Hello, all.

I am a [very] novice gardener, and now that the weather is turning colder
I have some basic questions regarding the herbs I've planted outside.
(Everything else in my garden is a native species and I'm not as worried
about those.)

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.
I live in Urbana, Illinois (zone 5).

Thanks for the help!
Cheers,
Rosemary

"R Braun" wrote in message
...
Hello, all.

I am a [very] novice gardener, and now that the weather is turning colder
I have some basic questions regarding the herbs I've planted outside.
(Everything else in my garden is a native species and I'm not as worried
about those.)

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.
I live in Urbana, Illinois (zone 5).

Thanks for the help!
Cheers,
Rosemary

All of those will survive your normal winter. However, the parsley is a
biennial plant, and it will die back in winter and re-grow in the spring,
produce seeds and then die. You can let the chives freeze up solid outside,
dig a chunk up and bring inside and stuff into a clay pot. They will produce
chives for you all winter...then just re-plant outside next Spring! The Sage
and Thyme are very hardy and can survive outside quite well.

Regards,
Bill

R Braun wrote in message ...

The herbs in question are sage, parsley, chives, and thyme.
I live in Urbana, Illinois (zone 5).


almost certainly they will all survive. They will all die back except
thyme and come back in the spring. Most varieties of sage are not
hardy to Zone 5, but I trust you got the stuff that will survive
there. Thyme is useful until very late in the season, red cabbage and
carrot matchsticks with thyme vinaigrette is a november classic at my
place.

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