Fresh herbs within reach of the chopping board
A few pots of herbs on a kitchen sill earn their keep. You cut what a recipe needs instead of buying a bunch and watching most of it wilt in the crisper, and because the plants sit right beside the pan, you actually use them. Herbs carry plenty of flavour for very little effort, which is handy when a plain dish needs lifting.
Indoor plants are sometimes sold as a way to clean the air in a house. In a real room the effect is far too small to measure, so grow herbs because they smell good and cook well, not for the air.
Here are seven herbs that do well in pots by a window, how to start each one from seed, and when to sow them where you live. You can browse the culinary herb range to see what is in stock.
What a windowsill can and cannot do
Light is the whole game indoors. In Australia a north-facing window is the sunniest in the house and gives direct light for much of the day. An east-facing window gives gentle morning sun and suits leafy herbs through summer. A south-facing sill is too dark for most herbs all year. If a sill gets less than four to six hours of sun, plants stretch, go pale and taste weak, so either add a grow light or stand the pots outside for part of the week.
Use pots with drainage holes and a saucer you can tip out, and fill them with potting mix rather than garden soil, which packs down and drains badly in a pot. Feed monthly through the growing season with a liquid feed, turn the pots a quarter turn each week so growth stays even, and expect to replace the annuals, basil and dill among them, each season.
Not everything belongs on a sill. Dill and fennel drive down a taproot and need a deep tub outdoors or on a balcony. The small leafy herbs, basil, chives, parsley and mint, are the ones that are genuinely happy in a 15cm pot by the sink.
When to sow, zone by zone
A warm sill lets you sow a few weeks earlier than the open garden, but the plants still follow the seasons outside. These months come from our own sowing calendar.
- Tropical (Darwin, Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Broome and the Top End): basil in any month; chives, dill and parsley through the dry season, roughly April to August; mint from June.
- Subtropical (Brisbane, the Gold and Sunshine coasts, Bundaberg, Coffs Harbour, Lismore and the NSW north coast): basil late August to March; chives January to September; dill March to September; parsley March to October, moving it into part shade as summer comes on.
- Arid and semi-arid (Alice Springs, Broken Hill, Kalgoorlie, Longreach, Mildura, Port Augusta and most of the inland): basil mid September to March with afternoon shade; chives March to May and July to September; dill in March, April, August and September; parsley March to September.
- Temperate (Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong, Newcastle and most of coastal southern Australia): basil mid September to January; chives almost all year; dill late August to January; parsley all year except the hottest weeks; fennel with the December sowings.
- Mediterranean (Perth, Adelaide, the south west of Western Australia and the South Australian gulf country): the same months as temperate, with a long dry summer on top. Pots on a sunny sill can need water twice a day in a heatwave, and basil and parsley do better with shade after midday from December to February.
- Cool and alpine (Hobart and most of Tasmania, Canberra, Ballarat, Katoomba, Armidale and the tablelands): basil undercover in September and October and outside from November to January; chives January to March and August to September; dill September to January; parsley for most of the year, though it is slow in winter; divide mint in June.
These are broad groupings. Gardeners between zones, or in the hills above a warmer town, should lean on local frost dates rather than the zone name.
Basil
Sweet basil, Genovese, lemon basil and Thai basil all grow well in a pot on a sunny sill. Sow a few seeds 5mm deep in a 15 to 20cm pot of damp mix, keep it warm at 20°C to 25°C and thin to the strongest seedling. Stand the pot in a north-facing window, where it will get six hours or more of direct sun. Basil sulks in the cold, so keep it off a draughty sill in winter.
Keep the mix moist and pick often. Snip the top of a stem just above a pair of leaves and two new shoots break from that point, which is what keeps a basil plant bushy. Let the tips run if you want flowers for the bees, and pull the plant out once it sets seed and the leaves turn bitter.
Do not put fresh basil in the fridge, because cold blackens the leaves within a day or two. Stand cut stems in a glass of water on the bench instead, out of direct sun, and they will hold for the best part of a week. Leaves also freeze well chopped into ice cube trays with a little water or oil, and there is always pesto. Basil lifts tomato and egg dishes, salads and Thai cooking. Basil seeds come in a range of leaf shapes and scents, so it is worth growing two or three kinds.
Chives
Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are a perennial with a mild onion flavour that suits eggs, potatoes, sauces and salads, usually snipped over a dish just before it goes to the table. Sow 8 to 10 seeds in a 15cm pot, cover them with 5mm of mix and keep them between 15°C and 21°C. They do not need darkness, only warmth and moisture, and they take 7 to 14 days. Grow the clump as a clump, and in a garden bed space clumps 15 to 20cm apart.
Plants reach about 30cm. Harvest by cutting whole leaves 2 to 3cm above the base rather than trimming the tips, which leaves blunt brown ends behind. The mauve flowers are not single blooms: each one is a rounded head made up of dozens of small florets, and a clump throws several stems at once. They are edible in a salad, though leaves turn tougher once a plant flowers, so cut most of the heads off if you are growing chives for the leaves. Clumps divide easily every couple of years. Chives seeds include garlic chives, which have flat leaves and a mild garlic flavour.
Dill
Dill is a pretty plant with feathery leaves, and all of it is edible: leaves, flowers and seed. It drives down a taproot and resents being moved, so sow it where it will grow, in a pot at least 30cm deep and as wide, and stand that pot on a balcony, a bench or a step rather than a narrow sill.
Sow seed 5mm deep, keep the mix damp until seedlings appear, then let the top few centimetres dry between waterings. Dill hates soggy soil and will rot at the base if it is overwatered. Water at the base of the plant rather than over the leaves, and feed monthly from spring to the end of summer. Take no more than a third of a plant at a harvest, and sow a fresh pot every three or four weeks, because dill runs to seed quickly in hot weather. Leave one plant to flower for the hoverflies and for seed. Dill seeds include compact types that suit a tub.
Fennel
Florence fennel is grown as an annual for its swollen, aniseed flavoured bulb, and the fronds and seed are used as well. It is not a windowsill plant. A mature plant stands 60 to 90cm tall and about 30cm across on a long taproot, so it needs a deep tub outdoors or a place in the bed, full sun and steady water, because a dry check makes it bolt to seed instead of forming a bulb. Sow it in December in temperate districts, and in Mediterranean districts if you can keep it watered through the dry summer; August to February in cool and alpine districts; February to April in the subtropics; March, April or June in arid and semi-arid districts; and April to June in the tropics.
There is a legal side to fennel. Common fennel is a declared weed in Tasmania under the Biosecurity Act 2019 and a declared noxious weed in Victoria, where it is a restricted weed in most catchment regions and trade in its seed is prohibited, so we cannot send fennel seeds to Tasmanian or Victorian addresses. Wherever you garden, grow it in a tub or a bed you keep an eye on, cut the flower heads before the seed ripens, and do not let plants run along a roadside, a creek bank or a fence line, where fennel is very hard to remove once it settles in.
Mint
Mint is a hardy perennial that will scent a whole kitchen when you brush past it. Leaves can be picked at any size, and plants carry white, pink or purple flowers if you let them run. Plant mint in a pot and keep it there, because it spreads by runners and will take over a garden bed in a season or two.
Sow one or two seeds in a 15cm pot of potting mix, press them onto the surface and barely cover them, then keep the mix moist but not soggy in a bright spot out of harsh afternoon sun. Seed goes in from June in the tropics, July to October in the subtropics, June or July in arid and semi-arid districts, and September to November in temperate, Mediterranean and cool districts. Pinch off stems as you need them, take leaves just before the plant flowers when the flavour is strongest, and cut the top half off a mature plant to push out fresh growth.
- Peppermint is the mint behind peppermint flavouring, and a leaf is often chewed straight off the plant to freshen the breath. It is a sterile hybrid that does not come true from seed, so start it from a cutting or a division of a plant you know is peppermint.
- Spearmint is the mint of tabbouleh and mint sauce. It can reach a metre in the ground, less in a pot, and carries slender spikes of pale purple flowers.
One mint belongs in a different category. Pennyroyal is a low, creeping mint with pale mauve flowers, often grown as a fragrant ground cover, and it is not a culinary herb. The oil it contains is toxic, so do not eat the leaves and do not brew them as a tea. Pennyroyal has also naturalised on damp ground and creek flats in parts of Victoria and New South Wales, so keep it in a pot and cut the flowers off before they set seed. Our mint range includes pennyroyal as well as the culinary mints, so check which mint you have before you pick any for the kitchen.
Parsley
Parsley is a biennial grown as an annual, in curly and flat leaf forms, and it is one of the most useful things you can keep in a pot by the door. A sprig chewed after a meal is the old way to freshen the breath, and the leaves go into almost everything else.
Parsley seed is famously slow, but not because of a hard shell. The seed carries natural germination inhibitors that need to be washed out, so soak it overnight in plain warm water, then rinse it and sow. There is no need for detergent, which can damage the seed. Sow 5mm deep in a 15cm pot, keep the mix at about 22°C with gentle bottom heat if you have it, and be patient, because two to four weeks is normal.
Once it is up, parsley wants sun for most of the year, so a north-facing sill suits it from autumn through to spring. In a hot inland or Mediterranean summer, move it to a spot with shade after midday, or to an east-facing window that only catches the morning. Harvest outer stems at the base and leave the centre to keep growing. When a plant throws a flower stem in its second year the leaves turn bitter, so start a fresh pot. Parsley seeds come in curly and plain leaf types, and the flat leaf kinds have the stronger flavour.
Sage
Garden sage is a small woody perennial with soft, silvery green leaves, used in stuffings, with pork and pumpkin, and fried in butter for pasta. It comes from the dry hills of the Mediterranean and it wants conditions to match.
Sow two or three seeds in a 20cm pot of free draining mix and stand it somewhere warm and bright. Germination is patchy, so sow more seed than you need and allow up to three weeks. Spring is the time for it in most of the country, roughly September to December in temperate, Mediterranean and cool districts, and the dry season, about April to August, in the subtropics and tropics, where humid summer air is what usually finishes a sage off. In arid and semi-arid districts, sow it in winter, in June or July.
Sage needs six to eight hours of direct sun, which means a north-facing sill, a balcony or the open garden rather than a dim corner. Do not mist it. Dry air and moving air are what it likes, and daily misting invites mildew on those furry leaves. Let the top of the mix dry out between waterings, tip out the saucer, and leave room around the plant so air can move. Prune it in spring to stop it going woody and bare in the middle. Sage seeds are worth starting early, since one plant will last several years.
Related growing guides
- Herbs on a Sunny Windowsill: Fresh Pickings All Year
- The Best Vegetables and Herbs for Containers (and the Pot Sizes They Need)
- Why Coriander Bolts, And How to Keep Picking it Into Summer
Ready to plant? Browse our Culinary Herb seeds.