Help what to do with my Rosemary

EmmaKav · Rank attained: Hazel Tree Joined: 15 May 2009 Posts: 10

Hi All

I bought a rosemary plant in the garden centre a few months ago along with a thyme plant. I kept them both indoors (which may have been a mistake?) wanting to feed them up with the plan of potting them into containers out on the patio when they got established. The thyme is doing really well now quite big and happily outside but the rosemary however seems to be dying a death Sad

It was grand for about a month and the all of a sudden it seemed to completely dry out and turn brown. I was aware of problems with overwatering so I was careful not to do this, we thought instead the problem was it was on the sideboard close to the radiator so prehaps was just too hot?

I moved it to a window ledge and it seemed to start to recover and produce new green leafs. I then thought of cutting back some of the brown stems to give it a chance but saw that some of the stems were turning back to green so I trimmed half and left the rest to see what would happen.

But its now been a few weeks and no other new growth or recovery. I have repotted it to see if it will help with new compost and been feeding it regularly. Any help? A friend told me I should put it outside?

Sive · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:43 am Post subject:

I'd pop it outside or into the ground to see what happens. As far as I know rosemary does better in poor soil, so maybe it reacted badly to your feeding it.....

inishindie · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:54 pm Post subject:

Wow...that's a bit of a challenge!
Herbs do better in poorer soil like sive said. The reason for poor soil is also to concentrate the taste of the herb in a smaller leaf to make them more delicious for us when cooking. They will do better outside too.
Take the plant out of the pot and check if there are any fresh looking roots, if there are you might be in with a chance of saving it. Failing that, if you are fast you could nip the top bits off and pot them up as cuttings. If the bottom leaf part of the plant is totally dead you could bury the plant up to the green bits. This practice is good for saving leggy heathers and herbs, but only if the roots are still alive. ....(if it does die then at least it will be instantly composted under the ground!) good luck... Smile

Greengage · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:20 pm Post subject:

its dead dump it and buy another one, Dried out in the room.
These are fairly cheap to buy so why bother trying to nurse it back. The best plant to sell is one that dies so the customer has to come back to buy another repeat business, that sounds cruel but its the truth.
The next one you buy take some cuttings and increase your stock