I don’t think we’ve ever showed this one to you all. That’s how we grow both marjoram and oregano!
One of the things us far northerners have to contend with is our exceptionally long days over the summer, affectionately called the midnight sun. A few plants are affected by this and this process is called photoperiodism. Essentially, some plants use length of daylight (or night) to determine when to flower. Fortunately, the bulk of plants we like to grow are have other flowering triggers.
Both marjoram and oregano fall into this category. You’ll find that these herbs start flowering, almost immediately after transplanting them. As such, we grow them in much smaller containers as they aren’t all that long for this world before we harvest and preserve them. You’ll note we use our 5.5″ pots and keep them in a 1020 tray to make bottom watering and general care easy.
We find this a bit arduous, so we’ve taken to growing a higher quantity of plants whenever we need to re-up our home grown supply. Commonly, every 2-3 years. Typically, we’re growing a dozen or more smaller plants and perform a complete harvest once they start flowering. Doing this, we can fill a decent sized jar and that lasts us quite some time.
Since these herbs won’t be growing for long, we can really pack them into a smaller pot. We’re trying two per pot, but we’ve also done three with success. We just don’t have the problems with intensive planting in containers with these herbs like we do with other plants.
We’re expecting these to start flowering any day now. We’re pretty lucky if we can get to July before they start popping off. But, we usually see late June and if you want a good harvest, you’ll whack them before they start putting on masses of flowers. Flowering herbs aren’t “bad” or anything and can still be used, but it’s not typically your desired crop.
If you’re trying to attract pollinators, flowering oregano and marjoram are excellent ways to get there. In that case, you’d allow them to fully flower and you’ll definitely notice an uptick in visitors from pollinators. The aromatics and rich nectar content in the flowers make it a bug favorite in the garden.
So, if you wonder why we don’t grow these herbs quite the same as we do everything else, that’s why!
