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Perhaps you don’t have enough room, or time, for a full-size garden. An herb garden is an easy way to dabble in gardening and can be done on a window sill, porch or anywhere where you can stick a pot. Planting an herb garden is a good project for young kids, as it can be done in about 10 minutes — just find a container, pour in the potting soil, dig a little hole for each plant, and gently plop it in. Voila! And unlike seeds, there’s no wait time before you can use the plants.

I have a rectangular planter on my deck rail, for easy dinner-time access from the kitchen. A larger pot on the deck holds extra rosemary (purportedly a natural mosquito-repellant) and several varieties of mint for those refreshing summer cocktails, er, beverages.

If you want to make sure you’re getting organic herb plants, take a look at the farmers market. Many farmers are offering herbs this spring as they wait for their other crops to come in. We picked out sage, thyme and rosemary (above) from Medina & Sons this past weekend at the West End Alexandria market — the Falls Church farmers market has several plant vendors, including our ecoganic CSA Potomac Vegetable Farms.

Check out this Middle Eastern Stuffed Pita recipe from Aviva at PBS Kitchen Explorers for a tasty way to use your home-grown mint.

What herbs are your kids growing? Do they eat them?

“Worm Wednesday” is a new feature here to highlight the enthusiasm kids have for gardening.  If you’d like to contribute, send me a picture and description or story of your garden to foodietots@gmail.com, and you could see your garden here on Foodie Tots!