The Crafty Cultivator

Over the years, I have become especially fond of growing herbs. Especially herbs that are a little harder to find in stores. Like savory for example.

Savory is one that is a little harder to find in the store. And its not typically differentiated on which one you are buying, its just labelled as ‘Savory’. I have also had a hard time finding “winter savory’ as seed from the big available-in-most-stores, or as started plants from garden centres.

Finally, I found some seeds for Winter Savory. I actually found them from a few different Canadian seed companies, but chose to buy them from “Wildrose Heritage Seed Company” because they are a local Alberta company.

While this will be my first year growing Winter Savoy, I have grown Summer Savory a few years now. I wanted to take this time in the winter while I’m using all my will power to not start my seeds too early, to write down some differences between the two. We can all learn together, and I will try to be on-top of writing here this whole year, and I plan on documenting the differences.

• Latin Names
• • Winter: “Satureja montana”
• • Summer: “Satureja hortensis”
• Life Span
• • Winter: Perennial (I’ve read that it is perennial to zone 4, so I’m right on the cusp. It may not survive if we have a really long harsh winter here)
• • Summer: Annual

I can’t speak on the difference in growth or flavour of the different kinds yet, but I really hope to document my experience with them this year. If I’m on the ball, I’ll come back and link to the updates I do get done later this year. For now, all I have photo-wise is the one at the bottom of this post of the seed packets.

Here is the Winter savory I’ll be growing this year. They also sent me a free sample (with the rest of my seed order) of their Midget Summer Savory too, so I’ll be growing that as well. I also still have a pack of old Summer Savory seed from McKenzie seeds, that I bought in 2014. As I was going through my seed collection, I found a new pack of Summer Savory seed from West Coast Seed. I forgot I bought it last year, so that this year I would have some new seed… Thanks past self.

I’ll be starting these in the next few days. By the time the little seedlings need more room for their roots, it should be warm enough outside for them. If you have any experience with the difference between Winter and Summer Savory, share them in the comments below.

2024 Update: (The post above is from January 30, 2019, which seems longer than 5 years ago, maybe because it was pre-pandemic times): I don’t think I ever noticed a difference in flavors. But I also never tasted them side by side. I typically just dry the majority of the herbs that I grow to use like what you would buy from the store. The winter Savory is in fact a tender perennial here. It will survive with some extra protection, like a good cover of mulch and snow. I don’t remember which winter killed it off, but we have had some pretty rough winters over the last 5 years, either with many days below -40. Typically the hardest winter on plants around here is when we get a bunch of chinooks that melt our snow cover, and then it gets cold again, the ground gets exposed to the cold without its “snow blanket” protecting it. So along with the warm weather drying out the soil and melting the snow cover, it gets fully exposed to much more cold (when the chinook goes away) and this is very hard on plants.

As I currently have some instability in my garden situation, I may or may not be growing these this year. If I find some healthy looking plants at a garden center for a good price, I might buy them, but Savory isn’t something I tend to grab on a regular basis for seasoning my food, so I would be more likely to spend money on herbs that I use more often. Maybe next year, I will have the space (and time) to grow some from seed again, which could also be an interesting test of my old seed. I would also like to do a fully new post on each herb that I typically grow, so if that is something you would be interested in, Or have anything to add to this post, share in the comments below.