Favorite Herbs~ Lemon Balm

One of my favorite kitchen garden herbs is lemon balm. I grow it in the corner of my herb garden right beside the house, and it comes up every Spring, in early April it starts peaking it’s little green leaves above the ground.

Lemon balm is a member of the mint family, but for me it isn’t as invasive. It does spread a little each year, but a little weeding around the edges gets it back in check when it starts to get out of control. It’s easy to grow, since it’ll grow in full son or partial shade and it doesn’t seem to be picky about the soil as long as it’s well drained.

(c) L Gerlach

Here are some things you can do with lemon balm:

• You can use lemon balm in most recipes in place of mint.
• I’ve used lemon balm to make minted sugar before, but I guess you would call it lemon sugar. You can store the lemon sugar for several months, and use it in recipes instead of plain sugar to add a lemon flavor.
• Add chopped lemon balm to sugar cookies to give them a lemony flavor.
• One of my favorite things to do with lemon balm is to add it to iced mint tea, it adds a lemony flavor, even if you don’t have any lemons.

Do you have any lemon balm growing in your herb garden? If you do what do you use it for?