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Can you get a Bay Plant?

Hi All

I wish to but a Bay Plant NOT a tree. It is such a thing? I'm thinking something about Rosemary size. A Bay Tree would be just to big for us.

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Posts

  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,066

    Yes.  Just look around in garden centres although it's probably the wrong end of the season for them.   Some supermarkets have them in their fresh herb section.

    The smaller plants can be kept bushy simply by removing leaves as you need them for cooking or you could remove lower leaves and gradually make a pom pom shape and grow more prostrate horizontal herbs such as thyme below.  That's what I've done but I have to bring it in over winter as they freeze to death outside in my winters whether in pots or in the ground.

    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • Thanks obelixx for that, I will be buying one next spring/summer

    Thanks for the warning about bringing them in over winter.

  • i bought my bay tree as a very small plant in  a pot and now have one big healthy tree which cost £1.50.image

  • Did you have to do a lot of work on it Flowering Rose to grow it from a plant

    to a tree and how long did it take?   I would love a bay tree but can't justify

    paying the price for a fully grown one when I have so much else to spend

    my pennies on!  I would really appreciate some advice on how to go

    about growing a tree like you have.  image

     

     

  • Sometimes the little ones you find in the herb section of GCs are clumps of several little individual plants - you can separate these and grow them on to make your own standard lollipops or pyramids etc.  It just takes a bit of time. 

    I grew my standard lollipop from a cutting some years ago - it would've cost me a small fortune to buy image


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,445

    Mine makes suckers but I can't seem to get them established when I dig them up. I shall have to have another try. Do you think spring wouyd be the best time?



    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • I'm growing one in a pot for my daughter - I took it as a sucker from a biggish bay that was in the middle of the lawn here when we moved in.  I think it must've been in the autumn when I potted it up - but don't see why it wouldn't work just as well, if not better, in the spring image


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,445

    I'll have some more tries Dove, can't give up though I don't need another bay, the one I've got is plenty. Perhaps I'll post one to flowersforbees and she can try and get it established. Assuming it's made some more, I haven't looked lately.

    Propagation gets to be a bit of an obsession after a while, but I can usually find takers for what grows.



    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • If you have an existing bay or  a neighbour with a bay, they are easy to take cuttings from.. If you just cut a length of stem, take off all the lower leaves, and put it in a pot and forget about it till next year, you'll find it's rooted! Anyway I have a high success rate (6 out of 7) rooted.  I overwinter them in a greenhouse (I am in Aberdeen) and within a couple of years you have a bush - and you train the cutting for what you want - I now have 2 nice standards - by letting a leader grow and rubbing out other leaves - cheap, good fun!

  • Thanks a lot folks!  Nutcutlet if you have any to spare I would love one - my

    flowers/shrubs/trees/etc. are all named after the people who gave them to

    me and I have to say the predominant name in my garden is definitely Nutcutlet! !

    Bay trees have always been a favourite and I use lots of bay leaves when

    cooking - would love to have one to tie a red ribbon onto at Christmas - it looks

    so festive!!  image

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