Growing Thyme in Your Garden

Call me silly, but if you do not have thyme growing in your garden you can’t call the place an herb garden.  It is one of the most necessary and useful plants around.  It cannot hurt that it has more than a hundred varieties, each of which has its own unique taste and aroma.

All of the varieties of thyme share similar attributes such as leaves shaped like ovals and a twig like, woody stem.  Your herb will have very small lavender, pink or pale white blooms that bud in early summer or late spring depending on the growing season.

Among the many varieties, here are 3 you will probably want to know:

• Common Thyme: This variety of thyme is the one that fills most of the little spice containers you can get at the market.  It is a little taller variety that also has a bold taste and smell, which makes it fantastic for your entrees.  Among the common thymes there are at a minimum three kinds, which you can determine by looking at the leaves.  You can find that the French type has very narrow leaves as opposed to the German which has very wide leaves, and then there is the English variety which has variegated leaves.

• Lemon Thyme: The scent of lemon thyme is obvious in the name.  If you thought it was scented with roses, you’d better go back to flower gardening.  Yes, lemon thyme has a bold lemon smell that you can’t miss.  You can even find some kinds of lemon thyme that have little yellow blossoms.

• Wild Thyme: People wrongly think that all varieties of thyme are the same, but you won’t often find wild thyme being used in cooking.  If you are looking for an interesting ground cover, this is a great place to start.

Cooking with thyme is as easy as snipping off some leaves and adding them to your other ingredients.  In order to assist your thyme thrive; make sure you prune it often which will give you plenty of chance to cook with the leaves in making wonderful meals.  This plant is also used in health and beauty products that you can make at home.  You can use it in soaps and lotions, add a small bit in your bathwater or use it to make an excellent potpourri.

Those same folks will say to use thyme to cure many different ailments including sleeplessness, gas, asthmatic breathing, headaches, poor digestion and coughing.  It basically can do just about anything but bring in the newspaper.

It is one of the easiest herbs to raise.  It will thrive indoors or outside and thrives in well-drained, rich soil and full-sun.  Because it takes forever and a day to germinate your plant (a long thyme), I suggest that you go down to your local home improvement store and buy a few herbs for your garden.  For your outdoor thyme, try it in your rock garden or along a wall or over a rustic driveway.

If you don’t want to mess with taking your thyme indoors for the cold months, you can dry it by cutting off each branch at the stem and hanging it upside down.

Don’t neglect to get the seeds on your thyme plant.  Believe it or not, your thyme can still be used in germination up to 3 years later.

Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.

Here is more information on Herb Garden Plants. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.