Growing Lovage – A Perennial Herb

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Have you ever heard of Lovage? What IS Lovage? It is not a common plant and many people have never heard of it.

Lovage is a wonderful plant that gets quite large. It’s a herb and you can pick the leaves to add to your dinners fresh. Lovage has a strong flavour, not unlike celery, but stronger than that. It’s great in salads with other greens, it really adds a zing. You can use it in soups and stews as well.

How to Grow Lovage

You can order Lovage seed, or you can buy one perennial plant. They are not stocked at many garden centers, though, so grab one if you find it!

You may also know someone who already has a plant that is willing to share with you. Lovage is easy to divide; just dig it up and split it in half with a shovel. Replant to make more plants or give one away to a gardening friend.

And Lovage is easy to grow. Just add some well aged compost to the planting hole before you add your Lovage plant. That’s about it – just water it as needed. Lovage does like regular watering, so don’t let it get too dried out.

Lovage starts showing some growth in April and by mid-May, you should easily be able to snip a few leaves to add to dinners or salads.

Here’s the same plant later in the season. It’s grown a bit, hasn’t it? We have it growing alongside our Rhubarb plants and love the way the two look together. We also have a lot of blooming Chive herbs along the front of the bed.

Lovage will grow about six feet tall – that’s a LOT of Lovage leaves you can harvest and dehydrate.

And, it’s a pretty looking herb that grows to the size of a shrub each year. Since the plant grows so large, you can get a great harvest!

And a bonus is that Lovage is a perennial! So plant it once, and every year it will come back and grow large again.

Here’s a full basket of Lovage, freshly cut. I’ll bring it up to the house and start snipping leaves, some to use fresh and some to preserve for later.

To preserve Lovage, you can easily dry it. Here’s an article I wrote on How to Dry Herbs.

Herbs are always better when they are used right away, but that’s not always possible, depending on the season.

It’s so easy to store a jar or two for using all season! Whenever a dish you’re cooking could use a celery flavor, add a pinch or three to whatever is cooking on the stove.

You can also dry the leaves whole, then follow the same instructions for storage.

Be sure the leaves are fully dry before storing. Then use them whenever you like.

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