I have a rosemary plant that I've managed to keep alive for about three or four years. Every spring, I move it outside and every fall, I move it back inside, cross my fingers and hope that the furnace-dried air doesn't kill it.
This year, I was later than usual moving the rosemary inside and we had had a few cold snaps. A week or so after I moved it to the kitchen, I noticed that odd little bumps were starting to appear on the plant. I decided I had finally killed the poor plant by mistake and wrote the bumps off as a weird plant disease or, heaven forbid, bug eggs.
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| The buds pictured are past the "bug egg" stage |
Why I didn't move the plant back outside when I thought there were bug eggs in the house, I have no idea. But! A few days later, I saw these adorable purple flowers.
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| Cute! |
I had no idea that rosemary could flower. Wikipedia tells me that it flowers in the spring and summer. Did the colder temperatures outside and warmer temperatures inside trick it into thinking it's spring? I have no idea, but I suddenly feel like some sort of horticultural wizard.
5 comments:
I bet the temperature shift did confuse it into blooming. Some plants need a combination of temperature and daylength and others just need one or the others. Sounds like rosemary is more temperature dependent.
I tried for several years to grow rosemary in my garden year round, each time one died I bought another zone 5 safe plant but they never made it past about February. This year I'm trying the indoor thing. We have forced air heat which is tough on plants but if the violets can make it then surely rosemary will be fine. I also have a little bay tree which is looking ever so happy.
That must've been a nice surprise to contrast the early darkness and the cold temps!
I've had good luck with rosemary, but I've never gotten it to flower before.
I think most herbs flower, but if you use them for eating, I have heard that you're supposed to pluck off the flowers so that they don't go to seed. Some of our outside bushes are doing the same thing! It got cold for a couple of weeks, then crazy hot, so they all started budding out! Poor plants...
I don't know how cold it gets where you are but you probably don't need to bring it in at all. Rosemary is incredibly hardy stuff! Ours cheerfully survived -10 last year.
Awesome! Is that what they mean by "forcing" a plant? I moved my rosemary in too this year (with the hopes of not killing it) but alas no cute purple flowers. :(
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