In need of a frugal little gift for someone who likes to cook? Check your garden. Any cook would love to receive a pot of herbs she can snip in the midst of winter when her garden is covered in snow.
Most of the perennial herbs in my garden look rather sad right now, but I did find a few small parsley plants to pot up for some foodie friends.
I had cut all the leaves off this parsley plant about 2 weeks before this picture was taken.
I potted up four parsley plants, cut off the old stems and set them in a sunny window for a couple weeks.
Hopefully you’ll find some herb plants in your garden that don’t need to grow two weeks in the house like mine did.
According to Organic Gardening the best herbs for transplanting indoors are parsley, thyme, chives and mint.
A word of caution… attempting to be frugal I planted some herbs in pots last year using my garden soil and compost. Halfway through the winter I noticed aphids on the herbs. Be sure to use commercial potting soil to avoid an insect infestation.
Plant your herbs in a pot with drainage holes, then set that in a decorative pot. If you don’t have decorative pots on hand check the dollar store. I have found cute pots there on many occasions.
For the cost of a little potting soil, a decorative pot and 20 minutes time, you can bless someone with a thoughtful, flavorful gift they can use for months.
Do you have some fast or frugal gift ideas? We’d love to about hear them!
This post was shared at Small Footprint Fridays, Freaky Fridays, Flaunt It Friday
While clay pots are fine for growing on, it’s best to use plastic trays with small cells to start your herbs. The small cells make it easy to start many herbs all at once, and you can sow herbs with similar growth requirements near each other. They can be transplanted into larger pots as they grow. The exception is herbs that don’t like transplanting such as parsley. Start these in larger pots to reduce the number of times they are transplanted.