Spanish Lavender From Seed

For no particular reason, other than I had never done so, I grew Spanish Lavender (Lavandula stoechas) from a seed.  

Sometimes I grow plants from a seed for no other reason than because I haven't grown that plant from seed before.  This was one of those situations.  

Spanish lavender from seed

Spanish lavender is a fragrant and edible herb that is also used medicinally and grown as an ornamental plant.  Honey bees and other pollinators seem to like lavender flowers.  

Lavender is said to be simple to grow, and it's meant to be simple to grow from cuttings.  Growing lavender from seed is meant to be far more difficult, and a lot slower.  

For some reason I always struggle to grow lavender, and I struggle to get lavender cuttings to take.  Instead of fighting a losing battle with lavender, I grow lavender mint, which is a variety of mint that smells and tastes like lavender.  Lavender mint is very simple to grow in my garden and very productive.  Lavender mint grows so well that for a long time I had not thought about trying to grow real lavender.

I didn't find growing lavender from seed to be overly difficult.  The most difficult part was getting seed.  The seed is not viable for very long, and most places selling lavender seed will usually send old dead seed.  

I planted this, and watered it.  It took a long time before it germinated and grew into a small flowering plant, I needed a lot of patience, other than that growing lavender from seed was pretty straight forward.  

Spanish lavender is a species of lavender.  While the leaves may look vaguely similar, it is not a type of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis).  

Apparently a lot of people have difficulty telling these apart, but to me they don't look very similar other than the shape of the leaves.  They grow differently, the flowers look very different, and the smell/taste of the plant is very different.  I would not use lavender in place of rosemary in a meal.  

My Spanish lavender seedling is only small, yet it is flowering well.  I don't think this is unusual for this species.  The plant isn't overly interesting, the flowers aren't terribly unique, but I still like it.  I probably like it mostly because I grew it from a seed.  

I will try to grow this out and see how it performs for me once it is larger.  I struggle to keep lavender alive, but perhaps this seed grown one will be easier for me.  Or maybe this one will die over summer.  Only time will tell.  I'm glad I grew this little one, now I need to find space for it in the garden somewhere.