Starting Herbs Indoors

Choose herbs that fit the window, use realistic light expectations, and avoid treating every culinary herb alike.

Be realistic about the window

Herbs indoors succeed or fail on light. Extension guidance puts most herbs at around eight hours of direct light indoors, or roughly twelve hours under a dedicated grow light. A south-facing sill is the best natural option in the northern hemisphere; a north-facing one will not support most herbs however healthy the plant looks when you buy it.

Which herbs cope best

Chives, mint, parsley, and green onions are the most tolerant of ordinary indoor light. Basil is possible on a genuinely bright warm sill but sulks in cold draughts. Rosemary, thyme, and oregano are the hardest: they want strong light and sharp drainage, and rosemary in particular tends to decline slowly indoors unless kept cool and very bright.

Buy, sow, or divide

A supermarket pot is usually many seedlings crammed together and will collapse if treated as one plant; divide it into two or three pots and it often recovers. Sowing from seed is slower but produces a better-structured plant. Chives and mint are easiest started from an existing clump.

Pots and mix

Give each herb its own pot unless water needs genuinely match. Use a container mix, not garden soil, and make sure drainage holes are clear. Woody herbs want a coarser, faster-draining mix than leafy ones. Most kitchen herbs are comfortable in 12 to 20 cm of depth.

Watering and airflow

Indoor pots dry slowly. Check below the surface before watering rather than following a routine, and empty saucers. Still, damp air encourages fungus gnats and mildew, so a little airflow helps. Crowding several pots tightly on a sill is one of the more common causes of indoor herb problems.

Harvest to keep them going

Regular light harvesting keeps herbs productive. Take from the top of basil and mint to encourage branching rather than stripping lower leaves, cut chives near the base, and never remove more than about a third at once. An unharvested herb becomes leggy faster than a used one.