The Iowa Gardener: Start gardening with an indoor herb garden

Grow your own herb garden this winter and use it as your table centerpiece. (Veronica Lorson Fowler)

Itching to garden? Now is a wonderful, rewarding time to grow some edible herbs indoors, and what could be a more perfect location for them than the middle of your dining room table?

They're handy for cooking, but they're also handy for kids, guests, and anyone else to pinch or snip directly from the plant onto their food at the table, the ultimate fresh seasoning.

Here's how to create an herb dish centerpiece:

Step 1: Choose a Container

Nearly any waterproof container or container with drainage holes and a waterproof tray will do, but the larger and wider it is, the more types of herbs you can accommodate.

If you have a wood table, be careful about the type of container. Unglazed terra cotta and some other porous containers allow moisture to seep out, which can damage your tabletop. Put adequate protection under them or choose another container.

Since this is an edible planting, it's fun to re-purpose a kitchen container of some sort. I used a large white serving bowl. You also can plant in teapots, jars, cans, baking dishes, molds, storage containers, and boxes. Do one large container or several smaller ones clustered together.

Step 2: Choose the Herbs

In Iowa, your choice of herbs will be dictated by what you can find in greenhouses and garden centers. It's worth calling around to see what various retailers have first.

Below are some of the most commonly available, with some suggestions for using them:

Basil: Use chopped on nearly anything with tomatoes, especially Italian pasta dishes. It's even good on frozen or delivery pizza!
Chives: Their mild onion flavor make them great on top of potatoes but also chopped into salads.
Mint: Make tea or mix into a fruit salad, or even pluck a single leaf and enjoy the fresh minty flavor (which traditionally is believed to aide digestion) after dinner
Oregano: Good in nearly anything Italian or Mexican.
Parsley: Add a herbal hit to salads or top any bland-colored dish for a pop of color
Rosemary: Snip off branches and tuck in with a roasting chicken, or pluck off the pine needle-like leaves and chop and add to soups and stews.
Sage: Think of this as the Thanksgiving herb. Great with anything with Thanksgiving like flavors, such as chicken, turkey, gravies, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and more.
Tarragon: A classic in French cooking, it as a slight licorice flavor that makes it delicious chopped into salads and salad dressings, but also good with fish and chicken and in creamy sauces like Alfredo.
Thyme: Useful in nearly any savory dish. Just remember that it's "thyme for everything."

Step Three: Care

If you are mixing several herbs in a container, use the same design principle that you would with a large container outdoors. Include one "thriller" (a tall, more vertical plant, like basil, chives, or parsley) with a "spiller" (a trailing plant, such as mint, thyme, or oregano) and a "filler" (a plant that is mid-height and more bushy) to fill in the space between the tall plant and the low plant. Fillers include rosemary, sage, tarragon.

The herbs listed here all prefer significantly different soils, but for this project, just use regular potting soil. Plant directly in the container and water well.

If your container has drainage holes, water it until water comes out of the drainage holes. If your container does not have drainage holes, water lightly so you don't waterlog the plants. With both, keep the soil slightly on the dry side, watering just when the soil no longer feels moist to the touch when you insert your finger and inch or so into the soil

Herbs need full sun, so manage your expectations for the life span of your herb plantings indoors. Without any direct sun, a planting of herbs will do well enough for a couple of weeks. Then they will start to get yellow and/or leggy. With some direct sun, it will probably last two to four weeks. And if you are able to put them in full sun during the daylight hours, or can provide a grow light, herbs indoors will last two to three months.

No need to fertilize, since the potting soil can provide all the nutrients needed for this short period of time. If you have any survivors, plant them outside this spring.

An indoor herb garden can be enjoyed in other places in your home as well, but for about what you would pay for a live blooming plant, you can enjoy a practical and pretty centerpiece right where you'll use it most.

Veronica Lorson Fowler is co-publisher of the Iowa Gardener website at www.theiowagardener.com.