Thymus vulgaris
Thyme
Common names: Common thyme, Garden thyme
At a glance
- Light
- Full sun
- Spacing
- 25 cm, rows 30 cm
- Lifespan
- Perennial
- Sowing
- Apr–May
- Harvest
- May–Sep
- Hardiness
- Hardy down to −15 °C
- Water need
- Low
Photo: Isidre blanc · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source
Description
Common thyme is a low, hardy subshrub with tiny leaves and a strong, spicy aroma, a cornerstone of Mediterranean cooking and a magnet for bees when it flowers pink. It thrives even in lean soil and does well at a sunny bed edge or in a herb pot.
Care instructions
Set it in a fully sunny, dry spot with free-draining, calcareous soil; it cannot cope with waterlogging at all. Water sparingly and cut it back by a third after flowering so it stays compact and does not go woody. Harvest the shoot tips at their most aromatic shortly before flowering in June on a sunny morning.
The care notes were machine-translated from German.
Garden year
SowingApr–May
HarvestMay–Sep
Germination
- Soil temperature
- from 10 °C, ideally 20 °C
- Days to sprout
- 14 to 28 days
- Light
- Needs light to sprout
- Sowing depth
- Press in, don't cover
- How to start
- Start indoors, then plant out
Soil & site
Soil pH
Soil type
sandy, well-drained, lime-loving, lean, dry
Thyme needs a very free-draining, sandy to gravelly-stony soil without waterlogging. Loosen heavy loam or clay soils with sand and fine gravel. A poor, rather chalky soil is ideal: too many nutrients come at the expense of flavour.
Feeding
Light feeder
Months
Mar–Apr
Feed only once a year in spring at the start of new growth: spread a thin layer of mature compost shallowly around the plant, if you like lightly worked in with some horn shavings. Do not feed in autumn, as it weakens winter hardiness.
Overwintering
Thyme is hardy in the bed and comes through lowland winters in Central Europe outdoors. The real enemy is winter wet, not the cold: put it in free-draining, rather sandy soil and slightly raised so that no water collects, and cover it loosely with brushwood or dry leaves in severe, lasting frost. Container thyme you place against a sheltered house wall, wrap the pot with hessian or coir fabric and stand it on wood or a board so that the root ball does not freeze through from below.
Propagation
Methods
- From seed
- Cuttings
- Division
- Layering
Cuttings (recommended method): In spring or early summer, cut shoot tips 5 to 8 cm long, not yet woody and not yet flowering, directly below a leaf node. Remove the lower leaves and insert the cuttings in sandy seed compost. Keep the soil evenly moist and place the pots in a bright spot, but out of direct midday sun. After about six to eight weeks the cuttings have rooted, which you can tell by new growth, and can be planted out.
Sowing: Thyme germinates in light. Do not cover the fine seeds with soil when you sow them; only press them down lightly. Start sowing under cover indoors from the end of February at around 16 to 20 °C; germination takes place after about 10 to 21 days. From mid-April you can also sow directly in the open ground. Prick out the young plants after four to five weeks and plant them out after the Ice Saints (mid-May). Note: plants grown from your own harvested seed often differ from the mother plant, because thyme crosses easily; for propagation true to type, cuttings are more reliable.
Division: Every three to four years thyme gets old and bare from the centre outwards. Dig the plant up in spring, divide the rootstock into several pieces, each with its own roots and shoots, and replant the pieces at once. This rejuvenates the plant and gives you several new specimens at once. Work carefully so that the mother plant comes through the division well.
Layering: In May or June, bend a long side shoot growing close to the ground down to the soil, fix it with a wire hoop or a stone and cover the spot lightly with soil. After three to four months the shoot has formed its own roots and can be separated from the mother plant and moved.
Companion planting
Good neighbors
nightshade family (Solanaceae)
particularly well establishedYou will find that basil next to tomato and pepper improves taste and keeps whiteflies and aphids away.
For example PotatoTomatoSweet pepperCocktail tomatoEggplantCape gooseberry and 14 more species in the catalogue
Source: classic companion planting (DACH-Gartenpraxis)
cabbage family (Brassicaceae)
You will notice that the intense scent of basil, thyme, and others confuses the cabbage whitefly and keeps it away from the cabbage family.
For example KohlrabiRadishKalebroccolicauliflowerBrussels sprout and 39 more species in the catalogue
Source: bio-gardening intercropping practice
Rather not
Companion planting is partly traditional gardening lore. Where the reason is known, it is given.
Some of these explanations were machine-translated.
For your garden
Grow Thyme yourself
Gartenkern tells you when frost is coming, when to sow and when to harvest, for your location.
Free, no time limit
Notes from real gardens
What other gardeners have written down about this variety, anonymous and voluntary.
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From the magazine
Building Garden Paths and Bed Edgings
Why the base layer decides how long your paths last, and how living edgings of box, lavender or thyme can replace the hard stone border.
Growing and pruning thyme: keep it lean, cut it right
Thyme is easy once you understand where it comes from: sun, poor soil, little water. The way you prune it decides whether it lasts ten years or goes bald.
Flowering lawns and herb lawns: the low maintenance alternative
Grasses plus low, tread tolerant flowers: white clover, daisies, creeping thyme, selfheal. Four to six cuts a year at 6 to 8 cm, no feed, no scarifying. How to sow a flowering lawn from scratch or overseed it into the sward you already have.
Where to get this plant
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- Browse thyme seeds at Samen.de
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