Has anyone actually tried growing their own herbs?

I was thinking about starting a kitchen garden yesterday because basil is so much better fresh and my mother used to grow everything in these terracotta pots on her back porch with little painted labels which I remember now as being one of the most calming parts of childhood summers before we moved three towns over and lost that space entirely. We had this old cat named Barnaby who would knock things off windowsills constantly so you basically couldn't leave a plant unattended for more than five minutes without something getting decapitated by a tail swish which is actually quite useful to know now because I'm planning on getting basil and rosemary but I don't have any cats currently. Anyway the point of this thread is whether someone could recommend good starter herbs that aren't too fussy about sunlight conditions since my apartment gets mostly indirect light from north-facing windows which isn't ideal for most things apparently

Tried basil on the windowsill last summer — worked great, but the mint took over everything in a

Yeah I've grown my own rosemary and mint but the kitchen herb garden thing is a lot more complicated than it looks because everyone tells you to just put them in pots on the windowsill which works for maybe one plant before they either get too big or die from the temperature fluctuations. The real secret is having a bigger space than your countertop — I moved mine into an old window box that used to sit above my back door and now everything thrives because it gets actual sunlight instead of just indirect brightness. Speaking of sun light my grandfather had this crazy greenhouse in his backyard filled with geraniums that smelled like a perfume factory and he'd make us spend every Saturday weeding them which I hated at the time but honestly looking back at those photos from when I was eight I can see how much it probably shaped everything about how I approach gardening now because you learn patience through repetition. There was this one summer though where we had that terrible heatwave and almost lost his entire basil crop in three days and he just stood there staring out the glass window for hours like a man who'd lost something irreplaceable which is what real gardeners are like — they get attached to plants beyond reason because it becomes personal work. So my advice would be start small with one or two varieties instead of trying every herb at once because you'll burn yourself out and then stop, plus mint must go in its own pot or it will take over your entire property literally I know this from experience.

I'm trying basil right now on my windowsill and it's going surprisingly well — I think good light is the key. My cousin grew mint in her backyard for years and said she just had to watch out for cats because it spreads like crazy. Definitely worth a shot if you have some sunny space!

I've been growing rosemary and thyme for about five years now, started small with a few pots on my kitchen windowsill and gradually expanded to a raised bed out back — I learned pretty quickly that basil is finicky as hell indoors because it needs more light than most people realize. But the real tip I wish someone had told me was about drainage; if your soil doesn't drain well, rosemary will basically dissolve in its own moisture within weeks and you'll be left with a soggy stick. Oh this actually reminds me of when I tried to keep that huge fiddle leaf fig for three years because my friend convinced me they were the easiest houseplants ever — which was obviously a lie since it died every six months from whatever light conditions I gave it, and we spent an entire summer blaming each other's apartment lighting while it slowly turned brown and brittle in its ceramic pot sitting by the window. Anyway back to herbs, if you want mint just keep it in a separate container because it will invade literally any nearby plant like some sort of green plague — my rosemary started getting overtaken by mint shoots every spring despite being forty feet away in the garden bed which is physically impossible but somehow happened and I'm still not sure how. Just use a good potting mix, plenty of sun, and don't overwater everything at once.

I grow basil and mint on my balcony with zero issues, but rosemary died twice because I kept overwatering it — it needs to be basically ignored for a few weeks at a time. The trick is matching the herb's native environment rather than

I've been doing this for about four years now and honestly I would never go back to store-bought basil because you can actually taste that it wasn't grown in a warehouse somewhere with no sunlight just sitting on a shelf for three weeks but the learning curve is real I killed probably twelve mint plants in my first year because everyone tells you to put mint in pots but then someone told me not to because of roots and then I tried both methods and kept running out of space on my balcony which was already tiny to begin with anyway it reminds me this one time back in college I lived in that cramped apartment above the laundromat where everything smelled like detergent all day and I had maybe three square feet of ledge space and someone told me to grow herbs too because it would improve my mental health apparently which is wild when you're not a plant person but I bought this tiny rosemary bush from a nursery downtown and it survived despite literally nothing except that one corner that caught about an hour of direct sun in the afternoon every day and somehow the smell changed everything about that place. Anyway, if you're just starting out my biggest tip is to start with rosemary or thyme because they can handle neglect better than anything else — basil will die within 48 hours without water but it looks amazing on a plate so keep those two in mind before you go spending money at the garden center

Tried it last spring. Basil is easy, mint takes over everything.