Rosemary is part of a chef’s essential herb garden and everyone who plans on cooking with it at home should learn how to grow rosemary properly. A good rosemary bush can last you for years in the right conditions and will make sure you always have a fresh and tasty way to season hearty warm dishes. If you can get a rosemary plant to take hold you’re in a good spot, because these plants a hearty and exceedingly difficult to kill. With that, let’s talk about how you get a rosemary bush going in the first place.
How to Grow Rosemary: Quick Reference
| Preferred Soil Type | Well drained sandy, low organic matter soil |
| Soil pH | 6.0 to 7.0 |
| Watering Requirements | 1 inch every week to every other week |
| Fertilizer Recommendation | 10-10-10 or 20-20-20 all purpose fertilizer |
| Light Conditions | Full Sun – at least 6 hours per day |
| When to Plant | When temperatures are consistently above 55F |
| Ideal Temperature | 55F to 80F |
| Days to Grow | ~85-170 days from seed to harvest, ~55 days from cuttings |
| Average Yield | Several springs per day |
Growing Rosemary at Home
Rosemary is another Mediterranean plant that’s found itself used all over the world. Rosemary is a shrub with needle like leaves. As far as garden plants go it can seem a bit unusual, but once you understand how to care for your rosemary you’ll have more than you could ever use from a single plant.
Rosemary is both drought and temperature tolerant, though it does best between 55F and 80F. Once it is established it is incredibly easy to care for so long as you don’t over water it. Many people get the idea that they’re going to grow rosemary from seed, but we recommend against it.
Rosemary seeds have terrible germination rates. For best results we recommend getting a starter from a nursery or alternatively start from cuttings from someone else’s plant.
Where to Grow Rosemary
Rosemary can be grown outdoors, but if you live anywhere that has a cold winter we would recommend that you grow your rosemary in a movable container. The plant should be transported indoors for the winter and then can be moved back outside for the spring and summer months.
If your temperatures stay above 50F for most of the year you can likely grow a sizable rosemary bush outdoors, but be careful, if your climate is too hot you plant may suffer from that too.
Soil Conditions for Rosemary
Rosemary goes in relatively poor dry soil naturally. This may seem odd, but too much organic matter and any type of soil that holds on to moisture can kill the plant by giving it root rot. Sandy potting soil will work great for rosemary where other plants may not be able to stand it.
That being said the soil still needs to have some nutrients, and because sandy soil holds nutrients poorly you are often best fertilizing with a general purpose liquid fertilizer every couple of weeks as needed. You can use a 10-10-10 liquid fertilizer or even a 20-20-20 liquid fertilizer so long as the fertilizer is not standing liquid in the soil.
As for pH, rosemary likes soil that is 6.0 to 7.0. This shouldn’t be too hard to maintain with a sandy soil, but we always recommend that you check your soil pH before planting and several times a year after fertilizing. It’s an easy problem to fix if you know to look for it!
Growing Rosemary From Seed or Cuttings
Normally we like to encourage people to grow plants from seed, but with rosemary it’s not worth the effort usually. Not only is the germination rate low, they require heated soil with a seed starting mat. They also take 15 to 25 days to germinate and once they do they are not amazingly hearty yet.
Cuttings on the other hand are much easier to grow. Take a cutting from an existing plant and strip the lower two thirds of the leaves from the plant gently. Place your cuttings in a jar of fresh water and in an area that receives indirect sunlight. Change out every 3 to 4 days and wait for new roots to grow. In several weeks you should have some cuttings that are ready for transplant. If any of the leaves on your cuttings turned brown that indicates that those cuttings didn’t make it and can be discarded.
Caring for Rosemary
rosemary is very simple to care for. Make sure it gets at least 6 hours of full sun a day or equivalent from indoor grow lights. Water it once a week to every other week ensuring the soil dries completely between waterings.
Beyond this you only need to ensure that you are harvesting your rosemary regularly. While you can fertilize your plants for faster growth and higher yields, it is often not necessary in the first year.
How to Harvest Rosemary and Pruning your Rosemary Bush
Rosemary should be harvested often. As a rule of thumb, once you have a large enough plant you can harvest up to daily. The general idea for harvesting frequently is that it promotes plant growth and can encourage the plants to become bushier.
To harvest rosemary simply identify any branches that are 8 inches or longer and cut the top 2 or more inches back leaving at least 6 inches on the plant and enough greenery for it to regrow.
The nice thing about this is that this is also the way you prune your rosemary. Once a bush is well established and ready for harvest you can easily get in a rhythm with it and prune it regularly generating a continual supply of rosemary for your kitchen.
Using or Storing Rosemary
Rosemary can be used fresh, but you can also dry it to keep it for longer. To dry rosemary you can bundle sprigs together and hang them upside down. The sprigs of rosemary dry in roughly ten day depending on the humidity.
If you would like to store fresh rosemary you can put freshly cut sprigs into a plastic bag and store them in your fridge for up to 2 weeks.
To use your rosemary simply strip the leaves from the sprigs to add to any dish. You can also leave the sprigs whole for soups or sauces and remove them before serving. Additionally rosemary leaves can be chopped fine to be used with potatoes or other roast dishes where you want to avoid the woody crunch of rosemary leaves.
Rosemary Couldn’t be a Simpler Addition to Your Garden
Rosemary is great plant to keep for any herb garden. It’s one of the few things you can grow for years that will produce for you almost daily. There’s almost no end to what you can use your rosemary for and in any homestead garden we recommend that you grow at least one!