Winter Herb Garden for your Home

It’s a new year and I’m sure you or someone in your household made a resolution to eat healthier.  This winter make eating healthy fun and exciting for the whole family by growing an indoor herb garden.  It’s a simple way to brighten up your home (no matter what size!), liven up a meal with fresh herbs, and teach youth the basics about plant science.

To plant an indoor herb garden, simply follow the steps outlined in the video below.
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Research has shown that children’s intake of fruits and vegetables stays with them into adolescence (Resnicow, Smith, Baronowski and Baronowski, 1998), and that eating habits and food preferences established early in life continue into adulthood. Growing an indoor herb garden is a fun, educational, hands-on, and tasty way to get youth excited about eating fruits and vegetables at a young age.

Try to include youth in as many steps as possible when creating and using your indoor herb garden. Below are some great tips for including youth.

In the Garden

• Youth can paint or color the containers with fun designs and pictures
• Youth can plant the seeds or transplants
• Youth can water the garden

Science Applications

• Teach youth about the four things a plant needs to survive
  • Sun
  • Water
  • Nutrients (soil)
  • Space
  • Teach youth about the simple lifecycle of a plant
    • A seed germinates when it grows in the right conditions, by creating roots and shoots.
    • The roots go down into the soil to soak up nutrients and water.
    • The shoots go up into the air to soak in the sun’s rays.
    • With the right conditions the plant matures and develops seeds.
    • The seeds are dispersed when the plant is mature and helps develop new plants.

In the Kitchen

• Youth can use scissors to nip the herbs for cooking
• Youth can measure the amount of teaspoons or tablespoons of herbs a recipe calls for (remember, if a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of dry herbs, you can substitute 3 teaspoons of fresh herbs)
• Youth can add the herbs to the recipe
• Make sure to have the youth smell the herbs before using them.  Then ask them to see if they can identify the taste in the finished meal.

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Jamie Bain is a Health and Nutrition Extension Educator for the East Metro. Her passions are working with youth, local foods access, and cooking healthy delicious food (preferably from the garden!).  She believes that communities are only as healthy as their food systems. Before working with Extension, she worked for a variety of nonprofit organizations in the metro area with a focus of holistic health for all and received her Master’s degree in Public Health Nutrition from the University of Minnesota in 2006. You can link to the Extension Health and Nutrition website at:  http://www.extension.umn.edu/health/