Fresh herbs can brighten up a kitchen as well as a meal, adding flavor to dishes and saving you money at the grocery store. They can even be dried to bring natural flavor to your cooking all year long. Gardening does not need to mean acres of crops or toiling in the hot sun for hours. If you like to cook with fresh herbs, growing your own can be done easily on a sunny windowsill, even in an urban kitchen. We tested out the FATPLANTS Herb Garden Planter, which is a complete herb garden kit, to see what we could grow. Read on for all of our dirt on the herb kit.
Setup Process: Add water and mix
The included instruction booklet was particularly helpful, with troubleshooting tips for new gardeners. We found each step in the instruction booklet easy to follow, with photos to accompany the planting instructions and care tips that will take your plants from seeds to healthy, mature plants. To start, you’ll need the three included soil disks. The disks are made of Wondersoil, which according to FATPLANTS, is optimal for germination. The photos in the instruction booklet direct you to use a small bowl to expand the disks, but we found it was much easier to use a large bowl. This allowed us to mix the soil without making a mess all over the counter. We added the recommended 3 cups of water but needed to add a little bit more to fully expand the soil. We then transferred the soil to the planters and added our chives, parsley, and thyme seeds. Once they expanded, the soil disks actually provided more soil than we needed for the planter boxes. Since you’ll also have more seeds than you can plant, you can save some of this soil for another planter if you have one on hand.
Ease of Use: Water periodically and watch them grow
The FATPLANTS Herb Garden Planter includes a planter tray that helps with water runoff. After about a week, we realized that the planter tray was sticking slightly to our windowsill, which prompted us to put a dishtowel underneath it to protect our windowsill from moisture. Most of the water is caught in the planter tray, but if you overwater, you may find it dripping onto your counter or floor. Once our seedlings began to pop up, we rotated the planter box every few days as FATPLANTS recommends positioning them so they don’t lean toward the sun. Because each individual box is separate from the overall planter box, you can also rotate each individually if needed.
Included Tools and Accessories: More seeds and soil than planters
What set this herb garden kit apart for us were the individual pots. Made out of Red Cedar, the square planters looked nice on the windowsill and were big enough to accommodate our seedlings once they’d fully matured. An included chalk pencil also allows you to label each plant. The tray the pots sit in is 6 inches deep, so make sure that your windowsill is big enough to support it. We tried putting the boxes, which are only 5 inches deep, alone on the windowsill but eventually moved them back to the planter tray to keep the water drainage manageable. The 0.75-inch-thick cedar that the tray and pots are made from felt sturdy, so we weren’t worried about our garden being knocked off the windowsill. The kit includes six different packets of non-GMO seeds: basil, cilantro, thyme, oregano, chives, and parsley. You’ll only have space to plant three herbs at a time, however. You may want to save the remaining seeds (a seed storage bag is included) for later or plant them in another container. Just follow the same instructions that you would for the herbs growing in the planter boxes.
Results: Seedlings within a few days
We normally prefer to grow plants from seedlings rather than seeds. Seeds require extra care and protection, especially if you plan to grow them outdoors. But within just a few days of consistent sun and adequate water, the FATPLANTS herb garden kit was showing signs of life with its first green sprouts. We grew chives, parsley, and thyme in the three planter boxes. The chives quickly shot up, followed by the parsley and later the thyme. We recommend using fewer seeds than are included in each seed packet so your boxes don’t get too crowded. FATPLANTS recommends thinning out the seedlings by clipping back the weaker ones. We found that helped them grow into healthy plants as they didn’t have to fight for their share of sun or water.
Price: Costly but sturdy
You can find many herb garden kits for less, but few come with planter boxes and trays as sturdy as FATPLANTS. While the $50 price tag may have you thinking twice, remember that the kit does come with six different sets of seeds, so you can actually plant a second set if you have additional pots or planters.
Competition: Decorative and affordable
Interested in checking out more options? Take a peek at our roundup of the best herb garden kits available. FATPLANTS’ Herb Garden Planter is a bit expensive but the convenience of not having to transfer your seedlings to a larger pot is worth it. Unless you plan to replant your herbs in an outdoor garden once they’ve sprouted, we’d say it’s worth the splurge.
