This site is primarily devoted to helping people start homesteading using simple methods. However, I personally started my homesteading journey with an herb garden over 20 years ago. That led to a strawberry patch and flowers, then mixed lettuce, followed by a big vegetable garden, a small orchard, and eventually to a nearly 10 acre homestead in rural North Carolina.
Over the last 7+ years, I’ve been on a personal quest to learn to grow, harvest, and use nearly every edible or medicinal spice or herb that can be reasonably grown in my climate or will fit in my greenhouse. So, as a side project for my own reference and to share with you, I’m building this collection of pages on growing herbs and spices.
Whether you use this information on your homestead or just grow your favorite spices and herbs in containers at home, I hope that this information will help you grow a life long love of gardening just as my first herb garden did for me.
Annatto, Achiote, or Lipstick Tree
Basil Varieties
Note: The photo on this page is of my greenhouse garden is stocked with lemons, olives, ginger, turmeric, cardamom, galangal, patchouli, catnip, rosemary, lavender, kaffir lime, black pepper, vanilla, galangal, capers, sweet bay, tea, coffee, allspice, tamarind, annatto, wasabi, ashitaba, artichoke, duck weed (for the ducks), cumin plant starts, and more. I also have a compost tea aerator in the photo that I use to make fertilizer and the heater that keeps the space toasty on below freezing nights and cloud-covered days. Strategic hot compost piles also provide additional heat throughout the space.
