How To Grow A Rosemary Plant For Decades | 12 Secrets To Success

hey guys today I'm talking about complete Rosemary care from A to Z and the first thing I'm going to be talking about is overwintering it I'm going to dig it up today take it into the greenhouse and I'll tell you every step along the way whether it's spring summer winter fall exactly how to take care of it and how to avoid from killing it which is one thing I've done in the past so I'll tell you everything you need to know about [Music] Rosemary so now that I've got the root ball out of the ground I've got a premium potting mix that I made myself and it's my own personal recipe I'll put a link up above so you can do that but I also added about 3/4 to one gallon of perlite just to make sure it's well draining because this Rosemary all Rosemary prefers to be in well- draining soil so if it's not in well- draining soil you're probably going to kill it that's rule number one about making sure your per your Rosemary survives is to add that extra perlite in there now another good idea when transplanting the Rosemary into a pot is to use terracotta unfortunately I don't have a terracotta pot that I feel like is big enough so what I'm doing is I'm taking some extra precautions and I'm putting a couple of these plastic draining mats that's usually used in the bonai world I'll link some of those down below put them in the bottom of the pot and then I'm adding an extra layer of perlite right at the bottom to help that drain because it is so important that again that we have no moisture being retained in the pot now the root ball on this Rosemary is not near as massive as this pot it's about the same width but it's not as deep so I'm going to add our first layer of soil right at the bottom and that's going to give it something to sit on so I'll just put about one3 of the pot in the bottom so we can have the Rosemary at the right level right at the edge of the pot and we've got some Leaf clutter in there so we're going to pull that out I'm going to carefully set our Rosemary in the pot pack it down and then I'm going to add Ro I'm going to add extra soil around the perimeter of the Rosemary to make sure that it's stabilized in our pot right and we're going to use our soil scoop and just add as much soil as we need to around the perimeter of the Rosemary pack that in and then we'll take it into the greenhouse and we'll discuss all the important tips and tricks about keeping your Rosemary as healthy as possible throughout the winter and having it ready for next spring so after doing some Creative Printing to be able to still be into the shot the Rosemary is one of the most versatile plants that can survive in a lot of conditions but there's one thing it can't survive and that's extremely cold temperatures I live in zone 7A and anything below that zone six or 6B anything below that it's not going to survive winners eight zone eight you have no problem but in my zone it might live A few Winters and then we have a really cold hard snap and it dies I had a rosemary that was twice this size that stayed outside for many years but we eventually had one of those single digit winter events and it did kill it so you may have Rosemary survive for a while outside in zone 7 but eventually a cold snap will get it so it's best to overwinter inside a greenhouse or a garage R your basement now I do want to make the point that Rosemary can survive light frost we've already had two or three light frost this year this is the end of December it's kind of a late winter for us but you can see it's still quite healthy and Zone 8 does get light frost but we sometimes in January February and March can get extremely hard Frost so it can survive a light frost just remember you need to start preparing to bring it inside if a really cold dip is coming now this is just a standard Rosemary you get at the Big Box store but there is a couple of varieties that have been said and I've never bought them before but there are a couple that can survive down to really colder temperatures in zone six but I still think there's a chance of them dying but those two varieties are blue spires and arp arp Rosemary if you can find those two and you live in zone seven or six and you can't bring your Rosemary inside then try those two before you go with just the general Rosemary you're going to find it most hardware stores or nurseries now if you are bringing Rosemary indoors to your garage basement or even your finished area of your house it's okay to keep it in pots because it can be very well adapted for pots the ideal pot is a very large terracotta pot unfortunately I didn't have one this is plastic but terracotta tends to breathe and allow moisture to escape through its natural evaporation so if you have to go with plastic then make sure that you do the drainage trick I showed you at the very beginning to make sure the soil doesn't stay water loged throughout the winter because if it does you will come out in the springtime with a very dead Rosemary now if you are in that transition Zone 7B or 8A then one thing you can do when you plant your Rosemary outside make sure that it's in full sunlight and if it's possible to plant it near any large rocks they can retain some of that winter heat through the sunlight as it collects it during the day and at night time it can slowly release that heat another trick would be to plant it near a masonry wall brick wall concrete wall where it absorbs the heat during the day and releases it at night time so in that transitional Zone you need to make sure that even though you may not get hard freezes make sure that the Rosemary itself can stay warm at least a slightly bit more more warm than you might get during the overnight hours when it can drop down slightly below freezing now even though we talked about Rosemary as a being a plant that loves dry soils and it can tolerate it's the Mediterranean type environment and it fast draining soils can dry very quickly in a pot I found that Rosemary requires a little bit more watering in ground very little watering matter of fact I don't hardly have to water the Rosemary Outdoors at all in the ra garden beds but once it goes into a pot it's probably once every couple weeks I just give it a light watering to make sure the soil has just a little bit of moisture in it now here in zone 7A we rarely get snow and in zone 8 a 8B they extremely snow rare events but when they do usually the snow can be kind of wet and heavy so that's a good idea to try to make sure that no snow accumulates on it because it can break the branches and it can cause some damage there so just remember if there's a snow event coming and you are in zone 7B or 8A just make sure you cover it to make sure that it doesn't get a lot of snow on it because that can do some damage to the structure of the plant as well now Rosemary is a sun-loving plant and it's kind of this is kind of a difficult thing if you're bringing it into a garage or basement because there's going to be a very limited amount of sunlight so you will need some type of L LED light it's going to thrive best with six to eight hours of light so if you don't have a window that's a south facing window in a garage or basement or if you can bring it even into a finished area you have to be careful there because you can have really dry air that can dehydrate the plant but just remember you're going to need a grow light I'll link one down below but you're going to need that to have at least five hours of that going each day on a timer but six to eight hours is optimal for the plant to stay as healthy as possible throughout the winter months now when I mentioned dehydration in a finish area it's perfectly okay to have it inside that area but just make sure that you don't have a vent or heated something like a radiator or a heater that's putting direct heat on it because that can really dry the plant out it's okay just to have it near a window but as long as there's no air hitting it directly you should be okay now if you do have your Rosemary in a finished area you want to make sure you have a soil meter so you can test the soil moisture at a deeper depth not just the finger test you can find out how dry it is in a deeper point so I'll link one of these as well but maintaining that dry soil is actually one of those things that your Rosemary is going to prefer water log soil is the worst thing you can do to a rosemary probably the number one way that most people kill them also in the winter time when people see them at the Big Box store they've been pruned in the shape of a Christmas tree so that's where most people actually come in contact with rosemary for the first time is they see that is kind of sold around the Christmas and holiday season some people may have just received one over the last couple of weeks since we've just passed the holidays so that's one thing to remember is just to make sure you have a soul meter and if you have that decorative tinfoil red or green around it you need to remove that because that may not be allowing the Rosemary pot to drain and you may find out very quickly that that's why they're dying on you right after the holidays if you've overwintered your Rosemary indoors one thing you need to consider is fertilizing and do that in late winter or early spring with an organic fertilizer mixed half strength and you can do that two or three times about once every week right before you move it outside so this is going to be a late winter early spring thing when the chance of heavy Frost have passed that's one thing you have to remember you need to keep that in mind when you're planning on taking it outside you can get an app you download I believe it's called weather.gov and that will tell you what the weather coming up will be and you might be able to find another app I the name of it escapes me but it's a frost warning app and it will tell you when your expected last frost date is and you can find that also on weather.gov now when you're picking out the size pot you're going to have to guesstimate the size but this pot is probably even a little undersized for this size plant generally let's say you have an A in size Rosemary you're going to want an 8 in deep pot this one probably could be maybe 25% larger for this size but a rosemary plant will grow into the size pot you put it in so the bigger pot you have the bigger the root ball will get and it will become quite large some rosemaries can grow six to eight feet tall and become quite huge as will their root balls now the pruning of the Rosemary really isn't needed in the winter and it's probably not a good idea to do that if you're going to leave it outside until right before right after your first Frost because when you do that pruning that can also dry out some of the the branches so it's just a better idea to wait till late winter or early spring once you take it back outside or if you're living in a climate where you can do that wait till late winter early early spring till your last FR Frost state is passed then you can do that pruning also never take more than onethird of the plant off because it can be too much of a shock to the plant so taking about oneir is going to be your ideal Point once you've passed that frost a now I've been quite busy this last spring summer and fall and I didn't really have a chance to do a lot of pruning on this but if you do annual pruning or biannual pruning you'll have a rosemary that's more full and more of a shrub rounded look that's normally what I like this is a little bit too leggy for the way I really like it to look but just remember if you want your Rosemary to be more dense and full to make sure you prune it at least once a year if not twice a year but avoid summer pruning and try to avoid late fall early winter pruning pruning early early fall will be fine and early early spring is fine but those extreme temperature months you want to avoid doing any heavy pruning now one of the reasons I grow my Rosemary in my raised garden beds and in pots is the clil the clay soil I have is very heavy it's very water retaining and a lot of times it can you can dig out a small hole pour water in it'll take a long time to drain out so it's always a good idea if you have heavy clay soils to make sure that you do a lot of amendments to the soil especially perlite and other things that will help it drain such as vermiculite can hold water but it can also Aid in draining so I still recommend using pots or raised gardens garden beds to do your Rosemary because I just feel like that's going to render you some better results in the long run again if you have well draining soil then you don't have this problem if you have really sandy soil no problem you can put it directly in that ground without having to worry about anything such as root Rott if your Rosemary does flour that's a great time to prune it once the flowering season is over you can prune it back back and that will also prevent it from becoming too leggy and too straggly also those prunings that you take off you can dehydrate them in a food dehydrator put them in a blender and blend them into a powder and then you'll have a rosemary powder that you can add to things like salt or other types of spices you can use but that's really important to remember is that you want to do that to make sure you don't over prune your Rosemary now if you don't have a food dehydrator and you want to dry some of your Rosemary sprigs after you cut them you can put them on a baking tray in your oven at about 275 for about 2 hours and that will really dry them out and then you can go into the powder form once you put it into a food processor blender or even a coffee grinder now one of the insects and I've never seen it in my area but I've heard about a rosemary beetle is kind of a very small greenish Beetle and sometimes you'll find them on the underside of the leaves anywhere from Autumn to Spring you can look for those very carefully as you examine the plant during those months and I'll put a link up above to some natural organic insect killer that works really great that I made a video about previously so here in zone 7A we get extremely humid Summers and the humidity last for months at a time so you want to make sure that if you're in that type of environment and even if you just have a lighter amount of humidity in the summer you want to plant them farther apart because you want to allow plenty of air flow so if you plant them multiple rosemary plants together that can cause a problem in itself so you want good air flow between each plant so give them about one to two feet in between each plant and remember if you're not planning on keeping it pruned that could go to 3 to 4 feet because they will get quite large now there's a lot of varieties of Rosemary and I'll put down in the description below eight that I know of some of them have blue flowers some of them have pink flowers and they all have different slightly different growing habits so I'll put a description with each of the eight types that I'm familiar with and put that in the description below now as far as location and where you want to plant your Rosemary you want to make sure that it is in complete full sun this is a Mediterranean plant plant and it requires and needs full sun all day long the original Rosemary that I had that grew to at least twice this size had some shade on it in the later part of Summer and that's because the sun our sun went further into the northern sky and I had some trees that were shading it so make sure that wherever you put it that all summer long that it retains and has plenty of full sunlight all day so I have my Rosemary planted with my other herbs I have in the garden but they also make excellent companion plantings for cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli cauliflower kale and those kind of plants so if you want to plant them in the garden plant those together with cruciferous vegetables now Rosemary does prefer the soil to be more on the acidic side and that's another great thing about these type of PH meters a soil meter is that it can tell you exactly what your pH is in your soil and they do prefer 6.0 to 7.0 neutral to slightly acidic and that will help you as I mentioned earlier I put one in the description down below and I've been been using this one all summer long and I've really enjoyed how well it's worked moisture light and pH monitor so if you are planning your Rosemary and open ground or raised vegetable garden I would recommend putting in about two handfuls of really really rich compost I've got a video that I showed how to make your own composter I actually have two types of composters I have a vermic composter which is a worm composter with take which takes kitchen scraps and food items and the worms break that down and make a really rich comp compost I actually think that's better and then a general composter that I make so I'll link both of those together so you can get an idea of what kind you want to build yourself if you want to do that but it really works well and it saves you some money from having to buy compost from The Big Box store now if you're planning on using Rosemary and you're cooking there's a little trick to getting the most flavorful Rosemary is you're taking that last four to six inch top of the stem off but one thing to remember if you collect those stems before it blooms you're going to get a much more flavorful experience from your Rosemary once they have bloomed a little bit less so just remember you want to do that before the rosemary blooms and you'll have a really great experience with using it in your cooking I mentioned two common ways you could dehydrate your Rosemary whether it's in a food dehydrator or in an oven for a couple hours but that's not even necessary if you can take your cuting that top four to six inches turn them upside down and then hang them in a cool dry area that's well ventilated that will also dehydrate in a about two weeks now if you want to propagate your Rosemary from cuting that's really easy to do I made a video previous about exactly how to do that I'll link that up above but you can do that or you can grow from seed I think growing from seed is going to be a little bit harder because sometimes seed is not true to type you may get another type of Rosemary depending on how it was pollinated during the flowering season so I think cutting is your best bet if you want to propagate Rosemary now one disease that happens with rosemary is powdery Milo you'll notice there'll be kind of a powdery like substance on the leaves and that is usually caused by improper drainage whether you have it in a pot or in an open ground so you can kind of prevent that by making sure that your soil is extremely well draining and it's not in heavy clay soil as I mentioned earlier as I talked about earlier the beetles that are sometimes found on them I've never found those in my area but aphids and spidermites can be a problem and I've got a video about how to control those as well I'll link that up above so guys Rosemary is probably one of my favorite plants when it comes to the smell and it's really great to have around the holidays because it always reminds me of Christmas especially when you crush the leaves in your hand it just gives you that feeling even in the summertime I still get that sort of feeling so I hope you'll try growing it and just follow along those rules and you'll have a lot of success with rosemary and you may have to do a lot of pruning because it grows really fast in one season so guys I really appreciate you watching if I left anything out I hope you'll leave it down below in the comments and hope you like And subscribe if you found the video helpful have a great [Music] day

Channel: Zen Garden Oasis

Views: 253,094

Keywords: rosemary, growing rosemary indoors, rosemary care guide, rosemary plant, rosemary shrub, rosemary cuttings, rosemary tips, growing rosemary guide, how to grow rosemary, planting rosemary, rosemary care, overwinter rosemary, rosemary from seed

Id: 7FNOmtWcEl4

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023