Everyones herbs look so nice. I like the natural unfussy look of herbs. I have a big ole rosemary growing next to the AC unit and dryer vent. Talk about an inhospitable place for a plant. I got it years ago from Home Depot. It looks like a bush. I use it alot in cooking. I have Mexican tarragon in my herb garden too. I love the little yellow flowers. Then there is rue. What beautiful little silver leaves. Both those are easy to grow. I have had them for years. I have no luck with chives. I have tried them in several places. So I use the tops of onions or bunching onions as I would chives. Still I would like to have some decent chives. If there is a secret to growing it I would like to know. Also no luck with nasturtiums. I think the seeds I used were old. Arugula seems very popular lately. I bought it once thinking I had spinach. What a surprise. Tasted like skunk. :( It is in a salad mix I planted and I pull it up when I see it. Lion's ear looks so neat. Anita gave me a clipping to root but it didn't make it. Is it easy to start from seed? Or where would be a place in Orlando that I could buy it?

I don't know who came up with the idea to spray rosemary with milk to combat powdery mildew, but it works extremely well. I am zone 4 and move my numerous rosemary shrubs in my greenhouse for the winter. Powdery mildew has always been a problem in the past, but especially bad this year because of a warm winter (even for Minnesota). Its very hard to keep the humidity down. Washing the plants just wasn't cutting it this year. I googled the subject Sunday and came up with the milk idea. My numerous rosemarys were badly infected, but one application of 1 part low fat milk to 6 parts water along with a 1/2 tsp of baking soda per 1 qt cleared it up. It did happen that the day was sunny which was mentioned as part of the cure process. I'm not sure about that. Milk, go figure.

Hello I can't give you any tip on seed saving for thyme and rosemary. I have however grown 3 rosemary plants from seed. It is true that the rate of germination is low, so you need to sow many seeds to make sure that you will end with a plant or some plants. So that is useful to know, I think. Another useful thing to know is that it can take a little while to germinate - at least for some seeds. I sowed the seeds in winter and one of the seeds germinated relatively qucikly. Much later, in summer, I got another 2 seeds to germinate. I had in fact forgotten they were there and I did not expect any more rosemary, but i had not thrown the sown seeds away. It happened in the summer when I had put a lot of my pots and planters outside in the balcony, so probably the warm weather helped. So that is another thing that might be useful to know. Good luck! Sálvora

One rosemary plant (common) has been going great guns in front of my Arlington house for 4 years. Once in a 4-inch pot, it now sprawls more than 4 foot high and 6 feet wide despite repeated cuttings and samples given to friends. A couple of years ago, I was surprised to see it blooming in January--now I find blooms around 9 months every year. FYI one of the rosemary plants at Green Springs garden also starts blooming midwinter, but other well-established plants in the Bishop's Garden over at the National Cathedral remain unbudded until spring. I also have a couple of smaller and newer rosemary plants in a terrace garden that are doing fine, as are my sages. Only problem I've had with rosemary is with seeds not sprouting or damping off. Caution: I did manage to kill a creeping rosemary in Philadelphia a few years ago and couldn't revive a store-bought potted Christmas-rosemary-tree a couple of years ago, so I won't guarantee winter-hardiness of the varies subspecies. Lemon thyme seems more tender, perhaps the least hardy of the thymes. I've never had problems with my common nor creeping thymes--one common thyme survived for years on a Philadelphia roof deck until ignored by a really neglectful tenant. By contrast, I lost lemon thymes a couple of winters in a row here in Arlington. Thus, last winter I decided to split a spring-purchased plant. Turned out that part left in the ground survived the mild winter just fine, as did its 2 offspring in the coldframe next to the house, but one of the two plantlets kept indoors died--tricky to water them neither too much nor too little, or maybe just not enough sun (tho peppers and a couple of creeping geraniums overwintered successfully on the same shelf).