Herb spiral
Posted on May 18, 2007 · Filed under: Tips, tricks, & ideas
Here’s a really cool idea for planting herbs: an herb spiral! The idea is to plant different herbs with different cultural needs in one permanent structure to create a beautiful, functional herb garden. With this, there’s no need to hide the herbs in the backyard. Looks like it wouldn’t be too hard to build, either. There are larger pictures available here. Also here, here, and here.
A book I’m reading offers these directions for building an herb spiral:
- Pile up a mound of soil/compost/manure about 3 feet tall and 5 feet across
- To save on topsoil, you can put a heap of rocks or subsoil at the base of the mound, then build over that.
- You can run a piece of irrigation tubing (1/4 or 1/2 inch) inside the mound, emerging from the top, and attach a mini-sprinkler
- Place fist- to head-sized rocks in a spiral pattern that winds from the bottom inward to the top
- Leave about a foot of soil between the tiers of the rock spiral
- Next, install the herbs. You can fit the same amount of plants into this space as you could in about 30 linear feet!
- Varieties that like hot, dry climates, like oregano, rosemary, and thyme, go on the sunny south side near the top. Parsley and chives, which prefer cooler, moister conditions, can go on the north side. Coriander (cilantro) can be placed on the east side, so it doesn’t get too much hot sun.
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