Do you like to cook? If not, do you like to eat? That probably was a little easier to answer. How would you like to go grocery shopping in your backyard? To be able to jazz up some pasta with some fresh, fragrant basil, or give a soup an extra kick with a pinch of dill? If you have a spare patch of land in your yard, you just opened up a world of possibilities. An herb spiral can snuggly fit into a smaller backyard, or can be nice extension to your regular kitchen garden. Utilizing a small amount of land, herb spirals are a smart way to support a variety of plants with minimal resources. If you feel intimidated by the time and effort a larger garden requires, an herb spiral is perfect for you. Little maintenance is needed after construction; besides watering and harvesting, an herb spiral pretty much takes care of itself, providing you with herbs year round.
Before starting, you should gather the following:
- · Cardboard (enough to cover the circumference), bricks or rocks, variety of herbs, gravel, compost, soil
Now, set aside a couple of hours of your day. Invite a few of your friends if you feel like it—all this work can be an excuse to hang out, and it never hurts to have a few extra hands. Once everyone has arrived at your garden party, or you’ve decided to complete your project solo, you’re ready to begin:
1. First things first—you need to select a location for your herb spiral. This should be somewhere convenient for you to harvest your herbs, but that ideally gets about 5 hours of full sun every day.
2. Once you’ve found the site for your future herb garden, measure a 2-meter diameter for your spiral, making sure you can reach the center (you want to be able to reach your herbs without tumbling forward, headfirst. No one wants a mouth full of dirt!).
3. Place your cardboard on the ground throughout the spiral. It helps to create a circle shape by first placing it around the edge, and then filling in the middle. This is not absolutely necessary, so don’t worry too much if you can’t get a hold of any cardboard—it just prevents grass and other weeds from growing through your bricks or rocks. If you do choose to use cardboard, it will eventually decompose, adding organic material to your soil, which improves its quality.
4. Use your bricks or rocks to create an outer ring, following the circumference of your spiral. The outer ring should be the shortest part of the spiral (height-wise), as it should gradually get taller, with the center being the tallest section. So, for the outside, the height should only be about two bricks high. The center should end up being approximately one meter high, with all sections in between gradually increasing bit by bit.
5. After you’ve laid the outside circle, lay the foundation of the rest of your spiral, using a layer of one brick to show the outline. The distance between each row should be about half a meter, but if that looks too small or too large, you can always adjust to your preferences. Just make sure your plants have enough room to establish themselves and grow.
6. Fill in a layer of gravel on the bottom of the entire spiral, about a inch or two thick. This will provide all your herbs with better drainage, so the soil does not become too waterlogged.
7. Using the rest of your bricks or rocks, build up the rest of the rings of your spiral, increasing the height gradually as you travel inwards. As I said before, the center of the spiral should reach about one meter high.
8. Fill in the spiral with a mixture of compost and soil. There’s no required mixture of the two mediums—generally, the more compost the better, but as long as your soil is moist and dark, it shouldn’t need too much compost. Ideally, it should have the texture of fine breadcrumbs, which indicates that it has plenty of organic matter.
9. Plant your herbs into the your new herb spiral! To select which herbs should make it into your herb spiral, think about the ones you use most often while cooking. From there, think about the climate in which you live. If you’re in San Francisco, chances are you shouldn’t grow something that needs consistent temperatures above 80 degrees—pay attention to the specific needs of your new plants. Be realistic; although you might want to change the weather, it probably won’t be possible for someone living close to the beach to grow basil. To ensure the success of your spiral, the plants you put in your herb spiral should probably be established seedlings or plants. Seeds are generally too vulnerable to weather, disease, or predators. If you only have seeds, start growing them in pots or flats indoors until they’ve established roots and seem less delicate.
10. To determine where each herb should be placed within the spiral, find out how much water it requires. Place the ones that need the least amount of water in the center, the ones that need a moderate amount in the middle, and the ones that need the most near the edge. In general, thyme, sage, and aloe could be in the center, with oregano or tarragon placed next, basil, parsley, and cilantro somewhere in the middle, and some sort of mint on the outside. However, you should mold your herb spiral to fit your specific herb wants and needs—no need to plant something that you won’t eat later!
11. Thoroughly water your new herb spiral! Maintenance from now on will be limited to this step, besides some minimal weeding. To check if your spiral needs to be watered, check the soil in the different layers and water if all lack moisture.
Food transportation and refrigeration are just a few of the major sources of carbon emissions in our society today, and are major problems we need to face in our transition to a carbon-neutral way of life. An herb spiral is just one solution to these issues. By growing herbs in your back yard, you cut out the hundreds of miles many food products travel before they arrive in your local grocery store. And they require no refrigeration—each herb can remain in the ground until you need it for cooking. Creative solutions like these are a great way to reduce our carbon footprint while enjoying the ease and beauty of a garden.
A well-known planting technique from permaculture design, herb spirals allow you to grow a variety of herbs, all with different needs and requirements, in a small area. If planted correctly, your new herb structure distributes the water fairly, providing water-hungry plants with the most and drought-tolerant ones with the least. The bricks in the spiral also help maintain a higher soil temperature—something very important to chilly San Francisco. Warmed by the sun, they allow the soil to retain more heat, promoting growth for your new plants. Now that you’ve built your spiral, enjoy the benefits of fresh herbs! Your cooking will taste fresh and delicious, your garden will smell wonderful, and your yard will be even more beautiful than before.
Very nice post. I was writing about the same.. your step by step instructions are very useful.
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