How To Grow Your Own Mason Jar Herb Garden

If you are looking to have your own herbarium at home without having to pay a fortune, you are in the right place. You don’t have to pay for special flower pots to set up your little garden with the herbs you want.

These jars are ideal for all environments, even the coldest ones since you only need water, sunlight, and good soil to make the herbs bloom, and thus have both natural and fresh products at any time. In this guide, we will teach you how to make your own mason jar herb garden from materials that you can find perfectly at home.

Things you will need

Actually, the materials are very simple to get. Even some won’t be necessary even for you to look for them because surely you already have them:

• Mason jars: Any glass jar will do, you can even use previously cleaned recycled containers, like jars of jam or jars of pickles, for example.
• Mason jars holder (optional): You don’t need the holder to make the herb garden. This object is simply used to place our jars more aesthetically and comfortably, wherever we place them.
• Soil: Good soil can be perfectly prepared at home, from organic matter, or it can be bought in supermarkets or in specialized garden stores.
• Rock/Pebbles: They should be small enough to fit inside the jar, but large enough that a layer of gravel doesn’t form. Any stone that you see on the street of the indicated size can be useful.
• Sand: The sand doesn’t need to be of any kind. We just have to make sure it’s clean and doesn’t have any toxic substances that could harm the plant.
• Plant/Herb seeds: Although theoretically, any plant would work, it’s more advisable to plant aromatic herbs and spices. Larger plants may run out of space and won’t grow properly.
• Paper and stick (optional): If we are going to make more than one mason jar with different herbs and we want to differentiate them. We will place it once we have finished our herb garden and have watered it.

Step by step guide

The jars they may have can be of different sizes. Here the few measurements that there are, which are about how much sand, pebbles, or soil to put change depending on the size of the container. We take the measurements for a 0.5-liter glass bottle.

Image credit: rebeccasbirdgardensblog.blogspot.com

1. In a clean mason jar, we place a layer of sand approximately one finger thick. (sizes change depending on the size of the jar)
2. Place a few stones, so that the soil has enough separation with the sand, as well as leaving spaces between the rocks to drain the water. The thickness changes, but it should be slightly thicker than the layer of sand previously thrown.
3. Place the soil. It has to be the thickest layer of the three, and it should take up about half of the mason jar. Add soil until you reach the part where the jar shrinks.
4. Add the seeds. We must take a few seeds of the plant that we want and spread them through the soil. After we have done it, we have just put the soil to the top of the jar. In this way, the seeds are protected.
5. Water the soil. Once our mason jar herb garden is finished, it’s necessary to water the soil. You have to water it only if you see the soil dry, the good thing is that thanks to the layer of pebbles and sand placed, the excess water that we can pour seep out of the soil and it goes to the sand, protecting the plant from overwatering it. That water that can end up in the sand, when evaporating, will return to the soil, allowing it to be kept wet for longer.
6. Place the mason jars in a sunny spot. We just have to wait for the time our plant needs to grow.
7. Once it has grown enough, you can take advantage of your plant, but never harvest more than a third of the plant because otherwise, you could harm the rest of the herb.

As you may have read, it’s not only cheap, but it’s very easy to do, so you no longer have an excuse not to enjoy the freshest herbs without leaving your home.