How's the drainage for the pot? Too much moisture and/or rich soil? Lavender likes lean, well-drained soil.

FataMorgana

Cant see much in the photo. It might wilt in the hot sun and spring back at night. Looks like tall stems coming out of a small plant, so droop will be more noticeable. Like Fata said, lavender likes loose, well drained soil, and a common first time mistake is to overwater.

fatamorgana2121 Moisture might be possible because I water everything together. I think I might have added a little extra watering because here in NYC we have had 4 days of 85*F+ weather. It's in it's original mix/pot it came with, which is well drained.

bardamu_gw Well the mix it's in .. I believe it is is loose and well drained, as I stated above the sun and temp has been pretty high this past 3 days. Also my English lavender seems to be okay.

Here are the photos of the Lavender I chopped off. A few are still on the plant.. they're sitll growing.

Is this when I'm suppose to hard best them? or when they are fully flowered?

looks fine to me. They do droop a bit under very hot sun but then get revived in the afternoon with watering.

You are right to harvest before the flowers are fully open. Personally I'd cut them with a longer stem. The stem will die off anyway once the flower is cut off.

With all respect, I'm not sure why Floral said the stems will die after the flowers are harvested... I grow lavender every year and always harvest my flowers, and the stems and leaves stay nice and green... maybe there's something I'm missing.

Lavender is best cut just the way you did it, before the flower if you want to use it for culinary use. There are other reasons to harvest after it's flowered, I guess it all depends on what you're doing with it.

Ivan

I grow several types of lavenders year after year. that includes munsteads, grossos, english and french lavenders. Some lavenders will grow longer and have longer stems. I also have propagated lavenders from mere cuttings (not hard to do). Interestingly if you let a few blooms remain and seed, you will get little lavenders seedlings the following year I think what Flora meant was that the remaining bit of stem on the plant can just dry up, but the larger part of the stem continues to thrive. Like a part of a branch that dies back after cutting. In fact a way to keep the plant in shape is a good pruning all over -I normally round the plants up in summer after harvest. But I digress.

Like Flora, I personally prefer to cut the stems longer. Like you I prefer to cut the blooms before they fully open. Also because I preserve the flowers, I would tie them up in bundles and hang them upside down in a dry dark location. the crooked blooms will straighten up due to gravity. In a week's time, the blooms are ready for presentation. It will last through a year or more. or sometimes, in trying the provencal method of creating lavender wands, I cut the stems even longer and close to the core, strip off the leaves, then tie the bundle just below the blooms, bend the stems over the blooms, and use a ribbon to create a basket weave. The bloom as it dries out, give out a nice sweet smell in the room.

Miss_Moose - clearly the plant's stems and leaves stay green after cutting the flowers. But the flower stems, once the flower has been cut off, just stick up above the foliage in an unsightly fashion. They remain green to start with but then they gradually die off back to a pair of axillary buds which can be some way down. The 4th picture down at this link shows where to cut the flower stems to avoid this die back. Where to cut Lavender flower stems

Thank you guys for helping me with all this. Should I upgrade my to a larger pot for larger and more lavender? Mine are pretty small as you can see.

Is it impossible to grow it in the ground?That would be by far the easiest way to do it.

Floral unfortunately no. I live in a apartment in NYC. So no ground. Just containers :(

@Flora, thanks for the info, I'll certainly check out that link on where to cut lavender stems.

@Ivan, lavender is a perennial and will regrow each year. Knowing this, is also knowing that it will get larger as time goes on. You may need to replant it in a larger pot, I think potting lavender is quite easy. It takes minimal care aside from proper weather conditions. Prune it properly, don't overwater it, don't over fertilize it and give it plenty of sun and space and it will be happy.

@Ivan, lavender is a perennial and will regrow each year.

Strictly speaking Lavender, although perennial in the literal sense, is a shrub. So it won't regrow each year. It doesn't die down in the winter but will continue to grow from a permanent woody framework.

Pruning Lavender consists of clipping it all over back a couple of inches into the green growth. This will keep it as long as possible from growing gnarled and straggly - unless that is the look you want.

Floral's right, my wording was off... what I mean is it will get bigger over time. I need to watch my wording here, sometimes specifics mean the world! Sorry about that!

Thank you so much guys. What I mean to ask is how can I get mine to look like this Here

You can grow them in big pots... for a young one in its second year 14 inch diameter pot would be nice, so that the root are not too close to the edge where it is hot and dry. More soil means more stability with temps and moisture. Also easier to overwinter outside with bigger pots... more insulation.

Some lavenders get huge, some are small.

If you follow basic idea of grooming it down for the first couple of years, you will have a bushy vigorous plant that will produce many flowers. For now I would concentrate on getting it there and enjoying the ride.

In that linked picture, Ivan, the Lavender appears to be semi-dried already and is probably a different cultivar from yours since it has longer flower heads. I think your flowerheads look extremely healthy and have nothing wrong with them. Good luck.

Whether or not lavender "regrows in the spring" must depend on where you live. Where *I* live, my lavender dies down to the ground in winter, and - yes, indeed - grows back in the spring.

Zen, speaking as a fan of lavender plants, I am curious abut where you live, if you happen to know the cultivar that dies down and comes back or if any variety dies down to the ground. And if this happen every year or occasionally after a bad winter. This seems astonishing to me.

High Sierras desert region. Warm/hot days, cold/cool nights. Zone definitions are meaningless here.

It ALWAYS gets below freezing at night all winter and usually well into the spring. Last year we had freezing temps at night 'til the end of June. This year was not THAT bad, I think last frost was some time in EDIT: LATE May. (I put early before but it should have been late May/early June)

So yes, it dies back to the ground at some point each winter but comes back each spring. Exactly when depends on the temps each year.

I don't know the specific cultivar; it was whatever Bonnie Plants thinks grows well here. Apparently they guessed right!

Lots of lavender is grown here (residentially] so its not just me. You're welcome to be astonished if you care to be.

Zen I too am very curious about that type of lavender as I've never seen this with my plants (I live in Canada with -30C temperatures in winter, cold season last 7 months). Can you post a photo of the plants? Does it form woody stems at all? or simply is greenwood throughout its growing season? The types of lavenders I own are meant for my area's cold & wet weather but lavenders are really desert plants so I'm very interested to see what you have.

Ivan -- growing lavenders in pots is no problem. It can be wider but it needs to be deeper as well for the roots. However in winter, the freezing temps will chill the plant and can kill off the roots. Long story, but the alternating freezing and thawing can be very devastating to plants in the ground and most especially potted plants. To reduce this problem, take your pot and place it in an insulated box (a carton filled with styrofoam or something else). Its to keep the temperatures as steady as possible and to reduce the effects of temperature swings. You can group several pots with lavenders together and they will look lovely. Lavenders will grow for a long time although in some sites they recommend replacement after 3 years because they can get too woody. I've kept mine for 7 years and some are still going strong.

Ivan I only now saw the pic you wanted your lavender to resemble. that's a variety that produces tall blooms like provence or grossos.. There are multiple types of lavenders - English types are not as tall. First year lavenders do look like yours. Second year it becomes thicker and more blooms. To produce enough to create a thick bunch of lavenders, grow as many plants as you can.

In anycase, this is a link to Richter's Herbs that supply different types of lavenders here in Canada. It's a good resource area just to compare lavender types: . https://www.richters.com/Web_store/web_store.cgi?show=list&prodclass=Herb_and_Vegetable_Plants&cart_id=868956.19905

Ianna - isn't lavender a Mediterranean plant? Not really a desert plant - but it seems to do well in this semi-desert environment. I'm told its not REAL desert because we get 7" of rain per year, LOL!

Here is a picture. The lavender plant stays small because it dies back in winter, but I have seen much larger lavender plants in a nearby hellstrip. I don't know how they manage that - perhaps they protect them over winter. I just leave mine exposed to the elements! I'm probably a very bad plant parent.

There's a lot of Russian sage grown here, which is not lavender but gets mistaken for lavender.

No woody growth, all green stems.

Similarly unprotected and left to the mercies of nature, German thyme and Rosemary also do not get very large, but continue to survive despite winter die-back:

Those plants around the smaller rosemary are volunteer sunflower plants. I let them go wherever they pop up. The scrub jays eat the seeds when they ripen, and finches munch on the leaves - which doesn't kill the plant but they sure look bad once they start up the salad bar, LOL!

I have creeping thyme starts to set in this year and some nasturtiums to fill in the gaps until the creeping thyme, well, CREEPS.

Mediterranean - very semi desert conditions. Think Provence or Spain. Interestingly Provrnce gets whipped up by the Freeszing mistral yearly.

Zen - you have a dwarf form of lavender. Probably am insteaf. I get what you mean now. It won't look as shrubby like the taller types but it certainly is still a shrub. It would look like it does back completely to the ground but probly not really. The core would remain woody for it to bounce back the ff year

sorry for the typos but using my iphone to type things up is so frustrating because of the autocorrect feature.. Munstead - that's what I meant.

I understand totally. When this stupid data phone dies, I'm never having another. I'll just get a pay as you go flip phone. LOL!

I commute by train to work and usually I sit in the top level where its a quiet zone.. but one day I was laughing a bit too loudly. My daughter kept sending me texts that said "I'm gingery" and .... " gingery" and again .. "gingery" and finally "hungry" Autocorrect at its best.

Not to derail this tangent on Autocorrect, but...

I use voice mail software that transcribes a voice mail to text which it then emails me. Really cool concept. You still usually get the gist of the message, so it is useful. But the results are often funny because of strange punctuation and misunderstood words.

For example, on my way home the other day my wife who is an articulate speaker left me a voice mail transcribed: ...please bring home a little of Christy Brendan....

I did not know Christy Brendan and figured I probably would not be able to bring home any part of her, so I listened to the voice mail. That Christy Brendan turned out to be crusty bread.

I guess we won't be having artificial intelligence over for dinner anytime soon.

oh my that is funny..

Hi. I have a well established lavender bush ( French lavender) 4 years old. It's beginning to die from the stems upwards. Although it still has flower shoots on the top. Could it be diseased? I have also had to move the plant that was next to it as that one started to get sickly too.

Hi parker, do you have a photograph of the plant? The plant that was next to it, what type of plant? What climate are you living in?

The plant that was next to it was a hydrangea. And it's British weather.

I think your soil is waterlogged. Has it been raining much?