Nothing perks up an ordinary dish like fresh herbs. You don't have to pay $25 a pound for fresh herbs at the grocery. Choose the right varieties, and you can grow and harvest them all winter. The best choices for a winter herb garden in Tennessee are cilantro, parsley and French thyme. Cilantro and parsley will also grow on a sunny windowsill or under lights.

French thyme, as can be seen in the photo at left, takes on a lovely blue-gray color in winter, but the flavor remains unchanged. Cooks prefer this variety of thyme for two reasons. Its flavor is superior to most other types, and its growth habit provides long, straight stems from which the leaves are easy to strip. Lazy cooks (like me) always appreciate that characterisitc.

Grow French thyme in full sun and well drained soil with added organic matter. Avoid using organic mulches, however, as they can sometimes encourage root damage. Once established, French thyme needs little attention other than occassional watering. Fertilization is unneccessary.

With all perennial herbs, it is wise to pay a little more for plants started from cuttings, rather than start your own from seed. Perennial herb seedlings can be delicate and difficult to handle, but more importantly the flavor varies from one seedling to another. Purchasing named varieities propagated vegetatively assures you will grow plants with the flavor profile you had in mind.

If you cannot find French thyme at your local garden center, do what I did. Check the produce section at your local market in spring. French thyme roots easily from cuttings. I have even found bunches of this herb at the grocery in which some of the stems already had roots. Purchase a bunch, select the healthiest looking stems, and strip the leaves from the bottom two inches of stem. (Use the leaves in tonight's dinner.) With a sharp knife, recut each stem at an angle. Then place the cuttings in a glass of water and set them in indirect light. Within a few weeks the cuttings should have rooted well enough to pot up. After potting, water well for the first two weeks, then reduce watering until time to transplant to the garden.

After a few seasons of growth, French thyme will become woody and bedraggled looking from repeated harvesting. Take several cuttings, treat as described above, and grow new plants to renew your herb bed. I like to have five or six plants growing at any given moment. That way, no one plant gets picked too often.

Although technically biennial, parsley grows best when treated as an annual. You can buy parsley plants at the local garden center, but it is much more economical to start your own from seeds. Many cooks swear by the flat-leafed Italian types, and these do have excellent flavor. Cold tolerance, however, is better for tightly curled varieties, such as 'Moss Curled' and 'Krausa.' This winter has been a mild one in Tennessee, and although I was prepared for cold weather with several plants of 'Krausa' the Italian variety I grew for a spring and summer crop does not seem to have been affected by several nights of freezing temperatures. Either variety will germinate better if pre-treated to eliminate the natural germination inhibitors present in the seed coat. Pre-treating them is easy. Place seeds in a small bowl and cover with hot water from your tap. Allow to sit for 24 hours. (You will notice the water becoming colored from pigments in the seeds.) Strain through a fine sieve, cover with hot water again, and allow to sit. Repeat this procedure for a total of four days. On the fifth day, strain out the seeds and plant. Expect germination in about a week, rather than the three weeks normally required. 

I sow parsley in individual small pots, because transplant shock can sometimes cause the plants to bolt prematurely. By going directly into a 4-inch pot, I avoid having to move plants up to larger pots once or twice during the grow-out period. Sow three or four seeds per pot, then thin out all but the best one when the plants have a pair of true leaves. Feed lightly with a balanced fertilizer to keep plants dark green and growing rapidly. Plants for overwintering should go into the garden in August or September. If you want to hedge your bets, you can grow plants during the summer and then dig up one or two and transfer to pots for indoor growing. Do this around Labor Day. Chances are, however, they will survive winter without protection. Overwintered parsley will begin growing abundantly as they days begin to lengthen and warm temperatures return. Soon thereafter, they will probably bolt.

Cilantro is parsley's cousin, and is, if anything, even more cold tolerant. This makes no sense to me, as the herb appears in abundance in foods from warm climate countries, such as Latin America and Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, you can have cilantro's special pungency all winter from a single sowing in autumn. The plants I am currently harvesting, one of which is shown in the photo at left, are from seed sown on September 26, 2011. They just sat there most of the winter, but as soon as our usual January thaw arrived, they put on a growth spurt. Had I started them earlier, in late summer, they would have been large enough to harvest for the holiday season. Hopefully, this year I will remember to do that.

The BB-size seeds of cilantro are easy to sow. You can grow a whole row, or just poke a hole with your finger and drop in a few seeds here and there in the garden. The plants are undemanding and will grow in any average garden soil. You can begin to harvest leaves when the clump is larger than six inches in diameter. In spring, they will self sow if left to bolt, or the seeds can be harvested and used in cooking as the spice, coriander. Plants for overwintering will grow much more slowly than in summer. If you use a lot of cilantro, I suggest growing about a dozen clumps.

One other member of the parsley family deserves mention. Chervil looks like lacy cilantro and has a mild, anise flavor. It goes well with fish, chicken, asparagus and other dishes that call for tarragon. Unlike tarragon, it is not difficult to grow and is extremely winter hardy. In Tennessee, it grows better in winter than at any other time of year, in fact. I have always ordered seeds online, as none of the local garden centers seems to carry it. Look for 'Brussels Winter.' Sow the seeds in small pots in September and transplant to the garden when they have at least two sets of true leaves. References recommend growing chervil in partial shade, but as a winter crop, it will do better in a sunny spot. Gray, cloudy winter days don't provide much solar energy to begin with, so shade is not necessary.