Chives like a well trained soil and don't seem to like a full sun exposure all day. I grow a wild onion (just recently found this out), that is just now forming small bubil clusters at the tips of stiff stalks. Mine grows all through winter and in the summer months only the bulbil clusters are activing growing. I pluck all of these off once they have formed and crumble them ito the nearby soil around the rest of them. They will then die out in mid August, but start back up in late September and all through the winter months in Z6. These are quite hardy and when I pull up the bulbs in the soil they are about the size of a garden pea. The greens are great while they last, but the stiff stalks are tough as they must support the bulb clusters which are about the size of a large marble. Mine have no real flowers per se, but will have maybe one of two on each bulbil cluster. These tiny bulbs are tan color, and the edible greens are exactly the same size as a regular chive. Last year I sent out several of these to people who asked for some, as they can grow very well in cooler climates all the way to Z8. That ground cover with purple flowers looks very much like creeping phlox. I have it draped over the stone wall in front of my house and its blossoms last only a few weeks in early May to early June.

Oh dear, Carrie Jane take a deep breath, relax, no one has a black thumb, you just need to learn a few tricks is all :). I suspect you may be loving your plants to death. First things first, all herbs are different, they come from all over the world so each one has to be considered individually. I suspect you are over watering. I don't think it's the heat inside, I think its watering and lack of sun. I've grown herbs inside in boston. To water most plants in pots: Water until it drains out the holes in the bottom of the pot. I stick em in the sink. If any water is in their little dish (mine don't get dishes), discard it, sitting in water (called 'wet feet') leads to root rot with most plants but especially herbs (this is really important). Then don't water again until when you stick your finger into the soil about an inch or so down it feels mostly dry, but not bone dry. Always water at first signs of wilting. The herbs you mentioned are mediterraneian, so they tend to like things relatively dry, hot, and sunny. Rosemary (native to greece seasides-rosemary=dew of the sea) is one of the trickiest herbs, they just are finicky, and they are hard to over winter. If you find a good spot for rosemary don't move it-one theory is that the plant adapts slowly to changes in light etc because of a thick covering on it's leaves. Rosemary hates 'wet feet' meaning that it can't sit in standing water or too wet soil or it will get root rot and die. Rosemary also hates to be dry, which means that it's darn hard to water right especially since it doesn't wilt to tell you when it wants water. It needs a really well draining soil too-so lots of vermiculite/pearlite. Rosemary also likes to get powdery mildew-white fluffy stuff where the leaf meets the stem-this can be treated with 1tsp oil, 1tsp baking soda, 1/8 tsp ivory dish soap, 1 qt water. However, powdery mildew is tough and it can take a plant down fast. The also like to get spider mites (very very fine webbing with black or redish spots on the web-best seen by holding up to light) which is best treated by rinsing with water. Basil, can be grown indoors, but it really needs Direct sunlight shining straight on its leaves. Your kinda biding your time until you can plant new plants or cuttings outside in spring, but it can do OK inside. Basil gets the sunniest spot in the house. Basil is also an annual, so it will grow for a season or so, make flowers and seeds "go to seed or bolt", and then die. However, you can make basil more bushy by pinching the tips, and if you see flowers start to form pinch them out to stop the plant from bolting. Basil likes more water than rosemary, but it will rot if it's in standing water. Yellowing could also be from lack of fertilization, I would fertilize with fish emulsion (outside-stinky) at the reccomended dose or Peters at 1/2 concentrated of what it says on the package. I would fertilize no more than 1x/month, herbs generally do best with no fertilizer but in a container where your washing out their nutrients they need a kick every so often. Thyme. Probably the easiest one you mentioned. Thymes likes relatively dry soil but it's not quite as picky. Water as I mentioned above, don't let it have wet feet. These plants should be in individual pots to account for their different watering needs. Pots: I like to use store bought potting soil and mix in about 1/3 vermiculite (maybe up to 1/2 for rosemary)-I don't like pearlite. You don't want to keep them in the plastic 4" pots from the store. I really prefer terracotta clay, it breaths better. You know you need to repot when you CAREFULLY slip the pot off the plant and see the roots wrapping around the pot (too much and it's called 'root bound'). You want to 'pot up' to a pot that is 2-4" larger so atleast a 6" pot. When you transplant gently 'tickle' the roots to kinda comb out the bound roots. Then replant in the larger pot, water well, and your done. If your plants are real gonners, I suggest starting over, it's hard to pull em back from the grave. "I have a friend that I can ask questions of but find I don't even know what to ask" As your friend if you can come over some time for a demo, bring a dessert and it could be a great time :) "catalogs confuse me..." toss em, go to the local private nursury and as someone who is knowledgeable what will grow well and what you want. They know best for your area/soil/zone etc. If they are a good nursury, they will get very excited to share info with you. I'm a bit militant about this, I try to pick var that will do well in my climate. As for shade,sun,etc, I try my best, don't worry too much, and wait I to see, sometimes things need to be moved, some will die. In general, I really think that we stress too much, I mean they are plants after all, if they want to survive they best hop to it, they can adapt and take more than we give em credit for. "soil is sandy and don't know if that matters" Sure it matters, but look around you, obviously things can grow in MA. Personally, I think more can grow in sandy soil than in heavy clay. In general NE soil is pretty good-throw some bagged compost down and your golden. "I want to plant something very tall and interesting.." lol that's not detailed enough. Tree, shrub, herb, color, etc. For herbs, head over to the herb forum...I think you might like growing lavenders, I don't know lavenders too well being from FL but they do. Gosh, this got long. I hope it was helpful. Relax, have a glass of wine, enjoy growing. It's not something to stress over.

Larry, My garden started small, and I added to it every year until about 2005 when we started having more persistent drought and our family started spending a lot more time fighting grass fires, brush fires and wild fires. Since then, my expansion efforts have been hit and miss. Every now and then I've added a little more growing space, but I've wanted to add a lot more. This year, I am adding a lot more. I don't know just yet how much more we'll add this year, but the area we just rototilled and fenced adds about 2000 s. f. more. However, that doesn't necessarily mean I will have 2000 s.f. more than before because we are abandoning a lot of the west and north end of the original garden because it has become too shady to grow many veggies. It might be that if I measured the area we are abandoning to the shade (I will grow shade-loving flowers there and maybe some herbs there), it will just about equal the size of the new gardening area out back. My expansion plans include another area of about 1200 s.f. north of the garage. It is the worst possible clay in the world and there is no way we'll be able to rototill that very deeply, so we'll likely build above-ground using hay bales to build the outline of the raised beds and filling in the interior like a hugelkulture bed topped off with compost from our big compost pile. Then we'll put down cardboard on the remaining area around the two long raised beds and cover it with spoiled hay and chopped/shredded leaves. If we don't have too much rain the next couple of days, this is the area where we'll be working this week. I've always let my pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble throughout the entire garden which makes it hard to harvest the other stuff at times because the vines are everywhere, so I'm looking forward to being able to let the pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble without having the vines bury the rest of the garden. If the vines grow outside the fence, I am sure the deer will prune them back as they do when the vines escape the big garden. Then there's the lily pond......which sits right outside the sunporch, in between the house and the detached barn-style garage. You walk right past the lily pond as you go back and forth from the garage to the house to the dog yard. I love my lily pond, but ever since we started having more persistent and long-lasting droughts, it has been hard to enjoy it because once the creeks and ponds dry up, the water moccasins move to the pond. We never had water moccasins in the pond regularly until the drought of 2008-09, but we've had them for part of every year since then. For the last couple of years we've contemplated taking out the pond. After one-too-many close encounters with a water moccasin being a foot or two from a human being, dog or cat, we've decided to fill in the pond this spring. I'll miss having the little fish, frogs and turtles there close to the house, but I sure won't miss the water moccasins. We can't fill it in until enough rain falls that our one remaining pond that still holds water has enough in it for us to move the fish and the water lilies there. Once that happens, we'll fill in the lily pond and plant some sort of a garden with raised beds on top of it. It might be a garden of strictly ornamental plants, or it might be a small potager filled with herbs, flowers and just a few veggies....likely a couple of tomato plants, peppers, and some greens. If we get all this done this spring, that will give me three new growing areas to make up for the northern and northwestern edges of the current big garden where the shade from the adjacent woodland is taking over. Then, there's two more areas I want to develop into new gardening areas, and I also want to do something to change the Peter Rabbit Garden. Maybe I'll take it out completely. It sits directly north of an adjacent cow pasture and is a snake and bug haven throughout the warm season. I've always worried the neighbor's cows will reach through the barbed wire fence and eat the Peter Rabbit Garden's plants, though they never have. In its early years, the Peter Rabbit Garden didn't have those issues with snakes and tons of bugs migrating into it, but as the droughts have worsened, all the wild things have, naturally, flocked to any area still green and moist. This is a year of many changes on our property, and it sounds foolish to be making all these plans and new areas when we are in Extreme Drought, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I always say I'm cutting back, I'm simplifying things, etc. but I rarely do it. I also would like to plant a lot more fruit trees and grow more than just peaches, plums and figs. I now have my eye on a new area south of the new garden we're building. I haven't checked its soil yet, but it looks like it might have some fairly decent soil there. We could fence it off and plant a small orchard there. For the last few years I've put a lot of gardening plans on hold because of persistent drought. I've been waiting for better weather. Well, I don't know that we'll ever have better weather, so I'm just going to go on and expand and do the best I can with whatever weather we get. Dawn

OKC1, It sounds like a good workable plan. I guess mixing the commercial compost in with the sandy yard soil will fix the nutrient deficiency problem, won't it? As far as something gritty, that sounds good too...but where to get it? My best guess would be to call and ask at places that sell landscaping rock or gravel. Sometimes they carry finely pulverized rock like decomposed granite or something. And the "base" that is put down underneath gravel driveways is a great growing medium. It looks like a mixture of sand and tiny rocks...or maybe it is clay-y sand and tiny rocks. They put down a couple of inches of it and then put larger gravel on it for the driveways. (Can you tell I am in a really, really, really rural area?) Stuff grows in that base like crazy. It provides good drainage and yet seems to hold enough moisture for the plants to thrive. I wish I had it all over my yard! Some of my prettiest self-sown seedlings (chamomile, red Texas hummingbird sage, hollyhocks, zinnias, etc., )pop up in that driveway base at the edge of and in the middle of the driveway. It might give you the grittiness you need in order to have good drainage for the herbs. Dawn