Planting Lavender in Containers – Container Gardening with Herbs

This video is part of a series of easy to understand and comprehensive videos on Planting Herbs in Containers narrated by Barb Melera, co-founder of Harvesting History Heirlooms, LLC. This particular video describes how to grow in containers and when to harvest the legendary herb – Lavender. It also details the history and original habitat of this plant. Excellent for novice and experienced gardeners.

Brought to you by Harvesting History, LLC an American Heirloom Horticultural Company, https://harvesting-history.com/. You can purchase the bulbs discussed in this video at our website, https://harvesting-history.com/

good morning my name is Barb Malera I’m with the heirloom Horticultural company known as harvesting history harvesting history sells heirloom Horticultural products like seeds and plants Roots sets tubers and also a line of vintage classic gardening tools we have begun a Series this year on planting herbs in containers and today’s herb that we are going to talk about is lavender one of the most beloved herbs on this planted and something that is an asset to just about any Garden that you could ever put together today the most important thing I want you to remember if if you get serious about growing lavender for the oils or the scents is that as as you harvest the flowers which is where a lot of the oil is contained the best oils the oils with the most Esters come from the early flowers later flowers do not have as much oil as the early flowers so as you get into growing lavender remember you want to harvest the flowers early and it is the oils in those flowers and also to a lesser degree in the plant itself that make the lavender scent and the lavender healing oil one of the things that people do not know about Lavender is that it really is a desert or an arid climate plant it’s native to the European side of the Mediterranean in the higher elevations where the soil and I use that in quotes is largely made up of small rocks with a spare amount of soil they can tolerate drought they like it dry so always remember do not overwater your lavender it doesn’t like that kind of thing again it is native to the Northern or european side of the Mediterranean in the high mountainous regions where the soil is largely what we call scree now let’s teach you how to grow lavender in containers that would make you happy a big enough lavender plant that would satisfy your need for lavender take a look at this lavender plant and in particular look at the size of the pot one of the things we are trying to do in this series is to teach you that you don’t need giant containers in order order to grow plants you can grow plants very successfully in 8 10 or 12 in pots and this particular Lavender is being grown in an 8 in pot just like this pot this is an 8 in diameter pot it’s nice if you can get them deep because the depth is uh more conducive to a plant’s liking than a shallow pot but an 8 in pot is sufficient to give you a lush Lush lavender plant and then when the flowers come this will be covered with flowers in the spring and early summer so this is the right size pot you can also this is an 8 in you can do a 10 in or a 12 in you don’t need to do more than that for your lavender plant and our soil mix that we recommend for container gardening we recommend this soil mix for all container gardens let me give you a little background about why we think we have the right to make a suggestion of a soil mix for the last 18 years we have been growing making 300 plantings in containers per year so we have a lot of experience with grow growing things in containers that means that over that 18 years we’ve done more many more thousands of plantings and from that we’ve learned that the planting Mix recipe I’m about to share with you is the one that works the best if you need more information I suggest you go to our YouTube channel and look at our uh best soil for containers video that is a very detailed video about the soil mix for containers now what’s the soil mix okay we recommend you start with crummy old backyard soil but in a lot of cases people refuse to use crummy old backyard soil and in at least one case a lady shared with me about 10 years ago that her backyard was concrete and she didn’t think she’d be able to get crummy old backs backyard soil from her concrete backyard and I I had to agree with her she was right so if you won’t use your crummy old backyard soil then use top soil notice this says top soil Not Special Top Soil Not Top Soil mixed with something it’s top soil it’s very in expensive you can get it at Home Depot Lowe’s your garden center will also have top soil if they carry soil products it’s usually for a 40 lb bag about $3 to4 so it’s very very inexpensive we start with this top soil and then and it doesn’t matter what size scoop what matters is you remember the number we take six Scoops this would be a scoop you can use a plastic tupperware container you can use a can you can use a bowl you can use a bucket but you want six of these as the first ingredient in your soil mix then to that you’re going to add two two scoops two scoops of manure it doesn’t matter what kind of manure I’ve always told people dehydrated manure but now they are uh they’re coming up with manure mixes you can use chicken poop you can use um cow poop you can use rabbit poop any poop you can get that comes from an animal you can use as your manure and then finally you’re going to use and I’ve already got the soil mixed which is why I’m not going through six Scoops and two scoops to what you’ve already got you’re going to add two two scoops of Pete MTH now many young people have decided uh for sustainability reasons that um they don’t want to use Pete Moss that’s fine you they’ve asked about coconut quar and you can use coconut qua it isn’t quite as good as Pete Moss but it’ll do the trick and you needn’t worry about success the coconut quir will work for you then what you do is you mix you thoroughly mix see if I can you thoroughly mix this soil and you fill the pot about 2/3 full with your mix okay for cuting if you’re growing a plant from cuting um you can leave it like this in the case of lavender we’re going to be planting a Seedling so we can fill the pot up so that it’s 1 inch from the bottom from the excuse me from the top of the container then just gently gently Pat it down and you’re ready to plant the seedling in this container one thing I want you to remember as a personal caution from me never ever buy lavender seed and remember I sell seed for a living the lavender seed that you mostly can get not in all cases but that you mostly can get is a cultivar called Russian lavender and it is nowhere near the quality of the French lavenders we found that the cultivar lavender provance does well um in the colder environments we’ve we actually had it winter over with heavy heavy mulching in hardiness Zone 4 but then after about 2 years it died off it just couldn’t take the cold of the winter however with again heavy mulching it does come back in hardiness zone five and six and seven on up to hardiness Zone nine so remember that uh depending on where you live please always always plant a lavender plant don’t try to plant lavender from seed now we’ve prepared the pot we’ve gone over with you the recipe for the soil we’ve put a big hole a big hole in the pot and now what we’ll do is we’ll take this seedling it’s a little luck we get it out of the pot and into the hole okay and then we just press the soil around this Little Seedling in 3 months it will be the size of this plant and will get even bigger so this Little Seedling here in three months will be the size of this maturing plant if you want more lavender just plant more containers if that’s the only option that you have lavender uh is an absolutely wonderful plant to have whether you have an herb garden or you have purely an ornamental Garden just just the fragrance from the leaves is magnificent so remember please only buy lavender seedlings you can grow them in an 8 in pot and get a beautiful clustering of lavender I hope that you will enjoy your lavender and that those of you who don’t have a garden can have a patio garden with some Lavender in it if you have enjoyed this video please come to our website www.h harvesting Dash his.com where you can purchase heirloom non GMO vegetables flowers and herbs please like subscribe and share with your friends our channel on the left side of your screen there is our most recent video video and on the right side of your screen is one of our playlists we are harvesting history seeding the future