Lovage Seedlings: Germination, Potting up and the First Season

Why the seed sits and does nothing

Lovage seed loses viability fast. Seed from the current season germinates in good numbers; seed that has spent a year in a packet often manages less than half, and two-year-old seed is usually a waste of a tray. If your sowing has produced nothing after four weeks in warmth, age is the most likely explanation, not technique.

The second requirement is cold. Fresh seed shed onto the ground in late summer sits through winter and comes up in a rush in spring, and that is the pattern to copy. Given a spell at 35 to 40F (2 to 4C) for three to four weeks, either outdoors in a pot or in damp vermiculite in the fridge, germination is even and quick once temperatures rise. Sown straight into a warm propagator with no chilling, the same seed can take two months or simply rot.

Light matters too. Lovage germinates better on or just under the surface, so press the seed onto damp compost and cover with no more than a light dusting of vermiculite. Burying it a half inch (1 cm) deep, the way you would a bean, is a common reason for a blank tray.

Keep the tray after the first flush comes up. Lovage often produces a second, smaller wave of seedlings ten days behind the first, and those are just as good as the early ones.

What a lovage seedling looks like at each stage

The two seed leaves are narrow straps, an inch (2.5 cm) long, and give away nothing. The first true leaf is the tell: a single glossy wedge with a few coarse teeth, dark green and slightly rubbery to the touch. Crush a corner of it and you get the smell that makes lovage worth growing, an intense celery that is stronger in a seedling than in a supermarket celery stick.

By the third and fourth true leaves the divisions appear and the leaf starts to look like flat-leaf parsley on a larger scale. Growth above ground is slow through this stage because the plant is investing downward. Do not read that pause as failure and start feeding heavily; a lovage seedling that looks static for two weeks is usually building root.

Thin to one seedling per cell or per station as soon as you can tell them apart, and do it by cutting the losers off at compost level rather than pulling. Lovage roots tangle early, and pulling one seedling out often lifts the neighbor you meant to keep.

1. Pot on at the third true leaf Move each seedling into a deep pot of at least 4 inches (10 cm), or a root trainer, using a free-draining loam-based mix. Handle the plant by a leaf, never the stem, and keep the compost surface at the same level it was before.
2. Grow cool and bright A cold frame or an unheated bench at 50 to 60F (10 to 16C) produces a stocky plant. Warmth plus low light gives a pale, stretched seedling that flops on planting out and takes an extra month to recover.
3. Harden off over ten days Lovage is fully hardy as an established plant but a soft, tray-raised seedling is not. Increase outdoor exposure daily for a week and a half, and leave it out overnight for the last three nights before planting.
4. Plant out before the taproot hits the pot base Once the taproot reaches the bottom and starts circling, the plant sulks after transplanting. Aim to plant within six to eight weeks of potting up, into ground you have loosened to a full spade depth.

Choosing the position, because you only get one go

A single lovage plant is enough for any household. The flavor is so concentrated that a couple of leaves season a whole pot of soup, and a mature plant reaches six feet (1.8 m) in flower with a clump of leaf two to three feet (60 to 90 cm) across at the base. Two plants is a decision you will regret in year three, not year one.

Put it at the back of a bed, against a fence, or at the north end of a vegetable plot where its height shades nothing important. In the wrong place it turns from a useful herb into an annual argument about what it is blocking. Full sun to light afternoon shade both work; in hot climates the light shade gives better leaf and less scorching.

The soil matters more than the aspect. Lovage drives a thick taproot down and wants deep, moisture-retentive ground with plenty of organic matter. Dig a full spade depth, fork the base, and work in a bucket of compost per planting hole. On thin or stony soil the plant survives but stays half the size and runs to flower early every year.

The first season, and what to write down

Expect a first-year plant to reach only knee height and to produce a modest handful of leaves. Take very little from it. Every leaf you cut in year one is root growth you are not getting, and the difference shows the following spring as a plant that is either twice the size or unchanged. If it tries to flower in the first year, cut the stem out at the base immediately.

Water through the first summer whenever the top two inches (5 cm) of soil are dry. After the first winter the taproot handles ordinary dry spells on its own, and routine watering becomes something you do only in a genuine drought. Mulch two inches (5 cm) deep around the crown in autumn, keeping the mulch off the crown itself.

Note the sowing date, the date the first seedling emerged and the date you planted out. Mark the exact position of the crown as well, because lovage dies back completely and vanishes below ground over winter. More first-year plants are lost to a fork in early spring than to cold. Record the date the plant reappears each spring too; over a few years that date becomes the most reliable signal you have for when the rest of the herb bed is ready to work.

Lovage takes three years to reach full size. Judging a plant on its first season is like judging an asparagus bed on its first spear.