Lemon verbena. Peppermint. Hmm..they seem sorta ordinary. Now I'm curious about "exotic" herbs. I'd love to expand my garden as well.

The herbs I use all seem ordinary, dill, parsley, cilantro, basil are the annuals; sage, oregano, rosemary, mint, lemon balm, catnip and wormwood are perrenials. I also have garlic, elephant garlic, garlic chives and winter onions.

I did raise a couple out of the ordinary herbs a couple years ago. I had Stevia for 3 years before it died out. I even dried a quart of the leaves and used them to add to tea, but didn't like the bitter aftertaste so went back to honey. I also raised milk thistle which was a pretty plant, but I didn't do anything with it.

I love my lemon thyme. I use it on fish, chicken and even steak. It has that thyme flavor, and just a little something special with the lemon flavor. The other night we had steak that I salted and peppered and pan-fried on high heat, then covered it in coarse ground mustard and finely chopped rosemary, lemon thyme and garlic and then finished it in the toaster oven until medium-rare. Delicious!

I grow pretty much the same herbs Dorothy listed, and also grow borage, both the white-flowered and blue-flowered versions. The borage repels tomato hornworms, so I interplant it with my tomato plants, and the flowers attract bees and other pollinators. Borage leaves and flowers are edible and have a cucumber flavor to them. I also grow Mexican Mint Marigold, also known as Texas Tarragon. It is a good substitute for regular French Tarragon, which doesn't like our heat.

I also grow papalo as a summer substitute for cilantro.

I grew Milk Thistle plants from seed this year, planting them in a large rectangle around the corn plants, like a fence around the corn which already was in a fenced garden. The milk thistles are large prickly plants and I hoped they'd keep the raccoons out of the corn. The coons didn't get any of the corn, but I don't know if the milk thistle gets credit for it because I had three separate beds of corn, and only one was surrounded by milk thistle. It is rare the coons don't get all the corn, or at least try to, so something else (likely the distemper outbreak among the coons) accounts for them not getting any of the corn. The butterflies did like the milk thistle plants when they bloomed.

I grow fennel for the swallowtails. I grow tansy because (a) it is pretty and (b) it is said to repel flies, though I cannot tell it does.

I grow chamomile for chamomile tea (a little chamomile tea can help prevent damping off when you are raising seedlings indoors under lights too).

I tried Stevia too and didn't care for the bitter aftertaste so don't waste space on it any longer.

I grow comfrey merely so I can harvest the leaves (they are big-leaved plants) and put them on the compost pile. Comfrey plants are dynamic accumulators of potassium, so one way to put potassium into your compost is to grow and compost comfrey. As a bonus, theryare very attractive plants, especially when in bloom. Because comfrey also mines other nutrients from the ground, it adds nutrition to the compost pile, or you can cut off leaves and place them directly on the ground underneath other plants as mulch, and they'll release their nutrients back into the ground as they decompose. Or, you can brew comfrey tea and use it as a fertilizer in the same way you use manure tea or compost tea. Comfrey is considered a natural type of compost accelerator.

I like to grow feverfew because feverfew flowers are pretty and the tea is good for migraine headaches.

A new herb (and actually it is an herbaceous perennial, but you use the flower calyx in tea) I'm growing this year is Roselle. If you are familiar with Red Zinger tea, it is the calyx from the roselle flowers that put the zing in the red zinger tea. They don't bloom until late in the season, so none have bloomed yet.

I grow catmint as an ornamental, and it just gives the butterflies more flowers to enjoy, and some cats like catmint in the same way they like catnip.

I don't have just one favorite herb. I like growing and using all of them. Most herbs, when allowed to flower, attract beneficial insects and pollinators, which is important to me since I garden organically.

That's all I can think of at the moment, and I'm sure I forgot some of the herbs we grow. I'd almost have to walk through the garden with a notebook and jot down every herb I encountered, and maybe then I'd have a complete list.

Dawn

Don't laugh but, Agastache pallidiflora 'Purple Hyssop' leaves taste like licorice and its good in soups and spaghetti sauce. I tried this and started using it for that purpose if I am out of anise seed. I don't think its considered a common edible herb but maybe it is.

I got some seeds for one called Papalo that is an annual Mexican spice for salsa. I haven't tried it yet but plan to sow these next year.

Wow! Thanks for sharing all of your intriguing herbs :)