I'm Never Buying Herbs Again

This has got to stop. That was the hook I used on one of my most viral videos ever. I was asking everyone watching to stop buying herbs from the grocery store. Some people love this idea. Some people absolutely hated this idea. But today, I am going to share this idea with you and show you how to make it happen. This is the gardenary challenge. No more trucked herbs. Let me explain what I mean. So currently, in the United States, almost 95, maybe even 98% of our culinary herbs come to us from just a few places, most of them being in California. Now, they are trucked across the United States in little jars where they've been preserved or dried or in little plastic containers that hang at the back of our grocery store shelves. Have you seen them? Have you bought them? They sell for about 3 or $4 for, like 0.2 ounces of herbs. So we're talking very, very little produce, Very, very little product, lots of money, and lots of other parts of production to make those happen, right? So these herbs are grown on farms, and they're cut and then put into the plastic. They are then shipped across the country, brought into the grocery store. So before those little 0.2 ounces of herbs even make their way into our grocery store bag, they've already been through so much work. They got cut, they got, you know, organized. They got put into plastic, they got shipped. So so many resources have been spent just to get these little bitty little, like, three sprigs of rosemary to our grocery store bag. But then, then it's not over, right? So we pay for it. Ding, ding, ding. Swipe the credit card, bring it home. Chances are, if you're anything like me, you're not using that herb right away. It's going to sit in your fridge for a few days, maybe longer. Then finally, when it's like five days after you're at the store, oh, you had that recipe that called for thyme. And now it's time to open up that little plastic container. You do so only to find one of a few things has happened. Number one, that little. Those sprigs of thyme have grown mold on them. So they were a little too cold, a little too chilly, maybe even a little too moist in your refrigerator. And so all those stems have turned moldy, which also means they are now going to the trash. Or let's say, better case scenario, they're still there like they are. They're not moldy. They're. They're still in their original form, but you take them out, you smell them, you, like, pinch off a couple of leaves and it doesn't taste like anything. Like it says time on the package. But when you actually open it up, there is. It's not like the timey time that you're. You're dreaming of. It's not what that cook on Instagram promised you it was going to smell and taste like. So the taste, the flavor, the fragrance, it's all gone because it's just been sitting in a fridge for a week or two. And it was on a truck before that and in the grocery store. So that's a better case scenario. It's at least still usable but not really useful. And then another case scenario is that it's just kind of dried out. So it's still there. You still got the stems, but all those leaves are shriveled and almost to the point of like preservation. You know, they're no longer those fresh greens that you were hoping and dreaming about when you bought them from the store. So raise your hand if you can relate to any one of these three scenarios. You spent the hard earned money, took the trip to the grocery store to get all your special ingredients for your special recipe, only to find when it was time to make the recipe, that those herbs that you spent so much time securing are now either tasteless or moldy or completely dried out and not really that helpful for your recipe. If this is not you, then I am so shocked because this is 100% me, and I'm pretty sure always been the case anytime I've tried to buy herbs from the grocery. But do not fear, do not dismay. We have a solution and that is growing your own. Why would this be possible? Because growing your own herbs is literally the easiest, the simplest, the most straightforward thing that you can do. People who live in a high rise apartment, people who have very little sunlight, people who have very little space, people who've never gardened before, all these people can grow their own herbs. I did it when I had no gardening experience, when I was pretty much terrible and killing every other thing, the herbs survived. As I've worked with clients over the last eight years, I found every single time we set up a garden for them, there's one thing I can bank on, one thing I can guarantee them, but will be successful in their garden. You guessed it, it's herbs. So after seeing so many people have success in the garden with herbs, after knowing my own success and journey of learning how to garden, I can promise you that you can do this. You can make the swap. You can go from the plastic trucked tasteless moldy herbs you've been having from the grocery. And for just a few dollars more, you can set up an herb garden that you can enjoy week after week after week. And instead of those greens sitting at the back of your fridge wilting or molding away, they are just simply growing in your little herb garden waiting for you. Waiting patiently for you to come and take a couple snips so that they can keep on growing. So does that sound like a good idea to you? I mean, I don't know about you, but I feel like this is like it's not asking that much. You know what I mean? So I'm going to read to you from my book, Leaves, Roots and Fruit. This is when I got to promote this idea. It's in my second chapter called Herbs. Step two is growing herbs. And you'll notice if you read this book, which I hope you will, that I give so much attention to the herbs. I mean, it's from page 61 to page 85, and I'm just still obsessed with herbs. We're talking 20. More than 22 pages are dedicated to herbs in this book. So I have at the end of the chapter all about herbs. I have my no more trucked herbs challenge. So I'm going to read it to you and then I'm going to give you the instructions so that you can make the swap too. One part of Gardenary's mission is to have no more trucked herbs, meaning every single family, yours included, will be growing and sharing their own herbs within their communities so that grocery store herbs, both fresh and dried, are no herbs longer necessary. Could you imagine if all those little plastic boxes didn't have to be there? Grocery store herbs often travel more than 15, that's 1,500 miles before reaching our plates. They're covered in single use packaging and they lose most of their nutritional value and great flavor in the transportation and the packaging process. See, that's basically just restating what I just told you. Because most herbs are leaves, they have a short shelf life. This means most herbs are processed, trucked, packaged and sold only to be tossed in the trash because they spoil before we can use them. That is sad, isn't it? By planting your own herbs, harvesting often and sharing the harvest, you can change the world for the better and make your food more delicious in the process. Will you join me? So here's how to do it. I'm going to give you this step by step, but this is basically the recipe. You're going to grow one perennial herb plant per person in your family, one perennial herb plant per person in your family. So this isn't like a recipe of like, if you want to have a little bit of herbs, this is so that you can have a lot of herbs so you can use this every single herb, you can use it weekly and every person in your family gets to have this herb weekly. So one plant per person, that's rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage and mint. Then you're going to grow five annual plants per person. So these are going to be things like cilantro, dill, parsley, basil. Like I said, this is not for like little bits of herbs. Okay. This is so that you have a lot of these herbs in big supply. Next is grow two chive plants or scallion plants per person and then finally grow one Asteraceae, one aster plant family, perennial plant per person. This would be chamomile, echinacea, calendula. Not all those are perennials, but basically if you want to make your own chamomile tea, make your own calendula products, make your own echinacea tea. Then you're going to grow one of those plants per person in your family. Harvest from the plants weekly during their optimal growing season, use half the harvest fresh and then dry or freeze the rest of the harvest to use during the off season. So that's the recipe. Those are the plants you want to have in order to be able to have a year round supply of herbs so you do not have to buy them from the store. Now I want to break down for you the key steps to setting up this herb garden. Are you ready? Okay. So the first thing you got to do is get yourself a container. So yes, you could plant these in the ground, but I want to give you the simplest way to literally have a ton of herbs growing right outside your back door or just in a concentrated place. What I've learned over the years is that convenience is key to habit change. Convenience is key. What's his name? James Clear. He talks about this in Atomic Habits. Like, you gotta make stuff easy for you if you want to change things in your life. They gotta be easy. Make it as easy as possible. Because the harder it is to access the changing thing, the harder it is to, to get to the thing that that is going to help you change. The less likely you're going to be to do it right. And so the further away the gym is from your house, the less likely you're going to get over there and do that workout. So what I want to recommend is that you put all your herbs, all these herbs we just talked about, into one container. And so the more people you have in your family, the more people you have in your household, the bigger the container needs to be. I did this for writing my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. I did this exact project, and then I've done it again in smaller sizes here in Nashville to show the process. Right? So you can use any kind of container you want. I recommend getting something that is the right size first. So if you're going to be growing a lot of these, if you've got a family of three, four, five, six, then you want to have a container that's probably at least, I would say, 10 to 15 square feet in size. And then you can pare it down from there, depending on how many people you're going to be feeding with all these herbs, the container needs to be at least one foot deep. So the depth matters. It's going to give your plants plenty of space to spread out, plenty of space to reach down and get the nutrients and the water that they need, and also just making sure that they need less from you. So. So with any kind of container garden, they are going to need your attention. And so I try to get the container as big as possible to take the pressure off myself because, you know, I forget, I get busy. And I'm guessing if you're anything like me, you will too. So at least one foot deep and then at least two feet wide. So I did another viral video. I guess people just like talking about herbs, but I did this video back in January of creating this really small little tub of herbs. And people freaked out because I put all the herbs together, which I'm gonna teach you how to do too, so you can freak people out as well. But this container, I believe, was like a two by two by one. So it was two feet wide, it was a circle. So it was always 2ft wide, 2ft wide, and then about 1 foot deep. And it is the perfect, perfect size for growing tons of herbs. Not as many as I direct you to in here if you've got a bigger family, but please, plenty big for one or two people. So one foot deep and then at least two feet wide. The rolling planter that I did, it's pictured here in my book Leaves, Roots and Fruit. And in Kitchen Garden Revival, actually, that one is 2ft wide and 4ft long. So it's about 8 square feet in total. And, man, I packed in the herbs in there. All right, so that's the first step. You're going to get yourself a container, I would use a container made of wood. It could be like untreated cedar, some kind of long lasting wood. You could use terracotta, although I wouldn't recommend it in general. Terracotta dries out pretty fast. It's going to tax your plants quite a lot. But that is an option if you're like, I'm going to make this happen with whatever I have. Terracotta could work any kind of other stone. If you can get a stone planter that is going to to absorb the water less than terracotta, that would work as well. Generally I look for a stone that hasn't been treated or glazed and then finally steel. And that's really been my go to source for setting up these herb gardens. So I love to use the, what are they called, the feeding trough kind of things. Feeding something. The things that farmers use to feed, give water and stuff to their horses and food to their pigs, you know, that kind of stuff. So it's like, it's a steel container that you can add drainage holes to. And that's the next part of this container. So it needs to be big enough. It should be a nice, natural, durable, sustainable material. And then you gotta have drainage. So you need to make sure that this thing is not going to hold water. Herb plants do not like to have wet roots. And so this thing needs to drain and drain quickly. So that's the first thing you need is a container. If you've got that, you're like so well on your way to growing your own non grocery, non trucked, non plastic wrapped herbs. The next step is a soil blend. So I recommend my 103 soil blend that's going to be basically equal parts topsoil, compost and coarse sand. Why the sand? Because sand helps with porosity and it helps with drainage. So sand is going to add all these little air pockets in the soil so that there's plenty of room for the roots of your herbs to reach down to get the nutrients they need out of the soil. But to not be wet topsoil gives structure to your soil and then compost gives it nutrients. Put those three things in and then throw in my 3% of some earthworm castings or some other kind of animal manure. And that's going to give those extra nutrients to push your plants to grow more and more and faster and faster every single time you harvest from them. So that's the soil blend. That is the second part of setting up your herb garden. You got the container, it's natural it's durable, it's big enough, it's got draining holes. Now you've got your soil blend. All right, next up, the thing that you need are plants and seeds. So most of the herbs we want to have in this herb container are going to be perennials. That's because 90, 95% of the herbs that we eat in the kitchen all come from this one plant family. It's the fancy Latin term, is lamiaceae. We also call it the mint plant family. And it's just awesome. It's delicious. The plants are so easy to grow, and they grow forever, and then every time you cut on them, they grow some more. It's like magic. So these, if you have not started your own from seed, which is totally fine, if this is your first time, don't try to start it from seed. Just go buy some from a local nursery, emphasis on local. So don't go to like a big box store. They're probably going to have miracle Gro sprayed herbs. And I love it if you didn't have that on your herbs. So head to a local place. They most likely grew those themselves. Ask about their growing methods to make sure it's all good and checks out with you. And you want to buy the perennial herbs. So in my book, I say that you want to have one. Did I say 1? 1 per person in your family. So this is rosemary, oregano, sage, thyme. You can add some fancy ones like marjoram, winter savory, summer savory, and mint. So you want to have at least one plant per person in your family. So you're going to start with those plants. The next plants that you're going to have is if you want to have any floral herbs. So those floral herbs can be used for salves. That's the word, salves, salve, like making, like the oils and things like that. It can be used for spices, it can be used for teas. So some of my favorites are echinacea and chamomile and calendula. You want to have at least one of those plants per person. And then you want to have some chives. That's going to be also a perennial plant, but in the onion plant family. Then we want to have our annual plants to add in when the season is right. So these plants, all of these, even the echinacea, maybe not the chamomile and calendula, but all of these are going to grow throughout the whole year. Okay, Should I say that again? They're going to grow throughout the whole year. So they'll start in the garden a little bit before your last frost. So they'll go out into the garden. They don't mind frost that much. They don't want it to be, like, frigid. But they're perennials, so they can handle the cold people. All right, so they go into your garden, like, mid spring, a month or so before your last frost, thrive and thrive through the summer. They're just going to be like, pumping out leaf after leaf after stem after stem, after harvest, after harvest. Even when it starts to go cool in the fall, they still keep growing. And then even after you have your first frost, they will still grow for you. So in my garden right now, we've had some serious frost here in Nashville, some early frost. Just this morning, I got chives, I got rosemary, I got thyme, I got sage, I got oregano. They're all still hanging on in my garden, and they will be in yours, too. Okay, so those are going to be first, and then the annuals are different. They're not going to be there for as much of the year. They're going to be there just during particular seasons. So we've got our dill, cilantro, and parsley. Those plants love it when it's cool. Okay, so before you have your last frost, those three plants are going to love growing in your garden. You can start them from seed, but if you're not there yet, if you're just a beginner gardener or you just don't want to do that whole indoor seed starting thing, no worries. Just go buy a few of those plants from your local garden center. And then as soon as the last frost has passed, then we get to hit one of the favorites, and that is basil. And so basil is also an annual plant. It's going to grow from seed to harvest in one season. It will not last before a frost or after a frost. Oh, wait, how do I say that? It. It's not going to thrive if you've still got frost. So if it's before your last frost or after your first frost, basil is a no go. Okay. But in the middle, when there's no frost, basil is bountiful. Basil is like busting at the seams. And so basil is what you're going to put into the garden as soon as you're outside of those frost dates. Okay. All right, so those are the plants. So we got our container, we've got our soil blend, and now we have our plants. We've got perennial plants and annual plants. Now let's talk about how to plant up this container. Now, the naysayers, the people who don't like my videos, they say that you should not plant all your herbs together. That herbs have so many different watering needs, and it's just impossible to put them all into one container. And I should stop giving this misinformation on the Internet. And so I respect you. I hear you, But I disagree. And I can tell you why. Because I've been doing this for years, for more than a few years, and it always works. And here's why. I love planting this way. Number one, if you separate all your herbs into lots of different containers, it is going to take a lot more work to keep them alive, because every new container you have, that's a new responsibility for you. It's like adding more children to your family. And trust me, I've done that. Okay? So every new child that you add to your family, it doesn't just. It's not like you took care of one, so you took care of the other. No, I mean, you got to go and you got to nurture and feed and. And talk to the other one. And so each new pot, each new container you set up with a different herb, that's more responsibility on you. And I don't know about you, but I just. I'm not sure I need to be responsible for anything else in my life. All right, so that's first. It's going to really increase the amount of care you have to give to these plants. And if you fall off the track, like, if you quit doing your job, then your plants are all going to die. They all will die. So that's first. It's too much responsibility. It's too hard to care for all these plants in their own little container. The next is, it's harder on the plants. Show me someplace in nature where a plant is growing all by itself. All by itself. No other plants around it in nature. Okay, this can't be, like, at a museum or something, but this has to be in nature. Show me where a plant grows all by itself. I'm waiting. Still waiting. Yeah, there's nowhere. So plants don't grow alone. Plants love growing next to one another. They don't need their personal space. They love being with friends. And so each time you put an herb all by itself in a container, it's, like, lonely. It's sad. It's like, where my buddies at? Like, I don't like this. And you can actually help your plants more by planting them all together in one container. That's going to feel More like natural to them. It's going to feel more like nature to them. And. And they're going to thrive in that setup way more than they will all by themselves. When they're all by themselves, they're more likely to dry out. They're more likely to overuse or underuse the nutrients that are in the soil, and they're just more likely to struggle than they will be when they're all together. So have I convinced you yet? I hope so. If not, let me tell you how it works. How can you have all these plants together in one container that have different watering and space needs? Well, easy. You just work with their needs and plant accordingly. So let me give you the layout of this herb garden. Are you ready to say goodbye to grocery store herbs? You will be after this. All right, so here's the plan. We're going to do the outside first. So on the outside of the container, whether it's a two by two. It's not a two by two. Right. It's a circle, a circle of two feet. Whether it's a circle, whether it's a square, whether it's a rectangle, we're going to work with the border of the garden first. So the border of the herb garden is going to be planted with those perennial herbs that, that we named out. So rosemary, oregano, you can, you can put some mint in there. I know people don't like saying putting mint with other plants. That's why people got all mad at me. But you can do it if you want to. You can put that one by itself if you're stressing. Okay, so don't stress. But if you feel so inclined to push your limits, go for it. But at least do rosemary, oregano, sage and thyme, and then any of those other perennial mint plant family herbs. So marjoram, winter savory, summer savory. They're all going to be on the perimeter of this herb garden. Why? Because they don't have high watering needs. They don't like a lot of water. And so you'll notice with any container, where's the first place that it dries out on the perimeter? On the outside, because water tends toward the center and the bottom. So this is going to absolutely work with your plants preferences. All right, so plant preferences. Put the perennial mint plant family plants all around the outside of the container. Plant those first. It's going to be like framing up a puzzle. It's going to be like putting, you know, like a margin, putting a little frame around your picture so you're going to do this with the perennial herbs. Next, we're going to plant the herbs that have the biggest watering needs right in the middle. So in general, these are going to be the herbs that are the annuals. You've got dill, cilantro, and parsley in the cool season, and then you've got basil in the warm and the hot season. So in the center of this garden, this is where you're going to put those plants so you can plant them pretty close together. The corner thing about cilantro, dill and parsley, especially dill and cilantro, is they're going to go up. They're pretty vertical growers. I've had cilantro that's like three, four feet in my garden. It's crazy. So these are going to grow primarily up and down, and then the parsley will spread out, you know, more wide than the other. But you can pack these in because for the most part, the parsley is going to just spread out a little bit, width wise. But the dill and the cilantro are mostly vertical growers. So perfect to pack a lot of those plants right there in the center of the planter then. Okay, so you've totally dealt with the water situation, right? You've got the, the plants that don't need a lot of water there on the outside. You've got the plants that like a lot of water there on the inside. And then right in the center, that's where you're going to fill in the gaps. So that's where I like to put my flowering herbs. So if you're wanting to grow some, some annual things like chamomile or calendula, those can go right there in the center. Or they can also hang over the edge like your perennial herbs as well. You can grow some small marigolds around there. And if you've got enough room, this needs to be a pretty large herb planter to make this possible. But you could grow some of your perennial flowers as well, like echinacea or rudbeckia. So the middle, the, the, the row in between the center of the bed and the exterior border, that's where you can fill in with a lot of your flowers. And finally, the only other thing to add into this herb garden are chives and chives. My goodness, they are. You ever have that friend where, like, you forgot to call her for like, I don't know, a year and then you text her and you're like, hey? And she's like, hey, what's up? And you're just like, I love you so much for not holding it over my head that I haven't called you in a year. That's what chives are. Chives are the most understanding plant in the garden. They're like, you didn't water me. Cool. You watered me too much. No worries. It's hot. Got this. It's cold. I still got this. You neglected me and ignored me and haven't talked to me for a year. No worries. I'm still growing. Chives are the best. And so you can put them in any part of this herb garden that you want. I typically put them around the edges, in between the perennial herbs because they're perennials as well, and they tend to work pretty well together. So that's it. That's how you pack in every single square inch of your herb garden so that you can grow enough that you can say goodbye to those trucked grocery herbs right alongside me. All right, so we've done. This is it. So we've only got one last thing, really to talk about here, and that is care. But to get this started, you really only need a container. You need a great soil blend. And then you need some awesome plants that are planted the gardenary way. Once you've done this, you're now ready to start enjoying herbs every single week of the year. I'm not even exaggerating. So let's talk about tending this garden. And then. And then you have no excuses. Like, you are going to be known as the herb supplier. Like, people are going to be, like, coming to your back door in the dark of night, being like, hey, you got me. Got any oregano? You know? And you're gonna say, yes, of course I do. Cause I took this challenge and I made it happen. So talk about care first. So first of all, water. Like, don't overdo it, okay? These herbs, they don't need a lot of water. And so you just need to calm down with the watering. If you've killed herbs in the past, I can kind of guess probably 90% of your problem was that you over watered. So herbs are not like a lot of the other plants in the garden. And they don't want a ton of water. When you're watering this container, you're just going to water the center of the container, not the exterior, because those plants, remember, they don't need a lot of water. So you're going to water the interior where those annual plants are and where the flowers are, and then let the exterior be. They'll absorb the water they need from the soil and then move on. Do not, and I repeat, do not water unless you have tested the soil's moisture level. So you can do that simply by taking your finger, sticking it in about one or two. What are those things called on your fingers? Little knuckles. Are they all knuckles? Joints, yeah. One or two joints. I think we have two joints. One, two, three. We have three joints in our finger. Go one or two down. And if you feel moisture, if the soil feels moist at that point, do not water. Okay? Come back the next day, check it again until that feels dry. Don't do it. Just hold yourself back. Don't do. Don't go water something else. Okay? Go water some carrots or something. So that's the water. Let's talk about the light. These herbs need light, but because they're in a container, they're not going to love getting full on lots and lots of sunshine. So what I want you to do instead is to put these in kind of a partial light area or a place where they're going to get about six hours of sunlight a day max. So I had this herb container this year. I made my viral one. It was so beautiful, so bountiful on my porch. And then I moved it out to my kitchen garden area, which has full sun in the middle of the summer, and that did not go well. Okay, so that was the beginning of the end. It's still throwing, still throwing, still growing, but not nearly as well as it was when it was in more of a partial light situation. So these herbs do need sun, but don't overdo it. Don't like. But don't blast these things with the sunshine. Okay? We need about four to six hours of sunlight, and that is it. Don't give them the full sun. Now, the final part about tending, and this is such good news to me, and I hope it is to you, is, well, number one, you're done, like light and water, and that's all they need. Then what they need is to be cut. Let me say that again for the people in the back. Then the only other thing they need is to be cut. And guess what's happening when we're cutting them? We're like making our dinner. We're making our lunch. We're making our breakfast. So, like, the main job that you have to do for these plants is cut on them and eat from them. I mean, sign me up, right? And so you want to start cutting from them pretty quickly after planting. When we install gardens like these for clients, I bring them out on a tour of the garden like the day of. And I say, hey, here's how you cut this. You should cut them now. And the reason being is every time you prune them, every time you cut on them, you're stimulating the growth hormone on those leaves to keep growing. And you're also helping direct the growth of the plant. So when you come into a newly planted, especially those perennial plants around the outside, when you do some pruning and cutting on those leaves, that wakes the plant up to like, oh, I gotta turn it on and grow some more right now. So you can go in and start pruning from the perennial plants right away. The way you do it is you cut from the end outside of the plant and the lower leaves of the plant. And you always cut right above a leaf node. When you do that, you're setting off the meristem so that they will, they're going to branch out and create two new stems where that cut happens. And so you'll come back two, three, four, five weeks later. And in place of where you cut, there's now going to be two new stems with stems that you can cut again. I mean, what in the world, right? You can cut on these things and then they grow back more like it's magic. And why are we shipping little plastic boxes across the country? I just. This has to stop. There's a reason why I have so much passion about this. Okay, so you're gonna cut on them, your annual plants that are in the center. Same kind of idea. Cut the outside and lower leaves first, cut above a leaf node, and then they're gonna have a shorter lifespan. You've got about 60 days to cut and enjoy those you before it's time to either replant or move on to the next season. So you're going to have like cilantro, dill, parsley in the spring, move on to basil in the summer, move back to cilantro, dill and parsley in the fall. And that's the plan. So cut, eat, watch those leaves come back again. And that's the system. Now how does this turn into a year round supply of herbs? Just what I said in the book. Each time you're cutting, you're providing for two different scenarios. All right, so the first time you cut from a plant or every single time you cut, I want you to be thinking of two ways of using. First is fresh. So you want to always harvest enough that you can take these right away and go make the most delicious chimichurri and the best tasting rosemary focaccia Is that how you say that? Focaccia? I think you want to make some herb crusted chicken. Whatever it is, you're going to make it right away, right Then with the, those herbs. Like you cut it, you bring it to the kitchen, boom, you have dinner that's fresh usage, and you want to use probably at least half of your harvest that way. But each time you harvest, I want you to harvest a little bit more, harvest over what you need at the moment. And you're going to store those, you're going to first preserve those and then store those for the months when your herb garden isn't thriving and growing. So for instance, if I wanted to make, I saw this recipe, this girl I love online, Caroline, I forget her last name. Anyway, she had this sandwich where she cut rosemary and then she put it in butter and then she took some sourdough bread and she stuck it in the butter and the rosemary and made herself a sandwich. Oh my gosh, it was so delicious and amazing. So when I made that rosemary infused sandwich, I cut like three sprigs of rosemary, right? So the first one and a half I used, I didn't need a ton of rosemary to get the flavor because it was fresh and it was from my plants right outside my back door. So I used about one and a half sprigs of rosemary to make the recipe. Then I'm going to take those other two or the one and a half that's left, tie it up in a little bundle with some twine, and then hang it in a cool and dry place to dry out. It's only going to take one to two weeks for those leaves to completely dry. Then I'm just literally going to slide them right off of the stem, stick them in a jar. And now I have rosemary to make that exact same recipe if I want, or some other kind of recipe, six months, eight months, even 10 months later. So in one little cut with just cutting three stems, I've made myself some fresh rosemary that I can make a delicious sourdough buttery yum meal right now. And, and then I've also saved some that I can make that same dish way later when it's cold outside, when there's snow on the ground, when nothing else is growing. And if you do that, if you cut enough each and every time to use fresh and then to preserve for the cold season, then you, my friend, will also have a year round supply of herbs growing in just one container right outside your back door. It really is that simple. And I can honestly say that I've failed, that I've, like, missed the target so many times with so many other plants in the garden. There's so many times where I'm like, oh, shoot, I gotta buy tomatoes, even though I should have them in my garden. Or, oh, shoot, I have to buy carrots, even though I should have had them growing in my garden. I, for years have never had to say that about herbs. Literally. I failed at pretty much all the other things because I teach people what to do, but I don't do it myself. But the herb thing, it's so easy. I could do it with my eyes closed. And I know you can, too. So this is the recipe, this is the plan. This has to start. We have to start growing our own herbs. You need a container that's natural, durable, sustainable, and drains. You need a soil blend of topsoil, compost, coarse sand, and some earthworm castings. You need a wide variety of plants, from perennial plants in the mint plant family to. To annual plants like cilantro, parsley, dill, and basil. And then you need some flowering plants like chamomile, calendula, and echinacea. Then you got to plant them all together in one container so that they support each other, they can grow together. And it's easy on you. That's the key. It's got to be super easy for you to do. Then you're going to water just a little bit and you're going to cut just a lot. You're going to cut and cut and cut again so that you have fresh and dried herbs all year long. That is how we say goodbye to trucked herbs. And that is how we all say hello to the most delicious, nutritious, right outside our backdoor herbs. I cannot wait to see you make this switch yourself. I, for one, really think we could change the world together with this simple act of growing our own herbs in our own space and hopefully growing enough that we don't just provide for ourselves and our families, but also for our friends and our communities that surround us. Are you going to take the challenge? I want you to tell me all about it. Tell me what kind of herbs you're going to make sure you provide for yourself. And you've got to follow along with the challenge alongside all of us online@gardenary.com so you can find all the notes on how to make this happen, along with a free full photo tutorial@gardenary.com podcast. We'll have a link to this episode and of course, you can get the step by step to growing your own herbs. In my book Leaves, Roots and Fruit, I go into serious detail, like 25 pages worth of detail on how to grow your own herbs. In chapter two. It's step two, growing your own herbs in my book Leaves, Roots and Fruit. And finally, we have some awesome resources to keep you growing at Gardenary. We have the customizable 2024 garden calendar. You can get that@gardenary.com podcast. There you're going to get to give me two dates, just two dates. And from there I am going to tell you every other date that you need to know for your garden in the new year. So this is a free resource that I want to give you to make sure you don't miss a thing this year in the garden. So to get that resource you can head to gardenary.com podcast and you can download it, put in your dates and and start planting right away. I want to thank you so much for considering the no More Grocery Herbs Challenge with me. I really, deep down think this would make a huge difference in the world if all of us just started growing a few of our herbs right outside our back door. And I know that once you try this, if you go for it, you are going to love the results. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self Podcast and I will see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere. You love getting your podcast delivered on Apple podcasts, on Spotify, iHeartRadio, you name it, we are there for you. And if you want to read the notes and get our free resources to help you grow more, you can go to gardenary.com podcast.