Tastes Like Food

Chives

Want some easy-to-grow plants that look good and that you can use for cooking, garnishing and eating? These are herbs that I have in our front yard that are perennial. (Perennial means they survive the winter and come back every year. In fact, chives, thyme and sage stay green most of the winter, or even throughout the winter if it’s mild, and you can still use them if you don’t take too much of the plant.)

I live in Denver, Colorado, and these grow quite easily without much help from me! All these receive 6+ hours sun a day. Our soil is slightly sandy and not especially nutrient rich. These get watered when we have hot dry spells, but mostly are fine with the typical Colorado summers.

Russian Tarragon

Chives. I use chives lightly cooked in white wine sauces, as topping for potatoes of any kind, garnish any time you’d like a very mild garlic or onion flavor. Use clean scissors to snip the most attractive shoots close to the stem.

Tarragon. Tarragon leaves (but no stems) can be chopped and added to home made salad dressing, vinaigrettes, and marinades. It has an anise-like flavor. A little goes a long way. I think this is Russian Tarragon, which grows really well here and actually prefers less nutritious soil. The recommended culinary version is French Tarragon which is a little more gangly and wayward growing (not so tall and spiky straight), but this version I have works great for my occasional use.

French Thyme

Thyme. Pictured here is French Thyme, the preferred version for chefs and cooks. We are also growing lemon thyme. I use thyme in soup, chicken+turkey dishes. Typically I just toss in a few large pieces into a soup or roasted turkey dish, and then remove the cooked stems before serving. Or you could trim the leaves from the steams and cook them into a pasta sauce.

Sage. This is tri-color sage (shown below). We also have a couple of other types growing in the herb patch, though this particular plant is the happiest. (This picture was just taken a couple of days ago. We’ve had a wet spring and it has really grown big the past few weeks.) I use this with soup, poultry dishes, and one of my favorite dishes of white beans, olive oil, white wine and garlic (and bacon if you’re into it). Again, with this, I toss in a clump during cooking and remove for the final preparation and serving.

Tri-color Sage

With all herbs, when you harvest some of the plant, you’re stimulating them to grow more, so don’t be shy! It’s best to cut the stems close to the ground rather than just picking off leaves. Cutting a stem will cause the plant to get thicker and fuller and retain its natural shape, while picking off individual leaves may cause the plant to split and make new shoots too far up it’s stems so that it gets awkward, more erratically shaped and even tip over.

I’m sure there are several other perennial herbs that work grow well in our arid Colorado climate, feel free to add your favorites in the comments!