Herbs from your own herb garden are pretty to look at and a welcome addition to cooking, baking and crafting. Unfortunately, some plants do not survive the sub-zero temperatures of the cold season so easily. However, that doesn't mean that you have to discard cold-sensitive herbs in winter and start a new herb garden next year. After all, with the help of the right winter protection, you can still enjoy herbs and plants next year. However, when it comes to frost protection, you should take into account that different herb plants have different requirements. We'll explain to you how you can prepare your herbs for the winter.
Winterize herbs: Harvest perennials before winter begins
Many herbs that are often found in the home herb garden are perennials. This means that the plant sheds its leaves and often the stems in the fall. In spring the plants sprout again from the rootstock. Perennials include herbs such as lemon balm or mint, which can be used as natural remedies. For perennials, it is recommended to harvest healthy leaves in autumn. You can then dry and store the leaves.
Experienced hobby gardeners recommend cutting off herb leaves, inflorescences (if any) and stems in autumn. You can then sprinkle the harvested herbs on a baking tray and put them in the oven. Preheat the oven to 50° and leave the door slightly open. They usually take 3-4 hours to dry, being careful not to brown the leaves. It is best to store them in an airtight container afterwards. If necessary, you can then use the dried herbs to make tea, for examplethe many healing propertiesenjoy even in winter.
Only cut back plants with woody bases in spring
Woody herb plants are those that produce new shoots from their trunks after the end of winter. Herbs with a woody base are usually cut back in early spring. In winter you can simply leave the plants outside; they do not need overwintering or frost protection. It won't be time to prune until next year, mid to late April.
Fleece protects particularly sensitive herbs
Some herbal plants can tolerate sub-zero temperatures. However, they still need protection from particularly frosty temperatures. Snow in particular can harm such balcony herbs or even cause them to freeze. Herbs that are sensitive to frost include, for example, some types of lavender, bay leaf, rosemary and variegated sage. Unless these plants overwinter indoors, they require special protection during the cold season. However, if they are well equipped, these plants can be grown in a pot or planted out - often even better than in the houseoverwinter outdoors.
Fleece is particularly suitable for protecting sensitive plants outside from the cold. When purchasing, however, you should definitely make sure that it is thick fleece in so-called “gardener quality”. Only then is the material really able to protect sensitive herbs from frost and snow. If it is strong fleece of gardener quality, it weighs no less than 90 grams per square meter. This is enough to protect the sensitive plants from frost damage.
To construct a cold protection out of fleece, wrap the plant with a sufficiently large piece of fleece. Bamboo sticks, for example, can be helpful as a framework. Once the framework has been built around the plants, you can wrap it with the fleece. This means the plant is protected from frost, but the fleece does not damage it. If the temperatures drop particularly sharply, you should also cover the upper part of the plant with fleece. It is best to additionally weigh down the fleece with stones in the floor area. The light, water and air permeable fleece then completely surrounds the plant and protects it like a blanket of snow.
Additional protection for the plant in particularly cold outside temperatures can also be provided by thisSpreading mulchto reach. To do this, simply cover the ground around the plant with a thick layer of leaves or chopped bark, for example. The mulch layer then has an insulating effect and protects the roots of the plant even from severe frost.
Herbal plants that are particularly sensitive to cold can overwinter indoors
Certain herbal plants are particularly sensitive to frost. Herbs that particularly suffer from cold include basil, scented geraniums and lemon verbena. What these plants have in common is that they generally cannot tolerate sub-zero temperatures. If there is a risk of frost, you should definitely bring these plants indoors. Unlike many other plants, they suffer less from the change of location than from temperatures that are too cold.
You should then place the plants in the house as brightly as possible and at a temperature of 10 to 15 degrees. It is also important: In order to thrive indoors, the plants need a fairly high level of humidity. If you don't have a humidifier, you can also place a small bowl of water next to the herbs. An indoor fountain, for example, can also ensure plant-friendly climate conditions.
Even chives make it through the winter
Chives are one of the most popular culinary herbs. Germans always like to use it to flavor their dishes. It usually thrives outdoors in a bed or container in spring and summer. However, chives can also make it through the cold season. To do this, however, he has to “move” from his bed to a pot. To ensure that transplanting is successful, a little transplanting trick helps:
To transplant the chives, use a digging fork to remove the entire chive ball from the soil after the first frost. You can then divide the plant into several individual sections. Each section should have a diameter of around 10 centimeters. You can then plant the sections in a pot filled with fresh soil. You can then shorten the chive stalks to a few centimeters and place the pots in a bright, sunny place. Ideally, the room temperature should be around 20 degrees so that nothing stands in the way of harvesting chives even in winter.
