Arp rosemary - hardy?

Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 17:58:13 -0400
To: The Culinary Herbs & Spices List <HERBS.HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM>
From: Sara Anne Corrigan <SaraAnneC.AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: my new herbs

> I finally made it to the Herb Garden Store today, but was only able to pick up 4 nice plants. I bought a new rosemary, a lemon thyme, a basil plant, and a common thyme. The rosemary is an arp rosemary and she said that this is the one that will sometime winter over. My question is should I prune the roots which seem to be coming out of the bottom, and prune the top just as I would prune many plants at planting time to reduce the stress.

Rosemary ARP is generally coinsidered to be more winter hardy than rosemary officinalis but my experience in zone 6 is that neither will winter over if we have really hard sub-zero freezes - which of course we do more often than we don't. My advice for rosemary is to gently pull those roots apart at the bottom to loosen up the mass, then plant in a large container which you can bring inside in the winter. Do not need to prune it right away, unless your specimen is particularly long and leggy. If you pant your rosemary in a soilless mix, feed weekly with a foliar plant food such as Miracle Grow, but mix it only half strength.

You should be rewarded ere long.


From: Williams <rwilliams.RICA.NET>

>I finally made it to the Herb Garden Store today, but was only able to pick up 4 nice plants. I bought a new rosemary, a lemon thyme, a basil plant, (snip)

Don't worry about pruning the rosemary. It will be fine.