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Creating a homemade meal can be elevated by having your own herbs readily available. Although fresh herbs are relatively cheap to purchase in most UK supermarkets, they can quickly spoil and lose their flavour. Instead, whole herb plants are often a more economical and sustainable choice in the long run, and are also widely available in UK supermarkets.
Typically sold as a single plant in one pot, you can easily separate the plant and repot them as individual plants for even more growth, which will help them last even longer. They also make for a low-maintenance addition to a vegetable patch or garden, and if you sow them now, they can be continuously harvested throughout the summer and added to a variety of fresh dishes, from salads to pasta dishes and delicate tarts.
However, there’s one thing you should be doing to ensure your herbs continue to grow bigger and bushier so you can get the most out of them.
One gardener has shared what you should be doing with herb plants to get even more from them to avoid them becoming sparse and stalky in a video posted on TikTok.
Lee Bestall, who runs the account @thenortherngardener, said there’s one trick gardeners should know when it comes to harvesting herbs this summer. Like any plant, herbs need to be pruned, but he warned gardeners not to do one thing.
“Here’s the trick: don’t just pick the tops. If you only ever snip the soft tips for cooking, you’ll end up with leggy, straggly stems that look sad and taste worse,” he explained.
Though you may be thrilled to see your herbs in full bloom, this growth can lead to a plant becoming stalky, flowering, and subsequently losing its culinary lustre.
Rather than let this happen, Lee urges gardeners to prune their herbs with confidence to sidestep the emergence of “stalky looking plants”. Although those fragrant new tips may be what you’re after for your dishes, regular trimming is crucial to maintaining a robust yield.
Lee’s expert guidance includes “taking off what you need to use as herbs but also cutting back quite hard, almost to ground level” and ensuring this is done evenly to allow for continued regeneration.
By consistently doing this “right through the summer”, your herbs will regain foliage swiftly, avoiding a woody and stalky demise, while preserving their delectable taste throughout the season.
