Upright Rosemary

I love the aroma and flavor of rosemary, especially with roasted veggies. So I was disheartened when both our upright and prostrate rosemary pot-bushes were killed by the harsh frosts this winter (my own dumb fault for not moving them inside I realize).

So last week I picked up a couple of new upright rosemary plants at my favorite garden center. And today I took advantage of a sunny lunchtime today to pot them out.

After consulting with the highly useful The Kitchen and Garden Book of Herbs I discovered that rosemary likes ‘sharp, well-drained soil and full sun’, so the compost I potted the last plants in was probably a little on the rich side, which I guess might have held back their root development.

This time I went for a 50/50 mix of soil & compost from one of last year’s squash tubs, and some of the pebbly, gritty stuff from the spoil tip in the back corner of the garden, where I dumped all the stones and builders’ rubble that I sieved out of the veg patch when I prepped it a couple of years back.

As I mentioned before, my thyme plants seem to have thrived on this stuff, so hopefully the similarly-mediterranean rosemary will do as well. To help with the Mediterranean conditions, I used a couple of moisture-sucking terracotta pots.

First off, a dozen or so plastic milk bottle caps – in lieu of broken crocks – for added drainage, then the spoil / spoil mix:

Then the rosemary plants go in and everything is topped with washed gravel to keep the weeds down:

Those two are going back in the greenhouse for now, until I know for sure the frost-risk is absolutely minimal.

Hopefully they’ll take well and provide plenty of savory flavoring for years to come. I might even plant them out in one of the perennial beds (with Jo’s permission) at a later date, see if I can get them to bush up properly.