Rosemary

To continue the series on perennial herbs, we’re going to talk about rosemary today.

The herb is mostly seen as a culinary one but has medicinal benefits and like many plants we talk about, is low maintenance.

Let’s take a look:

Plant Profile:

Scientific Name: Salvia rosmarinus

Preferred Habitat: Drier conditions similar to Mediterranean climates. Not too picky though.

Edible Parts: Leaves, stems (though not preferred)

Distribution: Mediterranean region (north Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Mediterranean coast etc)

Harvest Season: I harvest as long as leaves are green.

Nutrition:

When used in small amounts in foods, the nutritional value is not a significant enough amount to measure. When used for medicine, rosemary has the following benefits:

• High in antioxidants

• Rich in antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory compounds (such as rosmarinic acid and carnosic acid)

• Has insulin-like effects on blood sugar

• Evidence suggests that it may lower anxiety and stress levels when consumed regularly

• Anti-cancer compounds

• May help repair brain damage over time

• May help heart function

• Helps stimulate hair growth

Studies on a lot of the effects of rosemary are lacking, so note that many of the verified effects come from the essential oils and extracts of rosemary, so whether or not tea offers the same exact benefits isn’t verified yet.

Here’s a more detailed study on some of the benefits of rosemary: Rosemary Study

Uses

For anyone who hasn’t had rosemary, I’ll describe the flavor: When tasted plain, rosemary has bitter and almost astringent notes with a kind of minty undertone. I’d almost describe it like if sage was more wood-smoky and soft if that makes sense.

When cooked or added to foods the soothing aroma changes the flavor quite a bit, tasting almost like a more savory and smokier cousin to lavender.

Rosemary pairs very well with meats in particular adding that extra complexity you want. It’s great with lamb, turkey, beef, chicken, and pork especially.

It is a great addition to breads and cheeses, in herbal salts, soups, sauces, and in beverages. It also goes well with roasted vegetables and garlic and is great for smoking in a fire for cooking over.

For medicinal use, most people will make it into teas, extracts, tinctures, soaps, natural haircare, or oils. While these methods can have slightly different effects, not much is known about how different each method is.

Growth Habits

Rosemary is a surprisingly fast grower for a woody perennial from what I can tell.

In our first year planting it, it was about 6-8in wide and about that same height. Three years later it is about a foot and a half tall and nearly 3 feet wide all around!

I should note that I have no idea what kind of rosemary we have since it was bought at a big box store (this was one of the few plants we didn’t grow from seed!)

As far as care goes, it helps to plant it somewhere elevated slightly like a pot, a raised bed, or a small mound. This helps water drain faster which more closely mimics the dry conditions that rosemary is used to but honestly, I don’t think it’s very picky.

You may want to prune it here and there if it gets a little too unkempt for your taste or if you start to notice dead branches.

To prune, just cut right above a leaf set and new branches will grow out of where you cut!

In my climate rosemary is normally treated as an annual, but for whatever reason this one not only grows every year but also tends to stay green almost year-round and takes very little frost damage at all!

Rosemary also propagates very easily so if you want more, take cuttings, strip the leaves off the bottom few inches, stick them in a pot, and they’ll form roots after a while.

For me it seems like cuttings have a roughly 50% success rate, so I’d definitely plant more than you need but that’s pretty easy to do with rosemary since you’ll have a lot of branches.

Rosemary will live to around 10-20 years under good care.

I know some people grow rosemary from seed and have pretty good success, but we have not yet succeeded the few times we’ve tried. Worth a shot though!

One final note on growth: rosemary actually can produce flowers! I have never seen flowers on ours, but this is likely because we either don’t get enough sun in our climate or it isn’t warm enough for long enough.

If you do get flowers, you’re in for a nice surprise!

Additional Information

Rosemary also serves as a great companion for most other herbs, alliums, and brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, mustards etc) since it either attracts pollinators or repels pests for a lot of those.

I would avoid planting it with mints and basil since they’d compete for space or have different growing requirements, and anything prone to powdery mildew (squashes, melons, cucumbers etc) should not be planted with rosemary just because rosemary can fall prone to it and spread it as well.

I would also avoid planting rosemary with tomatoes since they compete for nutrients and your tomatoes will suffer because of it.

Cultivars

While I don’t know what kind we have, there are a few that I think would be good selections in general:

• Blue Lagoon - A blue-flowering variety that is trailing rather than upright like a shrub.

• Arp - This is an improved cold hardy variety that is otherwise similar to traditional rosemary.

• Simplyherbs™ - This is a micro rosemary from Territorial Seed Co. for pots and small spaces. It gets no bigger than about 1-2ft wide and tall.

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