Summer Savory Seeds

Days to maturity: 70

Summer savory boasts a warming, peppery scent and taste. One of the essential ingredients in Herbs de Provence (along with rosemary, thyme, and oregano).

Summer savory is also wonderful alone to season beans, meats, and stuffings. Add it to your herb garden or kitchen garden this season; you only need one plant to season all your summer dishes. As fast as you pick these aromatic leaves, new ones begin to grow.

Summer savory is an annual, not to be confused with its cousin winter savory, a perennial. Summer savory can be grown in containers or the garden; it likes the same rich, well-drained soil as tomatoes, and makes a good companion to this vegetable in the garden; however, it also thrives alongside beans in leaner soil.

Very fast-growing, summer savory reaches about 18 inches high and up to 30 inches wide, with long, wiry upright stems bearing small, needle-like dark green leaves up to 4 inches long. Whorls of lilac-purple flowers appear in summer, and the plant may need staking if not pruned smaller. Cut the stems as needed for use in the kitchen; this will keep them shorter, prevent flowering (which diminishes the flavor of the leaves), and encourage new growth.

Sow seeds indoors about 6 to 8 weeks before the last scheduled spring frost, dropping one seed into each bio sponge of the Bio Dome or lightly covering them in seed flats. Transplant when they have at least two sets of true leaves, spacing plants 2 feet apart. Summer savory can also be direct-sown in spring, after all danger of frost.

Harvest the leaves as needed, or cut the entire plant and dry the foliage for use later. Summer savory is easy and quick to grow, and a single plant provides plenty of seasoning for a family.