Two unusual herbs for your herb garden

Here are two of my favorite herbs, sorrel and lovage. I use these herbs every day from early spring to late autumn for herb recipes, salads, herbal teas and tisanes. These herbs grow in my herb garden outside my kitchen door, and what makes them extra special is the fact that you can't usually find these fresh herbs in your food store.

Both sorrel and lovage herbs are easy to grow in a herb garden or in a pot in your yard. Now is the time to plant herbs for cutting all through summer.

Herbs have been grown as long as man has been alive. Herbal remedies were used centuries ago before modern medicine, and many people still use traditional herbal medicine and alternative herbal remedies .

Here we'll take a look at my 2 special herbs, and see why they might be candidates for a place in your own herb garden. You don't have a herb garden? Well , now's the time to make one, even if it's just a few tubs or pots outside your door or on a windowsill.

Lovage is a herb that has a similar flavor to celery. The lovage herb can be grown easily from seed, and once lovage is established in your herb garden it will grow happily for years.

Use lovage in stews and casseroles for an interesting flavor. It has a flavor rather like celery.

Make a lovage soup. Leek and lovage soup or potato and lovage soup make a great combination, and the bright green color and fresh herb taste are winners. Here is a recipe for old fashioned lovage and potato soup from Food.com.

Make a lovage tea, or tisane, or lovage cordial. This is said to aid digestion.

Use lovage chopped and mixed into cream cheese for a herb spread, or make a  lovage dip, or use lovage to stuff a chicken or baked potato. Chop lovage leaves into a summer salad.

Readers in the UK can buy lovage , sorrel and all sorts of wonderful garden things from the wonderful gardeners' website called Crocus. If you're not in the UK but love plants, take a look for inspiration.

Sorrel grows very easily in most herb gardens, but is rarely seen in your food store. Fresh sorrel leaves have an acid, slightly bitter taste, so you can use them in cooking in place of lemon. For instance, a sorrel sauce is great with fish, or stuffed into a barbecue chicken. Here is an excellent recipe for sorrel sauce from honest-food.net.

Sorrel soup is great, or you can use young sorrel leaves in a salad.

Sorrel has long been used for herbal remedies, and it's acidic nature has led sorrel to be used for cleansing the digestive system.

You can grow sorrel from seeds, and once sorrel starts to grow in your herb garden, you'll need to keep trimming the tops to stop it from bolting. I strongly recommend sorrel to you- it's a great, rather underrated herb.

If you love in the UK and love gardens, you probably already know about Crocus, which is a wonderful garden and home website.You can buy herbs, plants and all manner of garden items from Crocus.

Those of you in the USA might just enjoy looking at the Crocus pages for the sheer pleasure of it!

If you love the glorious scents of nature in your home , then the glorious website of L'Occitane is for you. I love the Amber Home perfume- rated 5 star by it's users.