So sage and thyme and mint, those are some of the best herbs to grow from the mint plant family that will grow in shade. You could probably also add winter savory and marjoram. Both of those are also in the mint plant family and they'll both do fine in lots and lots and lots of shade. For those plants, I would recommend buying the plants. Not trying to start from seed. Sage starts pretty well from seed, but the other plants are a little bit difficult to get going from seed. You can absolutely make your own free plants by taking cuttings and rooting them in water or sand, or just simply buying one little plant at the nursery. It's totally worth it. You will absolutely get your money's worth out of that plant if you buy a mint plant for the shade. Next up, we're going to talk about the onion plant family. And I wouldn't have you growing onions or garlic things that you actually want to grow a bulb underground for in the shade. But the greens for sure, they're going to work great in the shade. So chives and green onions and scallions, those are my favorite greens to grow in the shade. So in those back beds that I've been referencing that are completely shaded over, the chives are thriving, the green onions are thriving and the scallions thrive too. So garlic and onion chives both work great along the border of a raised bed. You'll get harvest after harvest after harvest. They come back year after year. Chives are, I'm not kidding, like a no brainer plant in the garden. They're so easy to grow and they will do so well even in a shady space. Then green onions, same. And scallions, those you could plant from a little, little baby plant or from even a little baby bulb. And again, the goal for these is not to get the onion, not to get the scallion, but to get the greens that we cut from the tops of those plants. So in the onion plant family, we call it Amarylla daceae, we've got green onions and chives and scallions. Those are awesome. The final grouping of herbs that will do great in the shade are from the Asteraceae plant family. This is the lettuce plant family. It's Got sunflowers in there. It's got lettuces, obviously got asters in there. And from this one, I found that chamomile and calendula will both do great in the shade. Chamomile is what we use to make chamomile tea. Calendula, you can make salves with it, you can make oils with it. You can make a calendula tea as well. Calendula is awesome for pest control, so I love having it in the garden just to balance out and keep my plants pest free. But calendula and chamomile both do totally fine in the shade. They're going to grow slower than they would if they had more sunshine. But both of those have done great in shady parts of my garden. So there you have it. Those are the herbs that will grow even if you've got no sun. Let's review. We've got our carrot plant family, cilantro, dill and parsley. We've got our aster plant family. We've got chamomile and calendula, our two flowering herbs. We have got our onion plant family. We've got green onions and chives. And then finally, the biggest plant family, the mint plant family. We've got mint and, and sage and thyme and maybe some marjoram and winter savory. Now, the herbs that I would not put in the shade would be basil. I would always put basil in lots and lots of sunshine, rosemary and oregano, always put them in sunshine. If I'm growing bay laurel, that's a bush or a tree, going to put that in the sunshine. And then finally, if I'm growing things like sunflowers or echinacea, which is also coneflower, redbeckia, those flowering herbs I'm definitely going to put into the sunshine as well. Anything that's not chamomile or calendula. Now, things grow slower in the shade, but all these plants will hang on even if you have no sunshine in these spaces. So try it out. Tell me which herbs you're most excited to grow. Now that you know you can still grow herbs even if you've got a completely shaded space. If you want to know when to plant all these herbs, you got to get the Gardenary calendar. You can go to gardenary.com calendar and download it right away. All you got to do is give me two dates and I will give you all the rest of the dates right there. If you love the concept of growing your own herbs, you've got to check out my book, Leaves, Roots and fruit. Chapter two, Step two is all about growing herbs. You cannot miss it. You'll get all the details inside of this book. So leaves, roots and fruit. We'll put the link for the book right below this video. And and finally, if you want to know more about growing herbs, we've got loads of videos. In fact, I've got one that's awesome, all about cilantro that you just got to watch. It's about why you're killing your cilantro. And I'll put that video up right here so you can keep watching and keep growing more herbs. I'm on a mission to get rid of grocery store herbs. My mission is by 2030, you and me and everybody else we know has a little herb garden right outside their back door. So. So I hope today's episode makes that more possible. Now you know you can grow herbs even if you've got a super shady space. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe. Like this video? Tell me what video I should make next right below this one. I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere. 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