Savory - growing and caring for spicy herbs in the garden
Many gardeners allocate space for spices in flower beds so that they always have fragrant herbs at hand. Among them, it is worth noting savory, the cultivation and care of which will not take much of your time. This unpretentious annual plant reproduces well by self-sowing. Bushes can grow in one place for more than 4 years, in contrast, for example, from thyme... The last one does not live on the old bed for more than 2 years and is degenerating. And savory will delight you for several more seasons, so be sure to plant it on your site. Where is it better to do it and how to care for fragrant bushes?
Choosing a landing site
To make the savory grow lush and give a good harvest of fragrant shoots, set aside a sunny place for it. In the shade, the bushes will begin to stretch. Even if you planted a plant as an ornamental plant, it will bloom better in the sun.
Savory loves soil fertile, light. If you have poor soil, dig up the flower bed just before planting. For digging, add a little organic matter (humus or compost) and mineral fertilizers.
Savory: growing and care
You can start planting savory in early May. This is easy: just sow dry seeds into the shallow grooves you made. Lightly sprinkle with earth on top and pour abundantly. Cover the beds with plastic wrap or other material to protect them from recurrent frost. Savory will not stand a drop in temperature and tender seedlings will die.
To prevent the seeds from deepening when watering, sprinkle the beds with sawdust. At the same time, they will mark the planting site and protect the crops from drying out.
You will see the first thin sprouts in a week. At this stage, savory needs attention, however, like any culture.
Further care of plants is as follows:
- Regular watering, especially in hot, dry weather.
- If the seeds have sprouted well and the crops are too thick, plant the seedlings.
- Top up the spice if necessary. In principle, savory can grow without additional fertilizing, if you fertilized the garden before planting.
- Pull the weeds out in time so that they do not drown the savory.
You can start harvesting herbs for culinary or medicinal purposes as soon as you see the buds. At this time (from about the second half of July) savory contains the most useful substances and essential oils. Cut off the tops of the plants with scissors.
As you can see, growing and caring for savory is not a very painstaking job. Taking a little time for it at the stage of seed germination, you will get a fragrant bed of spicy grass.