I'm an Herb Nerd with about 4 feet of book shelf dedicated to herb
books. Welcome to herb nerddom!
Love this book,--- Herbs, an A-Z Guide,
Gardening, Cooking & Health--, it's clear and concise. With wonderful pictures to learn what the herbs look like, I like it also covers basics, like making salves and tinctures. Really thorough!
Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Herbs-Guide-Gardening-Cooking-Health/dp/1435158423/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468799176&sr=1-15&keywords=A+to+Z+herbs
While no herb book can do it all, I also like -- Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs--. From an Amazon reviewer in 2003, he says, "I am a professional horticulturist who provides advice to commercial growers. This is the first book I recommend to anyone who is considering growing herbs commercially. It has been around for a long time and revised a time or two. It is not perfect (the perfect herb book doesn't exist yet), but if you are building a herb library, this book deserves a place there." Plus, it's really affordable if you decide buy it used. At this time, the book is listed at 1 cent. Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Rodales-Illustrated-Encyclopedia-Claire-Kowalchik/dp/0878576991/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468799494&sr=1-1&keywords=Rodale+herbs
Finally, the most amazing herb books I have ever found were sold at the Missouri Botanical Gardens Bookstore(1970's), I don't know if they still carry the small, thin herb books, like the ones about creating an herb garden and Japanese herbs( probably are out-of-print), but they were the ones that started my collection of herb books, and now unbelievably, they are now located on Amazon.
Links:
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Japanese-Brooklyn-Botanic-Printing/dp/B000LO8QJW/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468800174&sr=1-2&keywords=%22Japanese+Herbs%22
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Herbs-Helen-Whitman/dp/B000LP84WU/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468800222&sr=1-5&keywords=brooklyn+botanical+garden+books
The best thing about herbs would be running your fingers through the herb plant and rubbing the leaves and smelling the scent on your fingertips. There is nothing better than picking your culinary herbs by finding the herb variety which features the very best scent for you. For instance, I'm crazy about Provence lavender because the leaves smell exactly like the blooms! All the time, a person can have lavender and plentifully. Trim back the plant when it needs it, throw the leaves into a
dryer bag or old nylon knotted, and toss into your sheets drying in the dryer, nothing like lavender-scented sheets for sleeping if you delight in the smell of lavender. Make Santa Rosa Plum Lavender jam. The uses are endless.
Save so much money by growing your own
medicinal herbs, prepared by cutting, wash off, hand upside down to dry. When leaves are dry, strip leaves into a paper bag. Powder in a blender if you will be putting into a pill. and make herb capsules with a Cap-m-Quick device, using empty gelatin capsules size "0".
Cooking, if you like a certain type of cooking, look for cookbooks and grow your herbs for those recipe. Example this Herbs of Provence recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/223272/herbs-de-provence/
The savory is probably a Summer Savoy which is more delicate in flavor than the Winter Savory.
Once gardeners discover how useful herbs can be, it's easy to get a whole shelf of books.
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