Rosemary
Type: Perennial (treated as an annual sometimes)
Description: Woody with pine-like leaves
When to plant: 3 months before the warmer months so perhaps November or December
Level of difficulty: 3
How to plant: Rosemary is a beautiful herb that every cook needs!
If using a seed starter tray from the store:
- Get a seed starter container. If you don’t know what one looks like, as someone in a store like lowes or home depot. The container will have many small pockets in a tray for you to propegate your seeds.
- Make sure the soil in the little pockets are moist, and used all of them to plant the rosemary seeds. Rosemary seeds need patience because they take long to germinate and losts of them might not even germinate. (If you do not want to start from seed, you can propegate a piece of rosemary).
- Follow the directions on the seed starter and wait for rosemary to germinate and sprout.
If doing this manually on a different tray:
- Wash your planting tray with soap and very hot water to sterilize it first.
- Fill the tray to an inch below the rim of the tray with seed starter.
- Place rosemary seeds a half an inch apart on top of the soil. Lightly press them in, do not cover with soil.
- Cover the tray with plastic wrap, leave one side loose to allow air circulation. Place trays in a dark area with a temperature ranging from 75 to 85F.
- Check the tray daily for moisture. If you water it like normally (with drops or streams of water) this will cause a seed disturbance. So lightly mist with a spray bottle.
- When the seedlings (sprouts) emerge, move the trays to a sunny spot and remove the plastic.
- When the seedlings become 2 inches tall, move them to their individual pots. Make sure to check the soil for moisture.
- When the plants become 4 to 5 inches tall, move them to their own individual pots and move them into a sunny space.
- Allow the soil to dry in between watering, water more if the plant has lots of dry spells.
- Harvest the rosemary when the plant is about 1 to 2 feet tall by cutting the branching stems halfway or ¾ ‘s of the way. You can use them fresh or dry them.
Tips/Facts/Uses:
- Rosemary likes soil that is slightly alkaline.
- Heat up butter in a pain with some rosemary leaves. It’s delicious.
- If you dry a sprig, hang it up somewhere you want to smell nice. Rosemary has a beautiful scent.
- The germination of rosemary is unpredictable. So plant a LOT of seeds.
- If you are allowing the rosemary to be outside in a pot, mulch it heavly for winter. If not leaving it outside, you can just bring it in.