Packing Up the Herbs and Heading to the South (Window)

I use to keep herbs indoors all the time when I lived in apartments. But then we bought this house and then I had no decent windows to try to grow herbs in. No sunny windows = really dead herbs.

But that changed this past year. We remodeled our kitchen. My husband was just getting ready to cut the wood for the window frames when it hit me. The kitchen windows are north and south facing windows. As Martha says, “That’s a good thing” I casually asked if my husband if he could put in some extra, extra wide window sills.

You know, I found out that day that guys really don’t like it when you ask for changes two minutes before they are done with the job. I figured that it was better than waiting to ask until he was completely done but he didn’t see it that way. Besides, he got to go to the hardware store (aka the big boy toy store) so I don’t know why he got so upset.

Either way, I now have extra, extra wide window sills in the kitchen. And now I can have some fresh herbs in the winter. I am so excited that I could just pee my pants. No, really. I am a die hard cook. Fresh herbs are something I sorely miss in the winter or my wallet sorely misses my money when I go to the grocery and buy them.

Anyhoo, although the weather is still above threatening to freeze, the key to getting herbs a better chance of surviving the winter is to allow them to get settled before the “Big Move”. So I dug up a bit of my most favorite herbs and took a cutting of destined-to-die-but-worth-a-shot rosemary and put them in their new, soon to be high-rise, condo pots.

They will spend the next few weeks sitting on the back porch getting use to being in the pot. Then they will come inside incrementally until the first frost. It is kind of like a reverse hardening off process. Plants don’t like any dramatic changes in environment, so you are always better off changing things as slowly as possible.

I am looking forward to this winter now. No, I take that back. Sorry, a momentary lapse in sanity caused me to write that. I will never look forward to winter. But at least some fresh herbs growing on the window sills will make the winter a little more tolerable.