Learning to Prune

I've got a bunch of herbs that I'm trying not to kill. Maybe trying not to kill them isn't such a lofty goal, but that's about where I'm at right now. Since they have survived our unusually hot summer, and I've got a day an hour or two to play in my dirt, I'm trying to find out what kind of pruning they need to have, and what sort of care they should have been getting.

First, I looked at lavender. I have a lavender plant. I split it last year. Turns out that probably wasn't such a hot idea. I'm kind of amazed that they survived, after reading up on them a little. But it's done now, so I want to see what I can do with it. This lady says that I should have pruned it at least a month ago, but I'm going to try doing it. This other site says that it can be done in the fall as well, as long as it's well ahead of any frost, which we still should be.




Another plant that I'm thinking about picking on today is my lemon balm. Turns out, I am pretty lucky that it's not taking over the world. I'm OK with that. It's a mint, and they like to grow and spread, but mine seems to be behaving itself pretty well. Being a mint, it's supposed to be pretty forgiving, and not mind being chopped at pretty much any time, so I'm going to give it a trim this afternoon as well.




I'm thinking that I'll make potpourri with my lavender and lemon balm, but I thought that this was pretty interesting. Turns out that lemon balm has a bunch of medicinal properties but, being pregnant, I'm not going to mess around with that this year. But potpourri sounds like it would smell wonderful, and I think that it'll probably mix nicely with the lavender.





I got an oregano plant at the Chicago Botanic garden a couple years ago, and I've done a little bit with it; used it in some tacos, I even dried some and used it part of the winter one year. But I need to learn a bit more about it to really get the best from the plant. So I'm watching and reading about that one too.