 Good morning. My name is Megan Humphrey. I am the executive director of Hands and we're a non-profit in Burlington, Vermont and our mission is to get food to Seniors who are 50 years and older and we do some other programming as well besides this great Hands in the Dirt series with Charlie Nardosi. We also provide Meal and gift bag delivery on Christmas Day. We do nutrition education workshop with chef Robin Burnett and the Heineberg senior center and we provide a support buddies program also in partnership with Heineberg and some other folks and we want to especially thank AARP Vermont and Hannaford for their financial support and We desperately need this workshop today Charlie since there's snow outside and it's very cold. So thank you very much for being here Well, thank you Megan, and it's always a pleasure to be here and I'm just get this all set up so that we can be ready to go here There we go. So hopefully everyone can see me. Okay, and What I wanted to chat about today with everyone who is watching live or watching on the recording that we're doing of this Is talk about indoor herb growing and I'm not sure Megan mentioned I don't remember but we're gonna be doing this every month right through the growing season. So we're gonna start Of course indoors in February March with things like indoor growing But then once the weather gets better, hopefully we'll be able to be outside a little bit With the video and I'll be doing some presentations and things of that nature So hopefully it'll be something where we can garden together. How about that? Starting things indoors this time of year moving them out to the garden and then as problems come up and situations and issues come up We can deal with them here once a month on this program. So Thanks for coming and thanks for your interest in gardening and hopefully it makes your day a little brighter And it's always one of the things I like about it. So indoor gardening Indoor herb gardening in particular. It's a great way to really bring a little bit of the taste the sense The flavors of your garden inside and this time of year We're talking minute to end of February is actually a nice time to kind of start some we call windows Still herbs, even though I'll talk more about the lighting and how sometimes that's not the best way to grow them But we'll call them that for now Because of the days are getting longer as you've noticed you're getting some more sunshine And actually the day lengths now are equal to probably around, you know, October So it's not that bad and with those longer day lengths You might even notice your houseplants for example if you have some houseplants They're starting to put out some new growth So starting some herbs either from seed or transplants out is a great way to kind of get them going getting a jump on the season And I'll talk more about seeds and transplants and all that kind of stuff in a little bit And the idea is to grow either culinary and or scented herbs So culinary herbs like this rosemary, which is right here. You can kind of see it This is one I brought in last fall Nice fragrance grape for roasting potatoes and using in lots of different dishes or something like this plant This is a mint plant and it's another one I brought in from last year and this one is good You know what I do in the winter that is walk by this plant. I do this. I do a little scratch and sniff Just to give myself a little sense of just being out in the garden again So you can grow herbs for various reasons whether you're going to cook with them or whether you just want to have the sensory pleasure of smelling them It's really a nice thing to do But when you're doing indoor herb gardening and especially if you're doing it all through the winter not just starting in February March But starting way back in November There's certain things you need to keep in mind and I want to cover those today so that you have an idea of what to do Now and then also how to do it next fall and winter when you're moving into those dark days again And the things you need to keep in mind are which herbs are the best ones to grow in a sunny window How much light you need which of course is a really important thing The containers that you're going to use for them the potting so you can use for them And then any accessories and special care things and that's kind of one of the things I'm going to go over Here so first of all if you're new to indoor herb garden You have never tried to grow herbs inside before in the winter There are certain herbs that are easier to grow than others and easier is really more about they grow faster and they can Tolerate lower light levels So ideally if you're trying to grow herbs indoors in the winter you want a sunny window a sunny South-facing window like a bay window or a sunroom something like that That's going to give you the widest range the most number of options of herbs that you can grow successfully The other option of course is to have grow lights and that is something that many people have because they start their own seeds So if you have grow lights, it's easy because most herbs will do well underneath the nice grow lights setup Especially if you have those full spectrum grow light tubes at the T5 compact fluorescent tubes They'll really or LED lights for that matter They really will provide so much light that you can grow everything including basil indoors in the winter But I'm really kind of thinking that most people are not going to have a grow light setup that's going to be readily accessible So let's talk about growing them in a window. So if you have a sunny window that's south-facing window You can get away with some herbs that are Or if you have an Easter west-facing window you can get away with some herbs that don't necessarily need as much light to grow And thrive one of them is chives I'm sorry. They think little backwards, but you know what this is Chives are really easy to grow. They germinate fast and they grow in kind of partial sun another thing That'll grow really well that way is parsley Flat leaves or curly leaf parsley. They don't need as much light as some of the other plants that other herbs that are out there And of course this mint that I'm growing here, too It'll get a little leggy, but that doesn't matter because you can always cut mint back. That's a really nice thing about mint So if you have a window that maybe doesn't get it Maybe isn't south-facing to maybe east or west-facing doesn't or if it's south-facing it gets like part of the day And you want to try indoor herbs those are the three I would recommend try to try to get starting with those If you have a little more light so you have a south-facing window or really bright room You can start going more towards the Mediterranean herbs and those will be things like the rosemary that I showed you just a minute ago Or sage this poor looking little sage plant. It's still alive. I'm proud of it that way Time oregano those Mediterranean herbs if you think about the Mediterranean, it's very bright even in the winter It may be cool, but it's very bright So that's why these herbs need a lot of sun and I know people have tried to overwinter rosemary This is a rosemary one here. I'm talking about that. I did bring in from outside Actually was growing in the pot and I just moved it inside And it's done. Well, it's still alive. It's got some new growth on it I pinch it every once in a while and I'm cooking things And the key with these Mediterranean herbs to get them to overwinter indoors is to have bright light a lot of light That's and we're blessed with having a beautiful south-facing Room you're kind of in part of our dining room here where we have windows on the east to west and the south side So it's very bright and that's why it's done so well when it doesn't survive It's usually a number of different things. There's happening the first thing would be that not having enough light on it Another thing is that you overwater it you want to water it when it gets really dry But Mediterranean herbs like it on the dry side. I like a really well-drained soil So wait till it kind of gets really dry then water it thoroughly so it comes out the drainage holes And also some of the rosemary plants are susceptible to mildew diseases So put it in a place where there's good air circulation don't crowd it in with other plants But give it its own little space so it has good air circulation around it So those Mediterranean herbs are good if you have more sun now if you want to grow things like cilantro and basil indoors You can try to put them into a sunny window, but they're going to get kind of leggy I would suggest putting them under grow lights until This is the caveat until we get more into March and April when the days are really getting longer Then you can certainly start basil and cilantro in a window now cilantro You're probably thinking well, what's the big deal with cilantro the thing that happens with cilantro is that it'll bolt really quickly If it's not if it's under stress and not getting enough light means it's under stress a basil Of course, you know, it just needs a lot of light a lot of sunshine on it Now there certainly are a whole host of other herbs that you could try to do a lemon bombs And some people even grow beebom indoors and all these other types of herbs that you can grow inside Um as a culinary herb or a fragrance herb But I wanted to stick with these right now because these are probably the simplest and the most widely available ones to do so first thing is to assess your situation what's going on Um select the right herbs for then you want to decide how you're going to start your herbs Ideally it would be great if we could all just go to a garden center and get a plant like this This little parsley here is just really cute It's have been snipping at it for weeks if not months and it keeps growing and everyone is happy so garden centers are really doing more and more of that they are really starting to Introduce and have herb plants in so I know the rosemary plants lavender plants for example But even some of these culinary herbs they're they're getting better about carrying them into the winter So that would be my first step. I would especially this time of year since we are already at the end of February Um, you might want to start with a transplant That'll give you almost the immediate satisfaction because you can if it's a healthy plant like this parsley You could be starting to clip it, you know within a week or two of purchasing it The other option of course is to grow things from seed and there is Really a lot of different seed out there that you can grow lots of different plants as mentioned the chives Basil sage all kinds of different things the nice thing about seed is that of course it's readily available There's lots of it out there lots of varieties. Maybe you want lemon time and not regular time that kind of thing The downside of seed is well, you got to start them And this time of year it takes Sometimes two sometimes even three weeks like with parsley seed for example to get germination happening So if you quickly do the the math with the calendar, you could be well into march before you even get a seedling coming off So by the time you get something that's really going to be edible It'll be probably time to put it outside So that's just something to keep in mind when you're starting bringing things from seed This late in the season if you're starting them in the fall from seed Then you've got that whole winter to kind of nurse them along so that by this time of year you could have a full size plant So starting from transplants are starting from seed both are different options Now again kind of pointing a little bit towards the fall If you have some of these plants in your garden like chives like mint You can just take divisions of them pot them up say in september or so Let a nurse them along outside for another month or before the really cold weather comes then bring them inside And that's what I did with this this mint plant here That way you have a healthy plant in a pot ready to go You just have to be careful of course when you're bringing things inside there might be insects kind of hanging on them So you want to quarantine them away from your house plants and other plants And then kind of check them for a few weeks Then after that just let them grow now a nice thing about some of these transplants like this mint plant I'll put it a little closer here. I don't know if you can actually see in there But you probably see some of these little shoots that are coming It's a little hard to see with the lighting. Sorry about the lighting here But there are little shoots all through where my finger is here in the soil So what i'm going to do with this mint plant I didn't want to do it now Before now because I wanted to show it to you because i'm going to whack it back I'm going to cut it way back so you could cut these stems off Anywhere along the stem really you can cut it off. You can see that there's a little shoot right there coming up So you can cut it right above that that'll turn into a new stem So whenever it gets leggy like this you can actually cut it back and it'll send up shoots from the center That's the cool thing about a lot of mint Lemon balm is like that too. There's a number of plants that that send those out ebomb You know be like that too So if you wanted to make a minty for example, you could cut all of these off Dry them and then you have mint tea in fact some of these are even coming off already look at that little leaves So that's the nice thing about having a whole plant especially a perennial plant like a mint Is that it just keeps on sending up more and more shoots for you? Especially this time of year as the days are getting longer So let's talk then about Once you kind of decided which herbs and you've decided to go with seeds or with transplants depending on what you could find Let's talk about The containers that you're going to use and there's lots of different options So the the basic one that most people know about are the the plastic pots and I usually recommend like a four inch pot That has good drainage holes. You see the drainage holes there show them. There you go four inch pot Is a nice size because you can start seeds in it and they'll grow well But when the plant gets big like some of these plants like these these are four inch round pots Like these rosemary here in the sage and the parsley They'll still be fine. You can grow them right through the winter in that size pot. It works out pretty well The other option that you might want to take a look at are Cow pots these are biodegradable pots now. These are like the pea pots or cow pots They have that drainage hole too. You see it right there in the bottom And the thing about the cow pots is that you can put your plants in there And then if you're going to move them outside into the garden This is a great way to do it because you don't disturb the root system So you you put your soil in you put your seeds in or even a little transplant in there You grow it out and then come may or so when it's ready to put it into the garden You can bury the pot and all in make sure you bury this pot so that the lip here is under the soil line too Because if it's left exposed above the soil it'll wick out moisture and it'll dry out The other thing I like to do is cow pots or pea pots You know either one of those is to break them up break up the the sides of them in the bottom of them When you're transplanting them because I found that they they do break down and they do Help fertilize the plant as they break down, but they take some time to do that And in the meantime the roots get kind of constricted So by breaking it up you allow those roots to remove themselves from the pot And yet you have the pot there that is going to break down and feed your plants as you go along And then of course the other option is it's what I have here are metal pots, which is kind of the new chic thing to do The good thing about metal pots is that well They're metal You're going to have them forever once you have them They also if you have a sunny window they will heat up which is great for plants like rosemary that like the heat They have drainage holes in the bottom here. I plug this one because I have them on a tray But they do have a drainage hole in the bottom there And so they're really nice and they're more decorative So if you're starting your herbs in a kitchen or a dining room area and you want to have them Close to a window or on a table near a window This looks a little bit better than having like a plastic pot there It's kind of an aesthetic thing. It depends upon how you look at it So all these different pots have different advantages, you know The plastic pot is good for plants like parsley and mint that like more of a wet moist soil Because this one you don't have to water so much The the cow pots are good for plants that you're going to move outside You don't want to be transplanting it, you know from a ceiling to another seat to another seat Like a rosemary for example, and then these Metal pots are good for plants that like it a little bit warmer because in the sun they will heat up So you don't have to absolutely do all those types of things But it's good to know the difference in the pots and of course there's clay pots like this one That my sister in law painted for us. It's very sweet These are good for well dread plants that like well-drained. So plants like those Mediterranean herbs Because the drains the soil and wicks moisture out of it. So clay pot is good for anything like that It's why it's so good for a geranium. You might have seen So once you've got your pots then right you got all your containers then you got to put something in them and that would be Potting soil So you want to get some potting soil and you want to get Potting soil, excuse me potting soil based on How you're starting them. So if you have got little transplants from a garden center or somewhere Then you want to get regular potting soil. I would recommend an organic potting soil that has compost in it And that's really kind of the best one to use if you're starting them from seed If you're growing things from seed, you want to get something called a germinating mix Germinating mix is a little bit different in the sense that The the mix is finely milled. It's really really ground down. So it's light and fluffy It's great for small seeds like thyme and oregano and even basil seed for that matter They have very small seeds. So if you have a germinating mix, they're going to be more likely to be able to penetrate into that soil Especially when it's wet And germinate and grow faster and will drain that moisture, which is again key for any of those Mediterranean type herbs So also when you get your soil I'm gonna do a little hopefully you'll be able to see the differences here So some of the soil you get is mostly going to be with a peat moss based And peat moss of course is a material that gets mined or milled Up in bogs like in Quebec So a lot of people are kind of going away from that. I'm not sure if you can really see that very well Probably not. Well It was a good idea So the the peat moss based soil, you know, you've seen this, you know, what it looks like It's got perlite in it. It's got that white little crystals in it It's a nice one to use. It's what everyone uses But if you want to be more more environmentally responsible, you might want to try this mix. This is called quare And you can see it a little bit there. This is made from coconut husks So what they do is they in the coconut industry They found out that the coconut husk, which you normally just throw out and actually burn They found out that it makes a really good soil medium, especially for seed starting And the reason is quare is different from peat moss from the peat. The peat is what we call hydrophobic Hydrophobic sounds just like what it sounds like. It's afraid of water. It doesn't like water So you know this about peat if you've ever put it down Around your plants and then you try to water on top of dry peat moss What happens to the water? It just rushes right off. It just kind of goes away. It doesn't really soak in very easily You have to really work it into the soil Same as with your potting soil That's why I always recommend you know getting a bowl like this put your potting soil in before you're going to start seeds Put some water in and then really massage it so you get it nice and moist because if you put it in A container like this and it's dry then it's going to take a lot of energy for it to really soak into that peat So it's hydrophobic. It makes it a little harder once it's wet It tends to stay really wet which could be a good thing if you have a pot But if you have little seeds that like it well drained it may not be a great thing because it might rot those seeds So there's some things with peat moss that aren't necessarily the best for seed starting The quare that I mentioned that coconut husk material that I have here in my hand This stuff is much better because it's hydrophilic Now hydrophilic means that it likes water If you actually look at that quare under a microscope It looks like tiny little tubes that are going down through it and the water runs through it So when you moisten quare it doesn't have that kind of soppy wet moisture to it when you're moisten the quare what ends up happening Is that it just kind of runs through it so it's it's as moist as a damp sponge It's probably the best way that To describe what it's what it's like So the quare is a really good one for the seed starting because It it stays moist enough for the seeds to gather that moisture and germinate But it doesn't sit there and get really wet. It also has some other advantages For example, it pH neutral. So that's good for most plants Where peat moss tends to be more acidic and it has what we call good cation exchange capacity That's basically what it means is just taking up nutrients So if you can look for a potting mix with quare in it, even if it has peat moss and quare It's still going to be a good thing to have or you can make your own mix, of course Using quare using I would use maybe 50 50 quare and peat moss For the drainage capacity and then you can mix in the compost and other kinds of things like that So you want to have your soil all mixed up ready to go moistened pre moisten And then of course you're going to start your seeds So if you're starting say basil seeds if you ever go to garden centers, you'll notice when you buy a little little Four inch pot of basil seed. It's got probably 20 basil plants in it. It's kind of a new thing that they do in garden centers You know used to be you'd get like little six packs, you know one plant per pack But for some plants like basil, you don't have to worry about that chives are like that too Meaning that these guys are easy to transplant and they don't mind being crowded in a little pot As long as you're going to get them out of that pot and then into the ground or into a bigger pot As soon as they get to the bigger leaf stages So you're going to spread some of those seeds in the top now if you're doing things like sage for example You probably are going to want to just do maybe three or four seeds and that's about it You don't want to crowd them time and oregano the same thing Just enough that you ensure that you're going to get a couple plants in there But for the chives and the basil as I mentioned you can put in 10 seeds or so per Each one of these pots each one of these four inch pots that you have and then Put them in the window or the bright spot. So first of all I shouldn't say window because I really don't want you to put them right up against the glass because we get those cold nights Below zero nights That's really not going to be good for any of these plants these seedlings or these transplants as they're growing So put them close to a window preferably Near a window that maybe has a little table or something of that nature And gets a lot of light a lot of bright light And keep an eye on them The other thing that's really a couple things that are really important once you have them growing and germinating to keep them Looking good and not getting too leggy and also not growing too fast Keep them in a cool room a room that stays maybe in the 60s and not up around 70 or so That's going to be a way to slow down their growth Especially if you get something like this mint that really wants to grow Putting them in a cool room a little bit nice The other thing you might want to use to enhance the germination if you're going to grow them from seed is use A seed starting map and that's what this is If I can show it to you here It is a seed heating pad or a seed starting map is what it's called got all kinds of information on there But you can see it's just basically Plugged into the wall. That's all you nearly need to use for it. I love these I use this all the time for our seed starting Because I start seed down in a basement, which is cool So I really want to get the soil nice and moist those seed starting mats or steam heating mats The way they work is that you plug them in they're waterproof So they don't have to worry about them getting shorted with the electricity And they they heat up the soil About 10 to 20 degrees above what the air temperature is So if you have a 60 degree room, you're getting up to the 70s with the soil That's the perfect germination for a lot of seeds Most seeds actually like to be up around 70 when they're going to be germinating That'll quicken the germination reduce the amount of time that You might have to worry about them rotting in the soil. So you don't have to worry about that so much And you get a plant that's going to grow faster You know, even once the plant is this size if you keep it on that heating mat You'll see that it'll grow faster because that that heat really keeps the soil warm and it does dry it out a little bit So you have to be careful that you might have to water a little bit more once your seedling is up But I really like those seed Starting mats for those reasons those heating pads for those reasons I use them all during the growing season up until the plants get big enough for me to start moving outside So we have the pots. We have the soil We have ways to get them growing when you put your pots in the window You might want to look at some kind of trade system so that you can water them and not have to worry about It's spilling out onto the table or anything else. I like this one that I got locally You can see it there. This is nice because you can see it's got a little shelf here And you put the shelf inside. It's actually a self watering system But you don't really have to use it for that if you don't want Normally you would put a capillary mat on top of this and water in the reservoir But I like it just because it has that shelf there so that I can put the the plants on top of it And when I water it drains right into the reservoir That's the nice feature to have the other nice thing about this is look at the size of it It's perfect. It's like the It could sit right on a table or close to a windowsill. It doesn't take up a lot of space So these are really nice to have you might want to look around for certain trays That'll fit the pot sizes that you have those four inch size pots that you're using to grow a lot of these herbs Once you have them up and growing Um, like I said, it really kind of depends upon what you're going to do with them at that point in time So if you're growing them just to put them back outside, you know Like this time of year like a basil for example, you can just leave them in the pot and let them grow up until we get to May or so then then transplant them If you're growing them to have them indoors on a more permanent basis, then you're probably going to want to thin things out So you have one plant like this sage per pot Or the rosemary one plant per pot is really what we're looking at for some of these perennial herbs that are kind of woody Those are probably the best thing if you grow like a cilantro and you put too many in the pot That's another stressor and what that happens with those is then they bolt really quickly And you don't get many of the leaves to make your your salsa's and other kinds of great things So once it's up and growing then you probably want to Keep it well watered but also give it some fertilizer. And so there are a variety of different Products on the market. This is a gardener supply product plant health care product. That is a nice one to use We also use an espoma organic product that works really well And I like the ones you mix in with water Because every time you water or maybe every two or three times you water you put a little fertilizer in That's going to keep them growing Now you don't really need to do a lot of fertilizing from november till Well, basically it's time of year early february Because the days are so short the days are really cloudy The plants are really not growing so much really what you're trying to do during those three four months in there Three months. Let's call it three months In there is that you just want to hold your plant. You don't want to really Try to push it forward by giving it a lot of fertility a lot of fertilizer But starting now is a good time because like I said, you're seeing a lot of house plants and other plants are starting to put on new growth That's the thing you look for when you want to know about adding more fertilizer That's when you want to start doing it on a more regular basis Maybe every other or every two or three times you water put a little fertilizer in there and let them grow So hopefully this kind of gives you an idea of some of the things you want to Approach when you're starting to do some seed starting indoors It all starts with you know finding that sunny window unless you have grow lights Like I said, unless you have those grow lights a nice sunny window Then once you have that sunny window that'll help determine which herbs you want to grow Whether it be ones that can take a little bit of shade like the the mint and the parsley and And the chives that I mentioned or ones that like a little more sun like the Mediterranean herbs of rosemary and sage Or ones that like a lot of sun like basil That's all going to be dictated by what you have as far as light levels Then using the pots and the containers and the watering All is kind of part of that and starting if you can with transplants So hopefully this gives everybody an idea about how to start some indoor herbs Whether starting them now or starting them in the winter earlier in the winter to have them And just to be able to have something that you can scratch and sniff Is just great or taste like this parsley. I'm just going to take parsley is to tell you It really is parsley. It tastes like parsley So hopefully this helps you to be able to grow these herbs indoors and do it successfully