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Caribbean Herbs and Kitchen Garden

Caribbean herbs and produce grown at home or abroad: the right plants and names, pots, beds and grow lights, peppers, shado beni, callaloo and pimento, seasonal routines and preserving the harvest.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Then open the Marketplace in the app, search for Caribbean Herbs and Kitchen Garden, and click Install. It goes into your own files, and works offline from then on.

What it installs.

1

Pillar

1

Area

50

Projects

201

Starter tasks

🌴 Caribbean Life & Diaspora

Caribbean Herbs and Kitchen Garden

Growing Caribbean herbs and produce: shado beni, chive, pimento, peppers and callaloo, indoors or out, and preserving the harvest.

  1. Climate, sun and season check for your garden
  2. Choosing your first six Caribbean herbs and peppers
  3. Sourcing Caribbean seeds, slips and seedlings
  4. Plant health rules for seeds carried from home
  5. Containers and free-draining mix for tropical herbs
  6. Sunny windowsill and grow light set-up
  7. Backyard kitchen bed layout
  8. Soil test and first compost heap
  9. Garden notebook and harvest log
  10. Saturday garden round
  11. Dry season watering plan
  12. Monthly feeding and compost turn
  13. Pest and disease log for herbs and peppers
  14. Succession sowing of callaloo, bodi and herbs
  15. Late winter Scotch bonnet seed starting
  16. Overwintering peppers and tender herbs indoors
  17. Seed saving and a labelled seed tin
  18. Hurricane season garden preparation
  19. Annual kitchen garden review
  20. Growing shado beni in shade without bolting
  21. Spanish thyme and French thyme from cuttings
  22. Chive and escallion clumps that keep coming back
  23. Scotch bonnet and seasoning peppers from seed to ripe pod
  24. Callaloo from amaranth or dasheen bush
  25. Pimento and West Indian bay trees in pots or the yard
  26. Sorrel that flowers before Christmas
  27. Ginger, turmeric and fever grass from shop roots
  28. Bodi, ochro and caraili on a trellis
  29. Christophene vine on a fence or arbour
  30. Pigeon peas in the yard for Christmas
  31. Choosing a cold frame, greenhouse or polytunnel
  32. Gentle pest control that spares bees and lizards
  33. Rainwater barrels with mosquito-proof lids
  34. Keeping fowls, iguanas and giant snails off the beds
  35. Drying and freezing herbs from the harvest
  36. Pepper glut into mash, flakes and frozen pods
  37. Turning a patch of lawn into raised beds
  38. Plant care while you travel home for weeks
  39. Christmas harvest timed for sorrel, peas and peppers
  40. Plant and seedling swap with Caribbean neighbours
  41. Recording a grandparent's garden knowledge
  42. Balcony herb garden for a renter in a cold city
  43. Caribbean crops on an allotment or community plot
  44. Growing peppers and callaloo with children
  45. Raised, reachable beds for an older gardener
  46. Taking over a parent's yard garden back home
  47. Bush tea herb corner with careful identification
  48. Hydroponic herbs on the kitchen counter
  49. Heritage pepper varieties kept true from seed
  50. Selling surplus seedlings and herb bundles

Where it starts.

Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.

Climate, sun and season check for your garden

Before buying a single seed, it pays to know three facts about where you grow: how many hours of direct sun each spot gets, your last and first frost dates or your wet and dry season months, and where water and shelter are. A Scotch bonnet needs a long warm season and shado beni prefers afternoon shade, so these facts decide what goes where, whether that is a yard in Mandeville or a balcony in Birmingham.

First tasks

  • Walk round your space and list every spot where a pot or bed could go
  • Check the sun on each spot at 9am, noon and 3pm on a clear day
  • Look up your average last and first frost dates or rainy season months
  • Rank the spots for full-sun peppers and for part-shade herbs

Choosing your first six Caribbean herbs and peppers

Trying to grow everything at once usually ends with a windowsill of leggy seedlings and nothing to cook with. Picking six plants your household really uses, say shado beni, chive, Spanish thyme, French thyme, a seasoning pepper and a hot pepper, gives you a small garden that earns its keep in the pot from the first month.

First tasks

  • List the herbs and peppers your kitchen uses every week
  • Note what you spend on them at the grocer each month
  • Match each family name to its seed catalogue name
  • Pick six plants that suit your sunniest and shadiest spots

Sourcing Caribbean seeds, slips and seedlings

Shado beni seed, true Scotch bonnet and the right seasoning pepper are hard to find in a general garden centre, and the wrong variety can look identical until it fruits. A short list of trusted seed sellers, nurseries, Caribbean grocers and gardeners who share slips, the rooted cuttings people pass over the fence, saves hours of searching and a wasted season.

First tasks

  • Search two seed sellers for culantro and Scotch bonnet by variety name
  • Ask at the Caribbean grocer who sells seasoning pepper and thyme plants
  • Post in a local gardening group asking for Spanish thyme or chive slips
  • Record each purchase with seller, variety and date in the garden notebook

Make it yours.

Install Caribbean Herbs and Kitchen Garden, then tell Aurum the date you're aiming for. It checks whether the plan fits the weeks you actually have.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Blueprints are general information to help you organise your own work. They are not medical, financial, legal or other professional advice. See the Terms.