1stop Organic Gardening

Here’s a great perennial herb to grow in your organic garden. It’s called lovage, with the botanical name Levisticum officinale. It’s like many herbs, in that it has multiple uses – in fact lovage has many, many uses.

For starters, it grows all year round in temperate climates. So you can have a celery type flavour whenever you want – unlike celery, which takes about 5 months to grow, you harvest it and it’s gone forever. With lovage you just pull off a stem or three for your soup, casserole or even salad. You can use the stem as well as the pretty leaves and seeds.

Lovage can grow quite tall – up to 2 metres, so it’s best along a fence or the back of a border. It is also quite happy growing in partial shade. It prefers fertile soil and not to dry out, but is quite hardy.

In summer it will produce small, yellow flowers and then seed. You can also use the seed in cooking, replacing celery seed.

Lovage is also an excellent companion plant. It’s one of those fantastic plants that improves the health of other plants living close by. It is also used medicinally as a tea.

So you see it really is an amazing plant….  and very easy to grow. All in all, a great herb to add to your collection.

Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…

Filed under: Herbs on September 12th, 2008