Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Not a succulent

Hard herbs are not succulents but plant care is much the same. Well-draining coarse soil, minimal watering, minimal fertilizer, lots of sun. Hard herbs include oregano, rosemary, thyme, sage, and similar.

I have one rosemary plant that I decided to treat exactly like a succulent, potting it in terra cotta, using succulent potting mix, and even covering the surface of the soil with little stones. I only water it when it is dry. Maybe not quite as dry as the typical succulent, but close. It's doing great.

I have an oregano plant in a 10-inch terra cotta pot that I have had for a few years. Three years, five years, I'm not sure. It has been looking sickly/yellow lately so I decided to try something I have seen Mr. Sheffield do to house plants -- prune the roots. It took some effort to pop it out of its pot, and lo and behold I found a plant tag: Greek Oregano. That was a surprise. Next time I am shopping I will have to get a regular or Italian variety. Anyway....

I used a bread knife that has been in the family for 70 years (no joke) to slice off the bottom third of the root ball, about three inches. I put a mesh screen over the pot's drainage hole, added three inches of fresh garden soil mixed with pumice, and put the top of the plant back in. I did not add any fertilizer because oregano should not need it. I watered it in and that was it, unchanged to the casual observer.

I went through the sliced-off portion to see what there was to see. It was all fine roots and large stones. Everyone now says not to put stones in the bottom of pots because they do not improve drainage and actually may be harmful, but X number of years ago when I originally potted it, putting stones at the bottom was standard. I suppose in five years "they" will say using pumice is a huge mistake and everyone should stop doing it.

The Canadian dude on Everything Plants root prunes his Jades, but many other types of succulents do not have an extensive root system like Jade. A web search for "root prune succulents" reveals a variety of opinions on whether the root ball for other types of succulents should be trimmed when repotting. It's not something I'm going to worry about until the first time I see a root-bound succulent, which hasn't happened yet.