Learn About Varieties of Herbs - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Organic Living - Learn about Varieties of Herbs I have a lot of herbs in my garden and some of my favorites are majoram, thyme, oregano, chives, tarragon and basil. I have three different kinds of basil in my garden. I have the purple ruffles basil, which actually, basil is a companion plant to tomatoe, so I like to put a basil plant next to every tomatoe plant. Somehow they help each other under the soil and they both grow better next to each other. An this is a Genovese basil. I also have tarragon here. This is a good example of how fresh herbs can look when you pick them right out of your own garden. The reason herbs are easy to grow is many of the are perennials, that means you only have to plant them once, you trim them back at the end of the season and they come up religiously next year again and again and again. So I have only ever bought only one tarragon plant. I put it in the first year that I have lived here and this is now going on four years. The plant is just as healthy as when I first planted it. Chives is another perennial. That if you trim it back all the way to its base it will just come right back. So for example, this, I would trim all the way down to the bottom and then I would just wait for some new ones to come back. I would take maybe half of them away and allow the half that I have chopped away to come back before I chop the other half. The flowers of the chives are edible. You can actually put these in salad and they smell and taste just like chives, but they are pretty. So imagine putting that in your salad. Kind of like confetti. It's pretty and it's edible. This is boretch. This is a companion plant to tomatoes and strawberries and the blossoms taste like cucumbers. But they also attract bees like crazy and this is great for pollination. This is a wonderful plant to plant for attacting bees. So if you are not getting good pollination of your zuccini, plant some boretch next to it. This is thyme. Isn't it beautiful? It is starting to send out flowers now, which means it will need to be trimmed. But, this plant grows without having to replant it. It keeps just coming back every year. And I do prune it down to just knobs if it looks pretty dried out and you just see it come back when its time to regenerate. Thyme is really good in a recipe that I do to roast tomatoes. So I just sprinkle some of the leaves on some cut tomatoes along with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil and garlic. The leaves impart this incredible flavor and aroma to the roasted tomatoes.
