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My garden has been on the backburner for a couple of years and my rosemary is woody and lacking leaves. I'm theoretically growing it to eat, rather than look at, so how best do I encourage soft growth?

Alina
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SAM A
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  • Where is it that you live, Sam? Southern hemisphere or Northern, grins! Please take a picture and send, okay? Do you have a pair of hedging shears? What about the rest of your garden? Would love to help. Healthy rosemary is good to look at as well as use for seasoning. It is a woody perennial and it is easy to keep growing new growth depending on a few other factors. – stormy Jan 06 '18 at 08:39
  • I second @stormy's request for a picture or two. You should be careful about cutting into the woody parts, this may be problematic with re-growth. – Stephie Jan 06 '18 at 09:52
  • Lacking leaves? Is it in a pot? definitely need a photo – Bamboo Jan 06 '18 at 11:21
  • @Stormy, Southern Hemisphere. – SAM A Jan 06 '18 at 17:04
  • Break or cut off any brittle branches. They're dead, and just adding a bit of load to an already stressed plant. If you can get one leaf to come out near the basal branching point, you're golden. If not, dig the thing up and try again. Summer vs winter obviously matters here. – Wayfaring Stranger Jan 06 '18 at 17:05
  • @Bamboo it only has leaves on the last four inches of a given branch. I've tried to add a picture (and have successfully done on other Stacks), but I don't think it did – SAM A Jan 06 '18 at 17:09
  • Is it in a pot or the ground though? – Bamboo Jan 06 '18 at 17:14
  • Sorry Bamboo, large pot I want to say 80L – SAM A Jan 06 '18 at 17:18
  • Ah, that explains why you have lost so many leaves. Check whether its outgrown its pot, unless you forgot to water sufficiently well and often enough during summer... Needs to be in the ground as it matures really. – Bamboo Jan 06 '18 at 18:31
  • I repotted it in August, it is a harsh summer after a short mild winter. Insufficient water is a possibility. – SAM A Jan 07 '18 at 02:00
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    Are you able to see any new growth at all? The best way to prune, any shrub, especially rosemary is to dead head the tips. Most of the energy of that plant is in the tips, the apical buds. When those buds are cut off that energy goes back down the stems to the lateral buds. Proper watering, great drainage, good lighting, a little fertilizer and shearing this plant once or twice a season should make a very happy rosemary. Think salad bowl. Turned over your plant. Make the salad bowl large enough to cover this rosemary...okay? Shears are perpendicular to the center of the sphere... – stormy Jan 07 '18 at 05:33
  • ...All shrubs should be pruned this way to make them healthy and dense. Salad bowl over plant, keep shears TANGENT to the surface of salad bowl or perpendicular to center of sphere. The sides of that plant should be wider than the top. The top should be partially flat then slope to the tips of the lowest branches. All shrubs should be 1 1/2 : 1 at the least, best is 2:1 2 being the width and 1 being the height. – stormy Jan 07 '18 at 05:37
  • Due to "nature is weird" for the first two years the cutting grew on the XY planes without any Z (it espalied itself) it's still tetrahedron shaped. I could probably achieve a fan like shape but hemisphere not so much – SAM A Jan 07 '18 at 05:44
  • It put leaves on but very little soft wood – SAM A Jan 07 '18 at 05:46

1 Answers1

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I would add some fertilizer. Not much, rosemary is a plant of poor and dry soils. On the other hand, if it is a lot woody, probably it has eat most of nutrient in the soil.

I would also check if there are some plants nearby which compete with rosemary. Rosemary is slow to grow (I think also on the roots), and it hates shadow. Really!

Pruning: I would never touch the wood (large branches), but when it is dead. It seems that rosemary doesn't like it. The green parts will cover the wood again. You should prune just the green branches (they are also woody, but round and young).

The good news: from my experiences, rosemary are very resilient. They will growth stronger that before, very quickly. [I assume you have no problem with climate, because the rosemary seems already old].

Giacomo Catenazzi
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