How to Care for Lavender
Hi, this is Growing Wisdom. I’m Dave Epstein and we are here in front of my lavender, one of my favorite plants in the garden.
This time of the year, early spring, it looks a little ragged so what do you do, you may look at this and think “I’m not sure of how to care for it.” I’m going to show you. It’s very easy. You just want to basically take off some of the dead stuff and prune it up a little bit.
If you look at the overall lavender plant, you can tell that some of it is still alive. If you’re not sure, you can do the scratch test. That is simply taking your thumb and scratching the bark a little bit. If you see that it’s green, then it is still alive. What I like to do with the lavender plant is to clean out any dead leaves that are around it. That will help to be sure that any moisture gets in there, any disease, spores will be removed as well.
This is also a great time to scratch some organic fertilizer into the ground. Remove any dead branches right to the base of the plant. I like to cut off the dead at the top of it as well to be sure that it’s nice and even. That will give it a nice place to grow from and we’ll keep the plant thicker rather than letting it get very lanky. And that’s really about it. So you’ve done the scratch test, see if it’s still alive, you’ve cut off the dead tops, the old flowers from last year and you’ve cleaned out around it.
And then in a few weeks, the plant will begin to put out its new growth and eventually start to bloom, giving us bloom for much of the upcoming summer.
For Growing Wisdom, I’m Dave Epstein.
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