can I grow herbs in the desert?

[boricuaqueen327]

I am working on a SFG with lettuce, carrots, and radishes. I am really, really interested in growing my own herbs such as calendula, chammomile, lavendar etc but I can not find any gardeners groups in my area. I live in southwest AZ (desert). Is this going to be feasible at all for me?

[Lit Chick]

I also live in AZ, and I am not a good gardener. At all. However, we have some herbs that do FANTASTIC.
We planted a small semi-circle raised bed when we bought our house a few years ago. Almost everything in it is new - we had an English thyme and a sage that were great for about 3 years, then died off - but I hear that's pretty normal.
The current planting is:
french lavender - 2nd year and it's huge and lovely and very fragrant.
rosemary - this does excellent out here. We have 3 big bushes in the front yard, and then this little one we keep trim for cooking
sweet basil - this does CRAZY well, and seems to really take off when it gets hot. By the frost, our basil plants are huge bushes.
sage this also does well, but stays fairly small. If we pruned it probably would have gotten bigger.
Pineapple sage We'll see - the first time we tried this one, it got blasted at the first hint of heat.
oregano can be hit or miss. Our first year, it did wonderfully. The next year it came back, but weak. Plants since then have given up early - but then again we've been very lazy and water is the only care the garden has gotten recently. So far, this year is holding up.
thyme Starts out small, but it's hardy. Last year we planted some fancy varieties - caraway, lemon, and lime. They all dies fast- but the plantings we got were tiny and probably needed more care before being left to the garden.
Last year we also had thai basil and it was just as massive and hardy as the sweet basil.

We've tried catnip, marjoram from seed, and many different types of mint - no luck. All of those were in containers though - and I think they worked like an oven and cooked the roots. I might just go ahead and plant mint in the bed and let it run wild if it wants to - I love mint.

And finally, we have a sad little twig of laurel (Greek bay) in a pot. We thought it was dead... and then it grew a leaf, and lost it. Bay is reeeaaallly slow growing, so I'm nit sure if it's dead or not - but I don't expect it to survive.