How to Choose the Right Herb Kit for Your Indoor Herb Garden

An herb kit is convenient for growing a year round herb garden indoors. It removes the need to gather supplies from various stores, as the kit contains all you need to grow your own herbs. There are several kits available on the market, making it hard to choose just one. If you’re thinking about buying an herb kit, here’s what you need to know to make the right choice:

Decide What You Want to Grow

Herb kits include seed packets to grow common herbs. The seeds are easy to grow, and typically include basil, parsley and oregano. This is fine if you’re just starting out and want to try your hand at growing herbs. However, if you have particular herbs that you want to grow, for medicinal or culinary uses, and they’re not included in the kit, then you’ll have wasted some money. When choosing an herb kit, find out what seeds are included first. Available for purchase are specialty herb kits, such as an herbal tea starter kit and medicinal herb kits.

Determine the Size of Your Garden

Not all herb kits are equal in size. The next step after deciding what to grow, is to determine where in your apartment you want to grow your garden. The area you have available will affect what size herb kit you should buy. Some herb kits are small enough to fit in a windowsill or on a counter top. Others take up more space, and you might dedicate a significant portion of a room to grow your herb garden. Each kit will list in its descriptions the dimensions of the planters and trays to help you make a decision as to whether that’s the right kit for you.

Make Sure It Includes the Right Soil

Herb kits contain potting soil for you to plant your seeds. This eliminates a trip to the store for soil, if you don’t have access to good quality soil where you’re renting. However, many herbs require soil that’s not as rich as most commercial potting mixes. As you’re looking at herb kits, learn as much as you can about the soil included. You could use your own soil or buy your own, but then there would be no point in buying the kit. You might as well assemble your own supplies, while you’re at the store buying soil.

Buy Kits with Grow Lights

Basic herb kits don’t include artificial grow lights. However, these are great to have when you’re living in an apartment situation and may not have access to a yard or direct natural sunlight. LED grow lights are what’s found in many herb kits that include artificial lights, and they require less energy usage, resulting in a lower electric bill compared to lights that use incandescent bulbs.

When you find three or more herb kits that contain the seeds you want to grow, make sure they meet the other criteria mentioned above to get the best bang for your buck. Otherwise, you’ll be disappointed and wish you’d made your own kit.