Bradger, Basil and Thai basil are what inspired me to begin growing hydroponics in the off-season, as there is nothing like having the fresh herbs!
I have tried many herbs indoors through the years. I only grew sage when cloning cuttings for others (as
bbq noted, it's a perennial, and I don't really need it in the hydro, plus, it is one of many plants that seems to attract spider mites. Just in the short time in the cloner, the spider mites would appear. Others I've grown, which grew vigorously, but attracted the spider mites, were holy basil, rau ram, and rice paddy herb. As soon as these plants were removed, the SMs disappeared - would not spread to everything else. Same thing with spearmint attracting aphids, which would gather on the stems, not the leaves! They would grow like wildfire, yet the aphids would be covering the stems! Yet peppermint never got them.
The basils I have found best for growing indoors are Serrata and Gecofure. Both of these are compact, bushy varieties, the latter a Genovese type, and both with delicious flavors. And for Thai, the Siam Queen has the best flavor, and is the most commonly found variety. Lemon basils grow sort of leggy, and have a tendency to bolt quickly, indoors or out. Here's a photo of some of the overgrown basil in my hydro - the Serrata in the L rear, and the Gefofure that large plant in the front.
Basil, and some other stuff. by
pepperhead212, on Flickr
Basil does great for about 5-6 months, then begins to go downhill. But I don't need it much past 7 months - I root a bunch of cuttings for outside, and when that takes, the inside stuff isn't used.
Other herbs I have grown indoors are chives, parsley, dill, green perilla, cutting celery, cilantro (can't grow this outside!), epazote, and Syrian oregano, these last two needing frequent trimming. Parsley and cutting parsley get huge roots - I found that curly parsley is better, in that the root system is much smaller. Same thing in soil pots, for the parsley, as the flat leaf gets rootbound quickly. I had 3 plants in a fairly large windowsill box one time, and in early June they were rootbound! The regular curly (not triple) did not do this, even by the end of the season.
Rosemary is something I tried growing indoors many years ago, but it would rootbound within a year, even in a large pot. So I grew it in the garden, and would cover it when temps got under 20°. My old plant died a couple years ago, because the cover blew off, and I couldn't get out to cover it, due to a surgery. So last year I started with 3 new ones, one inside, in a 4 1/2 gal fabric pot, the other two outside, one left uncovered, and it survived 7° temps! The one in the pot did the same thing as before - rootbound in less than a year, but got huge! About 4 times the size of those in the ground. Still, not worth repotting yearly. I'll stick with covering, and hopefully won't have any problems doing that in the future!