Culinary chefs and cooks use fresh herbs to create vibrant flavors. Italian parsley, basil, thyme, rosemary, lemongrass and Chinese parsley are just some of the herbs that you might find on the top of a chef's shopping list. Their expertise teaches them that the fresher the ingredients, the fresher the taste.

Dried herbs are widely available in our local stores, but they don't provide the same purity of flavor as fresh herbs. They can also go stale quickly.

Our local garden centers provide herbs in 4-inch pots that can be easily transplanted into any full-sun garden bed or container. They range from $2 to $4, which will be a significantly better investment than purchasing fresh herbs packaged at the store. A good starter garden collection would include rosemary, basil, Italian parsley and thyme. However, you are only limited by the herbs that your local garden center has on supply, so have fun choosing.

Recipes that call for 1 teaspoon of a dried herb will require 3 teaspoons of your fresh herb. The oils in dried herbs are more concentrated, in contrast to fresh herbs in which the oils are dispersed by high water content. The water content in fresh herbs is important in delivering the flavor that only fresh herbs can offer.

Harvesting regularly will ensure that you increase the amount of fresh succulent leaves that the plant produces every time you prune or cut. Home gardeners find that culinary herbs grow so quickly that they are harvesting for the whole block in no time. It is always a good practice to trim flowers regularly on the fresh herbs growing in your garden. Allowing herbs to flower will decrease the intensity of the oils in its leaves.

Chef Dale Thomas, Kapi'olani Community College culinary arts instructor and veteran Hale Koa chef, will be at the University of Hawai'i Urban Garden Center in Pearl City demonstrating how to use fresh culinary herbs tomorrow from 9 a.m. to noon.

"Chefs are thinking about cooking healthy, and using fresh herbs is so important when cooking healthy," Thomas says.

The O'ahu Master Gardeners are celebrating the first phase of the UGC's herb garden. Since June 2008, dedicated volunteers have amended the soil with organic amendments, propagated fresh herbs and laid a new brick walkway for easy access to the herbs. Visit the new culinary herb garden and discover cooking with fresh herbs with Thomas. Free recipes and tastings are included, along with herbs for sale.

For more information or directions, visit www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/ougc or call 453-6050.

Jayme Grzebik is an urban horticulturalist with the University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources Cooperative Extension Service. She can be reached at grzebik@hawaii.edu.