Update: overwintered herbs

All winter I've been pretty careful to keep the herbs watered, but I haven't given them much attention otherwise. But, inevitably, some got a little dry, and dropped a few leaves.

The sage, lavender, rosemary, and greek oregano held up the best — they rarely dropped leaves and are still looking pretty nice.

The thyme and lemon thyme were next best — I let them get a little dry and they'd have a little dusting of teeny leaves at their feet, but still they don't look lanky or too sparse. The regular oregano did alright, though it was pretty thirsty, but it lost a lot of leaves and I just cut it back to get some fresh, tasty growth.

The lemon verbena was doing ok, until last week when it suddenly got very thirsty, dried out and dropped a bunch of leaves...or so I thought. When I looked closer I saw that it was putting out new growth and was covered in aphids. So it got a major trim. It needed it anyway; it put out a lot of spindly growth when I brought it inside last fall and it was starting to look like a tumbleweed.

The mints were pretty bad — they just didn't like it inside I guess. I couldn't find a happy medium between too much and too little water. I ended up hacking off everything. They'll have to start fresh this spring.

And I almost lost the marjoram. One day I discovered that it completely dried up — every single leaf was crunchy. Oops. So I cut it all off and let it sit, gave it a little water every now and then, but pretty much ignored it. And a few weeks later I noticed one teeny green leaf. It's put out a few leaves now. But they're very tender, so I'm going to have to be careful with it.

And the hardening-off has begun! I started putting them outside for a couple hours at a time in the late afternoon when I get home from work — when it's about 50º outside. :D