R Braun wrote:

I'd like to know whether they'll survive the winter; and, if they will,
what I need to do to protect them and how far back I can cut them.
I'd like to harvest and freeze as much as I can without killing the
plants if they have a chance of coming back, but I wasn't able to
garner that infromation from the faq....

The herbs in question are sage, parsley, chives, and thyme.

If you have hard winters with snow and frost in the ground your thyme will
survive the winter without trouble, but will die in spring when the sun
melts the snow but not the ground. It'll die of thirst. Cover it up either
now or when the sun has melted the snow that's been covering it.
That's the Thymus vulgaris and other upright species. Groundcover thymes
mostly die off, too, but because they have roots pretty much everywhere
they touch the ground they bounce back the minute the ground thaws.

Sage sometimes dies in our winters, but inexplicably, generally survives
the hardest ones.

Parsley and chives have no problems whatsoever with winter.

Henriette

--
Henriette Kress, AHG Helsinki, Finland
Henriette's herbal homepage: http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed
Best of RHOD: http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/rhod