Planting oregano seeds for seedlings. What are the benefits of common oregano? Healing properties of oregano
Despite the fact that many summer residents and gardeners know what oregano (oregano) is, growing from seeds is not easy for everyone. Let's talk about rules and mistakes together.
Oregano, although an unpretentious plant, still requires a little specific labor, knowledge and attention for beautiful growth. Almost any area, both in the sun and in the shade, is suitable for planting; it is good to plant this plant in the garden. The soil can be any kind, but it must be dug up and fertilized first. On loose soil in the garden, the plant takes root better and blooms beautifully.
Growing oregano (oregano) is best done from seeds using the seedling method. To do this, in early spring (the first half of March), seeds are sown in a prepared seedling box to a depth of 0.5 cm. The plant germinates in about two weeks with good watering and indirect sunlight. It is best to place the seedling box on a bright window. At first the sprouts will grow slowly, but with subsequent proper care they will produce leaves. When approximately 3-4 full leaves appear on the stem, the seedlings need to be transplanted - each into a separate container. It is important not to damage the root system during digging. Then, as they grow, it is advisable to lower the air temperature and prepare the plants for planting in open ground.
As soon as the thin stems are replaced by young strong shoots, the oregano can be transplanted into the ground in the garden. This time usually arrives by mid-May. Plants are planted in well-watered prepared holes at a distance of 15 cm. Then it is advisable to water the soil well again and mulch it.
Directly into open ground
Some gardeners prefer to grow oregano from seeds by planting them directly in open ground. This is also a completely acceptable and acceptable method, especially if your region has a warm and early spring. To do this, at the beginning of March, the seeds are planted 0.5-1 cm deep into moist soil. After this, the growing area is not touched or fed until shoots appear. Only after this are the seedlings thinned out and well watered. Also at this time, it is important to carefully control weeds, which often choke the growth of young shoots. That is why oregano is most often grown in the garden, where there are fewer weeds.
Growing
After planting in open ground, the seedlings will initially require sufficient attention and care. But when the plants have finally taken root, become stronger and begin to actively grow, growing them does not take much time or trouble. However, it is worth remembering that in the first year, even under the best growing conditions, oregano does not bloom. Then, for beautiful and long-lasting flowering, experts advise fertilizing the plant before starting to plant buds. For this, as practice shows, a solution of 1 tablespoon of ammonium nitrate is well suited. The harvest is harvested in July, leaving only the main stem 20 centimeters high from the ground.
Growing common oregano from seeds is best done by seedlings. This way the plant takes root faster and requires less attention. Having grown stronger in a seedling pot, the plant already tolerates weather changes well and is able to fight weeds. As for subsequent cultivation, oregano tolerates both summer heat and winter cold well, so it does not require any additional shelter in the garden. Sufficient watering and timely fertilizing are the key to success.
Care
When growing oregano from seeds, the list of care includes watering, fertilizing, removing grass, and loosening the soil. But the same simple steps must be followed during the subsequent growth of the plant. It is worth noting that the value as a useful aromatic plant depends directly on its care. For example, with an excess or lack of moisture in the stems and leaves, the amount of essential oils decreases, which is why the plant may produce less of a pleasant aroma. In the first years of growth, it is advisable to clear the bushes of grass and other weeds, but after the third year of life, oregano itself will drown out the “uninvited guests.”
If you want to breed and cultivate this plant for a long time, you must remember that oregano does not grow in one place for more than 20-25 years. But in the garden, in order to enjoy lush flowering and aroma every year, it is advisable to replant it every five years. In the first year of planting, the bush needs to be thinned out and the inflorescences removed, so the plant will become thicker. For fertilizing, it is best to use organic fertilizers in the form of mullein (1:6) or infusion of bird droppings.
Also, due to its strong aroma and high content of essential oils, oregano does not require treatment against pests or diseases, as it has strong natural immunity and protection. This, of course, makes it much easier to care for and successfully grow.
Video
In addition to potatoes, onions and tomatoes, it is useful to plant garden beds with herbs, such as oregano (oregano). In addition to delicious tea and spicy dishes, it will help protect the garden from pests and become a wonderful decoration. If you have already thought about it, below you will learn everything about oregano, its cultivation and care.
Oregano: description of a spicy plant
Oregano (motherland, incense, oregano) is a perennial fragrant plant growing in bushes from 30 to 70 cm in height. Thanks to its strong roots, oregano is able to grow independently throughout the garden. Its leaves are small, egg-shaped with a sharp tip. Flowering occurs in a variety of shades, as today over 20 decorative varieties of this plant have been bred.
Oregano is used not only for delicious tea, but also as a medicinal herb.
- In particular, it can affect:
- nervous system, improving well-being, sleep, relieving headaches;
- digestion, increasing appetite;
- respiratory system, helping to cope even with bronchitis;
- female organs, helping to eliminate delays in menstruation, relieve symptoms of PMS and menopause;
- the oral cavity, helping to cope with stomatitis;
skin, since it is an excellent remedy for childhood diathesis and various dermatitis in adults. Oregano is also used in everyday life: if you leave it in the closet, you won’t be afraid of moths. Oregano is also a very popular spice, which is used not only to season pizza, but is also used for canning.
Oregano is also valued by beekeepers, as bees make very fragrant honey from its pollen. Oregano blooms every year starting from the second year of growth, and after flowering, fruits are formed on the stems - very small round nuts. Nuts collect seeds that are simply microscopic in size. 1000 pieces of oregano seeds weigh only 0.1 g.
Favorable conditions for planting oregano
Planting oregano with seeds involves first selecting a favorable place for the plant, where it will not only grow well, but will also be able to accumulate useful substances in its leaves. The bed with oregano should be located in a well-lit area, since in the shade the plant will stretch excessively and will not be able to retain its aroma. At the same time, oregano is not at all picky about the type of soil, as it can take root almost anywhere.
But since we are talking about a perennial plant, it is better to choose a site with nutritious soil that is regularly moistened. Too dry or constantly wet areas are not suitable for the plant, as it may not grow or may degenerate and become a common weed. Also, starting in the fall, it is important to add manure or compost to the beds for oregano; if there is none, then even saltpeter will do.
Many fans of oregano try to grow it on the windowsill. In general, this is quite possible, but to obtain high-quality raw materials you will have to wait more than a year, since this spice produces the first flowering only during the second growing season.
How to plant oregano in open ground: a method of growing through seedlings
Often, oregano is grown from seeds, but it is recommended to sow them as seedlings. The fact is that the first shoots of oregano are usually very weak, and they can be easily driven away by weeds. Therefore, it is much more practical to grow seedlings in pots on the windowsill in the spring, and plant them in open ground closer to summer.
When and how to sow oregano
If oregano is grown from seeds, it is very important to guess with time when to plant. For seedlings, it can be sown in ordinary plastic pots or boxes as early as March. The sooner you do this, the stronger the seedlings will be for planting in open ground. During sowing, it is necessary to fill the pots with a nutritious soil mixture, which is best purchased at the store and mixed a little with regular sand.
Be sure to spray it with water from a spray bottle and compact it a little, then make rows and cover them with seeds. You should not bury the seeds more than 1 cm. You have to wait quite a long time for the first shoots - from 10 to 15 days. All this time, pots or boxes of oregano must be kept at a temperature of 20-22 ° C and on a well-lit windowsill.
Many gardeners also cover the pots with polyethylene when growing seedlings, but in the case of oregano there is no urgent need for this. When sown as seedlings, oregano will surprise you with its thin sprouts, which at first are even scary to touch. But over time, they will significantly strengthen and become similar to an adult plant.
Important!If you are interested in the question of how to plant oregano seeds directly in open groundLocation on, then it is recommended to do this at the end of May, when the earth warms up well. To do this, clear the area of weeds and sow the seeds densely in row spacing of 45 cm.
How to care for oregano seedlings
Small seedlings are very sensitive to weeds, which can drive them higher and choke them. Therefore, even in pots, it is important to carefully inspect the seedlings and remove everything that is not oregano. If your seedlings are very intense, then over time they need to be thinned out so that the seedlings can become well established.
Also, do not forget to regularly water oregano in pots, for which it is better to use a spray bottle. After all, with a large amount of water you can wash away poorly rooted plants, and the moisture introduced during the spraying process is quite enough for seedlings. Be sure to keep the seedlings in the sun and rotate them if you notice lopsided development.
Picking seedlings
After 2-3 leaves appear on the seedlings, they need to be pricked, that is, planted in separate pots so that they can gain strength until the time when it is necessary to plant oregano in open ground. You can plant seedlings in peat pots, which can then be planted in the garden beds. Already in mid-May, oregano will be ready to be planted in open ground. There is nothing complicated about this, the main thing is to choose a not too hot day for this and regularly add water to the seedlings.
Oregano is also valued by beekeepers, as bees make very fragrant honey from its pollen.Oregano is very often grown on an industrial scale, collecting its leaves to obtain essential oil. The latter is used for aromatherapy as a sedative.
Oregano care
In the first year, oregano will require quite a lot of attention, because the question of how to grow oregano from seeds also involves applying proper watering and fertilizing to the plant.
Rules for watering and fertilizing oregano
Oregano is not very demanding of moisture, but drought is contraindicated for it. Therefore, watering should be organized in accordance with the intensity of soil drying in oregano beds. You should also take care that during rainy weather excess water does not accumulate in the soil with oregano, so it is better to dig it in small depressions.
As for fertilizing, the plant will need it from early spring and after harvest. But in the first year you shouldn’t feed oregano, since it will still have enough nutrients that you added when preparing the bed in the fall. From the second year, as soon as the plant begins to emerge from hibernation, you can sprinkle it with saltpeter or add a little mullein (necessarily diluted with water).
Similar fertilizers can be used to fertilize in the summer. But if you grow oregano as a decorative flower in a flower bed, then you should not fertilize it, as it may subsequently grow excessively and lose its decorative effect.
Soil care
The soil in which oregano grows should always be slightly loosened. In the first years, until the ornamental plant grows, it will have to be weeded quite often. After all, oregano does not grow very intensively, while weeds appear instantly on good soil. But as soon as the oregano grows well, you can forget about the weeds.
Another way to control weeds and reduce the amount of watering is to mulch the soil in the oregano bed with straw. As a rule, such a small nuance has a very good effect on the growth of oregano.
Important!If oregano blooms in the first year of growth, it is better to remove it. This way you will give the plant the opportunity to strengthen itself so that next year in the spring it will grow even more.
It is noteworthy that oregano tolerates cold quite well, so its bushes do not even have to be covered for the winter. If the ground is covered with snow early, greenish leaves may still remain on the plant in the spring.
Features of oregano transplantation
Oregano can grow in the same place for more than 20 years, but if you want to be able to obtain medicinal medicine from it, it is recommended to replant it from place to place every five years. At the same time, after oregano, you can safely grow any garden crop, which is 99% not affected by pests and diseases - after oregano there is simply no left in the soil.
Oregano propagation
You already know how to plant oregano seeds, but you can also propagate it vegetatively:
- Dividing the bush. To do this, the already mature oregano must be dug up and carefully divided into two parts. It is very important not to harm the root system or break the stems, since they still need to grow.
- By layering. For this purpose, throughout the entire growing season, you can simply dig in some strong shoots with soil, which will definitely take root. Next season, the new plant will only have to be separated from the mother plant with a shovel, and it can be transplanted to any other place.
It is recommended to propagate oregano by vegetative methods either in spring or early autumn, so that the plant still has time to take root in its new location.
The oregano plant is known as a spicy perennial herb used in cooking, folk medicine, and gardening. In our country it is also called motherwort, and in Italy and Greece it is called oregano. Breeders have created many different varieties. Also, oregano is not difficult to grow, so it enjoys well-deserved popularity.
Where oregano grows, people are calmer and healthier, because tea with this herb calms the nervous system, fights inflammatory processes in the respiratory system, helps with digestion, and enriches it with vitamin C.
This perennial herbaceous plant grows everywhere in Europe and the Mediterranean, but in Russia you won’t find it except in the Far North.
The plant has a delicate spicy odor and slightly bitter taste; it is grown for the production of essential oil and as a honey plant. Many summer residents plant it on their plots to add fresh leaves to salads, and then drink aromatic tea all winter or treat a cold, if necessary.
Video “Beneficial properties of oregano”
From the video you will learn about the beneficial properties of this extraordinary spice.
Landing
People are often interested in how to grow oregano, because even without taking into account its beneficial properties, this beautiful herb is grown for decorative purposes. It is often used in borders, mixborders, ridges, on alpine slides and in moth gardens; it is also planted by gardeners to repel harmful insects. It propagates by seeds, cuttings, root division, and layering. 
If it is possible to take part of a plant from nature or from friends, then this does not have to be done only in the spring. The transplanted part of the root (necessarily with several buds), rooted layering or cuttings are accepted even in the middle of summer; they only need to be planted in light, non-acidic soil, and then watered thoroughly until new shoots begin to grow.
Seeds are usually harvested in early spring. If you sow them on a plot, and this will not happen before May (they will then need to be replanted once or twice), new plants will bloom only next year. If you need to get flowering this year, you must first grow the seedlings and then plant them in the planned place.
Seeds for seedlings are sown in March. Take dishes with drainage holes, add light nutritious soil (you can just take garden soil and add sand), moisten it, make grooves or holes up to 1.5 cm deep, place seeds, sprinkle with a thin layer of soil, moisten it again with a spray bottle. Then the crops are covered with glass or film until germination. It is recommended to ventilate and moisten them periodically.
Growing
After a pair of true leaves appear, the plants are planted in separate cups, watered, turned, hardened until May, when real warm spring comes to the garden. The seedlings grow without requiring any extra hassle, they need to be watered regularly, not allowing the soil to dry out, you can water them once or twice with a solution of mineral fertilizers so that they gain strength, but you should not be overzealous with this - the plants may grow too rapidly. 
Oregano is planted in a bright, open place with a distance of 30 cm between plants and 50 cm between rows. It is undemanding to the soil, but grows best on light, fertile neutral soils; well-drained sandy loam is suitable. The main thing is not to plant this plant in a wetland; it won’t like heavy clay soil, but it will still grow, the bushes will be smaller, and there will be less decorativeness and nutrients in the grass. Oregano can be grown not only in a flowerbed or vegetable garden; it grows well in a pot that can be placed on a windowsill or balcony; there are even varieties for hanging. Some owners plant individual plants in the garden among vegetables to protect them from pests; many harmful insects do not like the aroma of oregano.
Care
Even beginners can grow oregano and require minimal care. It must be watered moderately, since overwatering, as well as underwatering, will certainly affect the amount of essential oil. The first two to three years you have to frequently weed the area and loosen the soil around each plant. And in three years they will have grown so much that there will be no room left for weeds, so weeding will become very rare. 
This perennial grass can grow up to 25 years in one place, but it is advisable to replant it, dividing the bushes every 5 years, this way the decorative effect will be preserved.
If cutting grass for drying or extracting oil is done several times during the season, then after each time it is advisable to fertilize it with a solution of chicken manure infusion (mullein is possible) or complex mineral fertilizers. When fragrant herbs are grown for yourself or in flower beds, it is better to do without fertilizing so as not to provoke too rapid growth.
Storage
When to collect oregano is a simple question; it is collected almost all summer, as soon as all the buds are fully opened. When all the branches with leaves and flowers are collected (they are cut 20 - 30 cm long), they need to be dried in the fresh air under a canopy or in a ventilated room. Properly dried grass leaves crumble and stems break. 
Oregano should be stored in paper or linen bags separately from other herbs. The twigs can be used for one and a half years; when storing the ground herb in a hermetically sealed container, the period of use increases to three years.
Video “Growing oregano”
From the video you will learn how to grow oregano.
Some plants cannot surprise you with their decorative qualities, but become desirable inhabitants of garden plots due to their medicinal properties.
Oregano, or as it is popularly called, oregano, belongs to the Lamiaceae family and is simply a storehouse of active substances: antioxidants, ascorbic acid, thymol, essential oil and many others. In nature, it grows on forest edges and clearings, but in many European countries and even in the USA, this inconspicuous but very useful plant is cultivated with pleasure.
Bushes with tiny hairs on the stem and oblong leaves rarely grow above 60 centimeters. Small inflorescences will not become an enviable decoration in landscape design. But this is a whole first aid kit, and grown with your own hands. In Italian, Greek and Turkish cuisines, oregano is used as a natural spice. In addition, it will keep things safe - the branches of the plant perfectly repel moths.
Growing Oregano
Growing oregano is very simple, caring for it also does not require much time and effort. The plant is perennial, so you should immediately choose the most suitable site - sunny, without stagnant moisture, with fertile soil. During autumn digging, the soil is fertilized in advance with manure, superphosphate or ammonium nitrate.
Oregano seeds are very small. In April, they are simply sown in the ground, not deepened, but lightly sprinkled with peat on top. After 14 days, the first shoots should appear and then the excess seedlings can be thinned out. The perennial will bloom only in the second year.
If there are concerns about the vagaries of the climate, you can choose a more reliable method of propagation - seedlings. They begin sowing in February-March; containers with seeds are placed on a windowsill or in a well-lit room with a temperature of 18-20 °C. Small bushes of seedlings are planted in an open area after both the ground and the air have warmed up sufficiently, usually in May. Leave approximately 20 centimeters of free space between plants.
Oregano propagation by rhizomes is less commonly used. They are planted to a depth of 5 centimeters.
How to care for oregano
When caring for a fragrant perennial, it is important to find the optimal balance when watering, especially immediately after planting the seedlings in the ground. The plant can die from stagnation of moisture, but it also tolerates drought very poorly. The bushes are delicate; it is advisable to water them using a watering can with small holes. Regular "rain" is better than too much water from a hose.
Usually the plant grows well in one place for up to 3 years, and the area needs periodic weeding, since oregano is sensitive to weeds. The leaves will be larger if the flowers are cut from the bushes, and removing some of last year's branches helps stimulate the growth of new shoots in the spring. During the budding period, oregano will be grateful for feeding with mineral fertilizers. It tolerates winter well; before the onset of cold weather, the bed does not need to be covered.
Flowering lasts from July to September. It is during this period that the aroma is strongest and the shoots can be cut for drying, but under no circumstances should they be pulled out. It is recommended to collect no more than 2/3 of the branches from one bush, then you need to let the plant recover.
The grass is dried by hanging it in bunches or laying it out on paper, but preferably not in a draft. By the way, it smells much stronger when dry. Then the plant preparation is placed in a jar and tightly closed with a lid. This way it can be stored for up to 2 years.
Healing properties of oregano
The medicinal herb mother will be a wonderful alternative to tablets and mixtures, because it has long been known in folk medicine for its medicinal properties. Tea will help relieve fever from a cold, calm you from neurosis and overwork, and help you fall asleep faster when you have insomnia. The aromatic drink has a positive effect on digestion, but it is worth remembering that it also increases appetite.
Herbal gargles are recommended for the treatment of sore throats and oral diseases, such as stomatitis and periodontal disease. Inhalations with a decoction of the herb will help get rid of cough. Baths will alleviate the condition of people suffering from rheumatism, atherosclerosis, various skin rashes and simply have a general strengthening effect.
If such a fragrant “green medicine” does not yet grow on your site, be sure to allocate a cozy place for this modest perennial, it is worth it.