People like to grow herbs and flowers like lavender in their gardens and pots. After you pick lavender and let it dry, the essential oils will smell good for a long time. Lavender grows well even if you don’t take care of it, so you don’t have to worry about it. Lavender can grow in dry soil and small spaces, and it doesn’t need fertilizers if you want it to smell stronger. Lavender is easy to grow at home, even for people who forget about their plants.
What Is Lavender?
Its sweet floral smell and beautiful purple flowers make it easy to spot. Some say it comes from the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and India and has been around for at least 2,500 years. In the past, lavender has been used as a holy herb. It was often used to freshen up clothes and hair, giving them a light scent. Lavender is used today in aromatherapy to help people deal with stress and as a natural antiseptic to help wounds heal.
What Makes Growing Your Own Lavender Important?
When you grow your lavender, you know exactly what it was treated with. There are many great things about having live lavender plants, like enjoying their beauty in the summer while you unwind in your garden or on your front porch, where their flowers are growing.
How To Grow Lavender In Your Garden
Lavender bushes need full sun to grow bigger and fuller. This is also the best way to ensure they have many buds. Plant them in a sunny spot in your yard, not under trees, awnings, or other large plants blocking the sun.
They can’t take too much shade, so don’t plant them under a tree, under an awning, or anywhere else with a lot of shade. If you’re growing plants for their essential oils, you’ll find they produce more oils in soil with less organic matter and fertilizer. Don’t add too much organic matter and fertilizer to the soil.
Add some sand to grow lavender in potting soil to ensure the soil drains well. Lavender grows best in soil that drains well and is on the dry side. Soil that is alkaline or very chalky will make your lavender smell better. Lavender doesn’t grow well in acidic soil.
Once it is established, lavender can survive in very dry conditions. Lavender plants will do better if you water them regularly during their first growing season. After that, you can water them less and let them grow each year independently.
Lavender plants are pruned by picking their flowers, but a little pruning in the spring is recommended to keep them in good shape and encourage new growth. For the taller variants, you can cut back a third of their height. You can cut down to fresh growth or cut back a couple of inches for the shorter varieties.
In the spring, you can cut back the lavender back. When your location has winter die-back, it is advisable to wait until you see fresh green growth at the base of your lavender plant before pruning. If you mess with plants too soon after they start growing, they won’t grow new leaves.
How To Regrow Lavender From Cuttings
In the spring, the soft tips of the new growth are cut off to make softwood cuttings. Most cuttings take 2 to 4 weeks to grow roots, but they don’t work as well as hardwood cuttings. As wood ages, it gets semi-woody and denser, making it less easy to shape. This is why it is called hardwood.
With hardwood cuttings, problems with bacteria and moisture are less likely to happen. Hardwood stems cuttings should come from good health, straight stems that can be cut from the spring to the fall to grow new plants.
Always choose stems that are brightly colored, growing quickly, and don’t have any buds or flowers on them. So, the cutting can put all of its energy into making roots instead of flowers. Always use a clean knife or sharp garden shears to stop bacteria from spreading.
Start cutting the stem between 4 and 8 inches from the leaf node. Cut just below the leaf node. The bottom three to four inches of leaves should be removed, and the skin should be gently scraped off the stems. If you lightly scrape one end of a stem with your knife, you can see greenwood slivers about 1/4 inch wide and 1/2 inch long.
Cut off the ends of your cuttings and dip them in hormone powder. This will help them grow roots. It’s a good idea to start more than one cutting simultaneously since some cuttings won’t root well, and you want a healthy plant.
How To Grow Lavender In A Pot
Lavender grows best in a warm, sunny field like the lavender farms near us, but it can also do well in a pot. Lavender in pots looks great by the door or on your patio. Even though lavender has big roots, it likes to grow in tight places.
If the pot is too big, there will be too much water, making your lavender plant unhappy. Leave a few inches of space in the pot for the root ball. In the early stages of growing lavender, putting a small pot inside a large pot or planting more than one plant makes a difference.
At the bottom of your container, there should be a lot of holes for drainage. Lavender’s biggest problem is root rot, which may be stopped by soil drying. Clay or terracotta pots help keep the soil from getting too wet by taking water away from it.
If you want to plant lavender in a pot, use a loose, soil-free mix, and keep in mind that lavender grown in a pot will need more water than lavender is grown in a garden. During dry weather, liquid the soil around the plant’s roots to keep the leaves from getting too wet.
Lavender Harvesting Instructions
Lavender flowers smell great even after they have been dried, which makes them very valuable. When the buds are just starting to open is the best time to pick the flowers because that’s when the oils are the most concentrated. The bunches should be hung upside down for about two weeks in a warm, well-ventilated place with good airflow.
Uses For Lavender
You can cook with this herb, make tea, and dry it to make your home smell nice. It would help if you always picked the flowers before they bloomed because they won’t make more of the oil that gives them their smell and taste after they bloom. Place large pots of lavender near entrances and gathering places to keep mosquitoes away.
I like it, so I put pots and lemongrass in the corners of my pavilion. Lavender’s scent is often added to perfumes, body care products, and cleaning products to make them smell better. Lavender is great for keeping bugs away and can be made into a relaxing tea to drink at night.
Tricks And Tips For Growing
- Lavender grows best in small places.
- Ensure your lavender plants receive at least 6 hours of light daily. They will do well if you plant them on the southern side of your house.
- Water your lavender sparingly.
- It’s fine to add compost as you begin to plant lavender, but don’t feed it too much.
Problems With Lavender Growth
Root rot is the most frequent issue with lavender, which can be fixed by not letting the plants get too wet. Some other common issues are:
- Spittle Bugs
- Spittle Bug Control
- Whiteflies.
- Controlling Whiteflies.
- Aphids.
- Preventing the Alfalfa Mosaic Virus.