CLOSE

Give your herb garden a little extra attention by taking the time to trim your herbs so that they can continue to flourish for the rest of the growing season. With a little patience and a pair of sharpened snips, you’ll find that caring for your plants is the perfect dose of mid-summer Zen.

Why prune herbs: It is good for the health of the plant — it will encourage fresh growth, propagate new, rooted growth (more plants), control the size of the plant, and give you a fresh assortment of herbs to use.

How often should you trim: There is a difference between light and hard pruning. Your goal is to keep the plant thriving and growing, not impair its ability to produce new growth. When you see blossoms forming, remove them to redirect the growth energy back to the leaves and roots. Blossoms use up a lot of the plant’s energy, causing its growth to slow and peter out for the season.

Light pruning applies to herbaceous plants like basil, stevia, cilantro, etc. They thrive all summer and will die off or lose their vigor in the winter months. Monitor their growth in herbaceous plants all season long because frequent trimming will encourage your plant to sprout new growth, and continue to grow bushier and more productive. The process of  “tipping” refers to cutting off the top few inches of new growth to encourage the branch to grow outward in two directions at the break. 

Tipping  will help to maximize the plant’s willingness to branch out. It works well with dill and basil. Pruning herbaceous plants is necessary for the health of the plant and surrounding plants in the garden also; either they get large and begin to suffocate neighboring plants in the same shared bed, or their growth slows tremendously too early in the season, reducing the amount of leafy growth to harvest. 

With all herbs that you are pruning readily (every few weeks during peak season) be wary of removing too much plant. Big leaves, or leaves at the base of the plant area, are really important for the health of the plant because they absorb so much more sunlight than smaller leaves with new growth. Make sure you keep big leaves intact for the overall health of the plant. You are safe to prune back half of a healthy plant without reducing its ability to rebound.

Hard Pruning refers to evergreen or heartier perennial herbs such as plants with woody stems like rosemary, lavender, thyme and sage that even without much maintenance are still capable of becoming robust. Upgrade to stronger clippers when pruning these plants. They should only be pruned once or twice a year. Avoid pruning at the end of the growing season because at that time it’s important for them to be “toughening up” for the winter and pruning would encourage new tender growth. So cut them back early in the year when new growth is beginning to show.

Like the herbaceous plants, it is important not to trim back too much at a single time, but you do want to remove any dead branches that get in the way of new growth. A good rule of thumb is to cut dead branches back to the soil, but avoid cutting more than one-third or one-quarter from the overall healthy plant branch. Trimming a large herb back too quickly will thwart its ability to rebound.

Lavender is an exception. It is often used as a garden feature so you need to trim it way back in the late summer or early fall so that only 3 to 4 inches of green remains atop the wooded stem. Avoid cutting off all new growth, leaving only wood stems, as the plant may not be able to regenerate. A similar pruning in the early spring will help spur new growth.

Now what to do with your herb trimmings? As you practice light pruning all summer long, take advantage of your herbs and use them fresh in recipes. You can dehydrate herb trimmings and jar them for use all year long. You can add them to ice water with slices of lemon, lime, or oranges for a refreshing drink all summer.

Many trimmed herbs will easily reroot with little effort — and what will that give you? — More plants. Just place your clean-cut herb trimmings into a jar with a little bit of water, and allow them to soak up sunlight from a window. Change the water every few days.  After a few weeks, fresh roots will emerge from the herbs, and you can transplant the trimming back into the ground or into a container garden.

Susan La Fountaine is a Master Gardener with the Sandusky and Ottawa County Extension Offices.

Read or Share this story: https://ift.tt/30NCFqR