Growing & Using Herbs & Spices

___Herbs and Spices by Don Burke has a wonderful collection of herbs, and a few spices, that can be grown in your own garden. Herbs are plants that produce leaves that we can use in food and drink flavoring, or in medicines or perfumes.They are those wonderful plants like coriander, mint or basil as well as leaves from trees like the tea plant and the lemon-scented myrtle. Spices are similar products made from non-leafy plant parts like bark, fruit, seeds, roots and even pollen- like saffron, the world's most expensive spice. Usually they are sold dried out. Most spices simply can't be grown easily at home: can you imagine collecting crocus flowers to shake out the pollen to make saffron! Or removing the bark from a cinnamon tree to make cinnamon? Herbs are by far the best and easiest of all edible plants to grow. They are also the most useful edible plant group. But which herbs and spices should you grow?