Growing and caring for herbs is new for me, so I can't just create a beginner's guide that tells you everything you need to know about growing herbs – all at once.
Instead, I'm going to create a series of posts, as I learn about caring for these culinary delights.
Yesterday, I decided to cook a pot roast since they were on sale at Albertson's for 2.49 a pound. We like Grill Mates Montreal Steak Seasoning and rosemary on our steaks, so I decided to do the same thing to the beef chuck roast.
Since I didn't quite know how to snip the rosemary off the herb growing outside, I had to do a little research on how to cut herbs for cooking; and I am so glad that I did.
I honestly would have done it wrong!
Trimming and pruning your herbs encourages the plants to grow bushier and produce more foilage for your recipes, so you'll want to do this even if you don't plan on using the herb right away.
But you don't want to touch your plants until they are at least 6 inches high or, at bare minimum, when they have 2 to 3 clusters of leaves going up the stems.
This means, I only had enough rosemary leaves for just the pot roast, due to rosemary being a woody herb, but clipping the rosemary yesterday will encourage the plant to grow more leaves.
No matter what type of herb you're growing, you'll want to make sure that you know how to cut those herbs properly, so you don't accidentally harm your plant.
And with that in mind, I decided to do research on all of the herbs and plants I'm growing in pots right now. That way, I'd already have the cutting information handy when I wanted to clip something else.
Glad I did, because the basil is flowering, which means it's overdo for a little bit of pruning.
Cutting Herbs for Cooking - General Information
Since my basil is flowering, I'm going to pinch off the flower today.
Like all herbs, you want to keep your plants from flowering because it will change the flavor of the herb and cause the plant to stop growing. Energy will go into the flowers instead of the leaves.
Trimming herbs encourages them to be more bushy and grow larger. Thus, providing a much higher yield. Rosemary, basil, and dill are some of our favorite herbs, so getting them to grow larger is important for us.
If you don't prune the herb you're growing, your plants will be tall and leggy instead of bushy and full. But you don't want to prune more than 1/3 of the plant at any one time, so the plant will recover quickly.
The nice thing is that you can use the clippings in your low-carb cooking.
You're going to need 3 times as much fresh herbs as you do for dried, so if your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of dried rosemary, you'll need a tablespoon of the fresh.
If you can't use the herb right away, you can leave the leaves on the stalks and hang the stalks upside down for 2 weeks to dry. Some people simply toss their herbs into a brown paper bag for those two weeks, while others use a dehydrator.
You can also freeze herbs in ice cubes for later use.