I have had decent luck with herbs in pots indoors. Mind you, I have an 8 foot patio door with lots of sun! My rosemary grows like crazy. The basil usually lasts til about Xmas time, enabling me to make little mozzarrella/tomato/basil tarts for Xmas appetizers. Parsley definitely gets thin, but it usually survives and comes back. I had all my herbs in a big 16" pot. Just last night I moved the rosemary to a smaller pot with a cone topiary thingy. I installed self watering adapters in both pots, and refilled the large pot with new mix. I repotted the parsley in there, and put in about 6 basil seedlings (3 are probably not going to make it, so it shouldn't be too much). This will live on the balcony for the summer, and come in again in the fall. By the way, I tried growing chives in that big pot, from seed, and they never took off. You're probably better off buying small plants at the nursery. Make sure that the herbs you group together all like the same soil conditions in terms of watering.

Congratulations on your herb garden. I've been growing several varieties of basil in a bay window in my kitchen for a little over a year now. It actually does well for me in terra cotta pots though they need daily watering in the summer heat. I now have some chives growing there as well but most of the window is taken over by plastic pots with various seedlings since things sprout good for me there. The basil has been manageable for me there cause I use a lot of it so am always pinching to keep the plant short and the variety of basils in terra cotta pots make the window look very nice. I found that plastic pots stay wet too long there and some plants don't like that. I do tend to overwater though and have to watch myself. Herbs are really fun to grow and your cooking will taste so much better than using dried herbs from the store. I'm still pretty new at this myself but growing herbs has been very rewarding for me. Ania

They will all do fine outside this summer. As for surviving the winter: -Basil is an annual, so it won't survive the winter. -I know that parsley is a biennial, but I have only used it as an annual. -Chives, oregano, and thyme should all survive the winter with no problem. Chives are extremely tough. -Rosemary ... it depends. I have it in a large clay pot that I put in an unheated, glassed-in porch for the winter. The rosemary that I bought last summer overwintered well, but other winters, rosemary hasn't survived for me. Other herbs that I have tried: -Sage (the plain green kind): very tough. -Lavender: I usually keep these in pots and move them into the porch for the winter, but I have grown some in the ground, too. I haven't found French or Spanish lavender to be hardy here. Some of the English lavenders (Munstead, Hidcote, and Blue Cushion)have been pretty hardy, though. -Bay leaf plant: I bring this into the house for the winter. This is the third summer that I've had the same plant (it's now about four feet high).

You might be talking about the Aerogarden "machine". I have one of these. It was gifted to me by someone years ago. The newer Aerogardens have LED lights instead of fluorescent lights like the old models. An Aerogarden works pretty well for growing certain kinds of herbs, not at all for others - faster growing, "weedy" types of herbs like basil do best in it, it doesn't work at all for rosemary, for instance. It also only works for herbs that grow readily from seed. It grows the plants in a tank of water, to which you add plant food, and the whole thing is one single unit that you plug in. Aerogardens are pretty expensive and cost even more once you start buying the seed "kits", replacement lights, etc. And they don't really do all the work for you - they still need a fair amount of fussing and they are especially cumbersome to clean out when your "crop" is finished and it's time to plant another. You still have to add water and plant food periodically - although it has warning lights to remind you to do this, you still have to pay enough attention to it to notice the lights. To a certain extent you can control the cost of the Aerogarden by making some DIY supplies instead of buying the replacement grow kits, but if you're paying enough attention to do that, you might as well just set up basic grow lights and plants in pots or trays in the first place. Bottom line, you can't grow plants without remembering to take care of them. If you get that part sorted out, you still will have an obstacle in growing herbs indoors because they mostly need more light than the proverbial "sunny windowsill" can provide, unless your windows are really massive and you actually live in a greenhouse. Grow lights can easily provide enough light to grow herbs indoors, but windowsills generally can't.