hi, friends- Seen rosemary 'christmas' trees at nurseries?

The only Rosemary I've ever used I grew pots or my garden from seed or seedlings. I'm a bit North to expect overwintering it outside. I find two varieties....one that stays close to Mother Earth and creeps and another that is bush like. I favor the creeping variety and keep one growing in a pot just an arms length from the BBQ. set up. Anymore almost all of my herbs are in pots close to where I use them.

Sally............likely every word you write will be news to me. I find herbs by asking a chef about one I discover on or in his food and like. Then if I can I grow it and add it to my bag of tricks. Sometimes when I get carried away the chefs will trade with me.

doc, if you know a good bread baker, offer some rosemary to go in a bread. One year I had a neighbor taking bread to a farmers market. She'd come to me for an armful of rosemary, then give me something left over from the day. Good stuff! I put some in a bread machine bread once, but I was maybe too cautious, didn't put enough.

This bread baker is just coming of age! It took me nearly a year to develop my favorite sour dough or pre-ferment loaf. I add the roughest oatmeal available and a nine grain mix from the local health stores. The grains are ground down to smaller bits in a food processer. We have cut out the white sugar and replaced it with maple syrup and honey. Seasalt gives it a low salt profile and adds the trace minerals good for all. The basic King Arthur flour is five cups of bread baking flour, one and a half cup of whole wheat or mixed light and dark whole wheat. We add water for consistancy not measure of water. The dough is a heavy on the dry side dough. Some call this a hard dough as compaired to a soft dough. Soft dough will not work with this much grain added. Boosters are a speciality King Arthur powdered milk for added calcium and some added gluten to boost the yeasts and give the artisen loaf strength to stand tall. One tablespoon full of cooking oil to add shelf life. When not being watched I butter top the loaf for a rich browning. Helps the whole wheat multi grain loaf be a tad more crusty and have nice color. This becomes a six to seven cup batch that makes three loaves of bread and three or four pizza shells sized for two seniors. Five bucks will not get you a loaf as good as this one at the local farmers market. My guess is I have less than a dollar a loaf in this beauty.

The next batch shall have Rosemary introduced. How much Rosemary for a trace flavor would anyone with experience suggest..........for just a trace flavor to be in there?

As an aside: The King Aurthur company is employee owned. Their flour products are thought by many bakers to be the best available today.

Doc, That sounds just yummy. I've used the King Arthur flours and found them to be very good.

I would grind the leaves of 2 or 3 Rosemary Sprigs per loaf and mix them into the dough. Also, after buttering the top, I would sprinkle some whole Rosemary needles across the top. A quarter cup of minced onion per loaf and some coarsely ground black pepper would also be great additions.

Doc, you are truly a man of many talents.

One of my X-mas gifts is a certificate which admits me to two afternoons with one of the areas most liked pizza chefs. Prime designated goal......to learn how to throw a pizza shell. I hope I have enough git up and go to get this lesson learned. The chef laughed out loud when I appeared to schedule with him. We will give it a good try anyway. The rest is just watching the master work. I am permitted to take notes but no pictures. Fair enough.

Oh, what fun!

What a blast!! Doc, that's a shame about the cameras, well maybe when you try it at home we can see a photo of you throwing your dough!!! What an imaginative gift. That should be added to the thread for what to give seniors. Any kind of fun classes would make great gifts.

I'm surprised that everyone else has had such poor results with thses pruned rosemaries. We bought one two years ago and immediately repotted it into a large pot (actually it's a stainless steel wastebasket with holes drilled in the bottom, but it's pretty and functional.) This is the third Christmas that we have used it as a "tree" and it still looks good. It had a rough summer this year so it's not as nice as it's been in the past. The only problem we've had was powdery mildew the first year because we kept it inside way too long.

All of our outdoor rosemaries were killed in a very harsh winter a few years ago so we keep this one in the garage when it's really cold and on the front porch when the weather is more mild.

I was trying to get christmas photos of the cats but they wouldn't sit still for two seconds.

What a beauty Katlian! I like that you've also decorated the pot even with lights. I always thought that the problem with Rosemary trees here was that the winter air indoors is so dry, but certainly your area is yet dryer. Even my outdoor Rosemary died a quick death this August while I spent a long weekend at the Beach.

That really is beautiful. Love the ways the lights wrap up the pot with the ribbons.

I read the instructions with the Rosemary. The big item.........."If you keep it in this pot it must be watered at least once a day". I pulled one out of the pot to witness extreme pot bound conditions. The unknown spray material was visable on the plant and I could smell it before I saw it. No suggestion there to indicate repotting would possibly be helpfull. Most folks buying that plant likely are not set up to repot. There was one warning...."Keep leaves dry". Now tell me how you could flush the spay material and keep the sucker dry? How much of that spray is in the plant as well as on the surface? If they sprayed it why can't we mist them? What the heck was that spray? I'm pretty sure it was not baking powder. If it was why don't my cookies stink. :))

Doc, You are too funny. You really do not like these christmas trees. I'll admit that I have never purchased one, knowing the odds are against me from the start.

I am not sure that I am following about re-potting since I had dug mine up from the yard to bring it indoors--tried this several times-to overwinter in the warm house. The plants did fine until around December....just when I wanted them to be looking great!! The needles turned brown suddenly and fell off!! Bummer. I think it is just the decreasing light, and maybe the drafts of winter. Who knows?

That is a beautiful tree, Katliam. I think your climate is more stable, perhaps, at least more sunshine during the winter months. We have so many dark, gray days.....

doc- keep an eye on the local news or maybe check the KingArthur website, looking for notice that they'll visit and give demo. We had one two years ago , well attended, informative and a little freebie cookbook too. I use their White whole wheat in place of all purpose, even tho my mom thinks it looks funny (tan) I am breadmaking-handicapped so far ...

Katlian- congrats on success and such a pretty plant as well.

Of the three plants I purchased this fall, one that I let get really dry has some browning. The two that I bought later I have tried to give small frequnent waterings and they look better. Getting water on the leaves doesn't seem to hurt at all. In a cool room on windowsill. But out of the decor pot which would drown them if overwatered. Yes very root bound. A huge rosemary in my yard had one year that it lost a lot of green in a very wet spring, otherwise truckin right along for 18 years.

Thanks everyone,
I think the reason it has done so well is that it was in pretty good condition to start with. I bought it at Lowes a day or two after it arrived from the nursery so the Lowes employees didn't have much time to abuse it. It came in a 5 gallon red nursery pot (not too rootbound) and it was out in the nursery section (not the heated indoor part). There wasn't any type of spray or glitter or any of the other weirdstuff they put on these poor plants. We keep our house cool (as in, "put on another sweater" cool) and run a humidifier 24/7 in the fall and winter to keep our plants and sinuses happy.

Fox, we get more sunshine but those are the days when the rosemary has to stay in the garage because the temps drop quickly at night. This week the clear nights dropped to 3° while the cloudy nights stayed around 30°.

This plant got spider mites this summer because it was next to some plants that always get spider mites. We hosed it down regularly to control them and it seemed to do less damage to the plant than the spider mites. Maybe the combination of humidity and cool temps in the winter makes them more prone to fungal problems if the leaves get wet.

The best thing I can come up with for these wierd little Christmas bushes is it led another observer to comment.......Someone must of had to much time on their hands to make these. Yet another thought.........If we would not have seen these dumb little critters what else would we have picked on today?

Actually, I think rosemary makes a wonderful topiary... I've seen it trained into other shapes, also. It's just the lack of care and info regarding these mass-production decorative ones that's an issue, I think. And whether or not that's a problem for you depends on whether you're willing to see live plants as "disposable" like cut flowers.

I'd like to try making a rosemary "tree" some time by sticking rosemary clippings into a cone of floral foam. :-)

hot off the press:

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1895/

Aw shucks....
claypa thanks for the link

and critter, then write an article about it

With bated (comes from the word abated) breath, I opened the first thread commenting on my article, title all in capital letters.
Of course, 'doc' is a true gentleman and found something nice to say about the weird little Christmas bushes. I think I'm more humbled by his kindness than I would have been by his coming out of the gate with another side of the story. Thanks, doc. That was a nice way to start my day.

Just came upon this Post! And it is already some 60 replies big! I REALLY need to venture away from reading only my "watched" Posts!

I have a Rosemary in my "yuk" corner bed that is growing well. Obviously, it must not mind the matted soil full of my Silver Maple roots only 6' away (hence my "yuk" bed...). It is nicely perennial and has grown to about 18" tall and maybe, 10"-12" wide. It started out as a 4" potted herb from HD.
My neighbor had a large Rosemary bush--then she dug it up and moved it, and it looks pretty sad....but there is green in it.

In 2006, when i visited my daughter in Seattle, the street she lives on has trees in the strip of land next to the sidewalk, and growing all around all the trees were huge plantings of Rosemary. I could not believe it! So--it is a pretty hardy plant.

Sally, I like your little decorated Rosemary "tree".....

Gita

Sally, that was a great article today! Oh, and thank you for using the right spelling of that word! I'm reminded of a story...

A city slicker heads out to the lake for a day of fishing, all decked out with vest, hat, waders, and every possible kind of bait and artificial lure. He fishes hard all morning and doesn't get a nibble.

He notices that just down the bank, there's a local kid, dressed in cut-offs and fishing with an old cane pole. The boy has been pulling in one fat fish after another, all morning. Finally, the city guy can't stand it, and he calls over and asks the lad to please reveal his secret.

The kid replies, "ooo mmmph emumph mummm mmm mph mmhmm!"

"What??"

"OOm mmmphee emumph muMMMM mumph!"

"What are you saying?"

The kid spits a juicy wad into his hand and replies, "You gotta keep your worms warm, mister!"

Now that is "baited" breath, and it's the image that always comes to mind when somebody uses "baited" rather than "bated" breath. (Yes, I'm a word geek.)

...which is all fine and good except my lunch in ready to come up...ugh....worms IN the mouth....gag

Sorry, Chantell... my apologies to any who read this over lunch!

Oh Sally, Just loved your article just made me want to run out and get one to decorate. I just may yet I could use a small gift for my Mom. Who said your not crafty???? You had great ideas on how to decorate those trees.
Critter, LOL

I was at the grocery store last week and found battery operated LED christmas lights. The strands were not long enough for my "tree" but it would be great for a smaller one. If my baby lime tree looked healthier right now I might decorate it with them and put it on my desk at work.

Last year some friends gave me a set of minature wooden ornaments that are the perfect size for my tree, but I'm not sure where they found them.

Jill - I was just teasin' with ya...lunch stayed in place no worries....God knows what Chloe's put in her mouth other then dog food

Baited breath--LOL - Excellent way to remember what's correct

Katlian- I think your rosemary is more attractive now that it's grown out a little looser than these almost-just-pruned ones.

Any association is great for remembering anything until about age seventy when the whole body starts acting up including the brain machine. Then even the teacher gets messed up with the simplest "stuff". I now feel sometimes like an educated idiot. More fun appears when the oldster starts to learn computer and digital camera. Then we get introduced to such wisdom as click on strart to stop and words that have no meaning whatsever in a functional sense. LOL

I am there with you, doc!
Educated idiots......Just love it!

For anyone who wants to try their luck with a rosemary "tree", I just picked one up at the local Lowe's yesterday for 50¢. All Christmas plants were $1, including some nice looking Norfolk Island pines! Check out your neighborhood Lowe's! Worth a shot!

Some Dave's gardeners are the most educated idiots I know.......Pssst- a tip--there is no "any" key
I was in stitches yesterday with my two teenagers over texting with my cell phone. Trying to text my husband. Finally one kid says- Mom, why don't you just call? , just cause you Can text doesn't mean you Have to!!!

My grandson age fourteen informed me I could stop being mad at the car door opener...."just put the key in and open it". The only key hole was in the trunk lid. He got to crawl through and open the driver's side door. LOL

And if it makes anyone feel better - I shut my keys IN my trunk...stood there with hands on hips yelling words that shouldn't be repeated at my stupid car for swallowing my keys. DD comes out a min or so later - asks what's wrong....calmly walks over to the driver's side (I had the door opened still) and hits the trunk release button....can you say DUH???? Looks at me, giggles and says "here's your sign"....ugh!!!

LOL, You guys, I'm right in there with you both. LOL

Ha, doc, he loved it! My son got the excitement of crawling thru Mom's bathroom window at age fourteen to rescue her from being locked out. My sister and I used to. Phew, kind of tough!
Chantell- --I never would have thought of it. I locked myself out of my van last summer, I threw my purse in the way back and put the hatch down, and it self locks, like a security feature. Gee thanks!

Rosemary is for remembrance!! Maybe now when you see a tree, it will help you rmemeber the car keys after reading this thread!! ROTFL!!! That's association at its best. :-)

LOLOL!

Maybe I should grow one in the car. I locked the one key in the trunk last week. The mechanics came and got the back door open immediately, but it took a couple hours and a trip back to the shop to look at the wiring schematics to get the trunk open, and they still weren't sure how they did it. But they didn't charge anything!!!

You've got some nice mechanics there!