More Rosemary going downhill

[bramble]

My rosemary is in a big container on my back doorstep.
It must be there about ten years now.
It gets little or no attention and is in full flower at the moment.
Sorry Matb, I dont have any advice to give you.

[Plot70]

I have in the past seen rosemary self deed into a 10 foot high brick wall and grow to flowering size.
It was in Hampshire in a built up area.

[ameno]

I imagine the extreme cold we had got it.
Fully grown rosemary bushes planted in the ground will shrug off those sorts of temperatures, no problem. But that one is still quite small, and more importantly is in a (none too large) pot, which always makes a plant more prone to freezing.

Just stick the next one on the ground somewhere sunny. The soil doesn't need to be good.

[Marb67]

Well another one has bitten the dust. I heeded advice about not coddling and left it outside and now completely dead

[Jungle Jane]

My rosemarys in a small pot but it’s rooted through the hole into the ground in the crack in the paving. Can’t move the pot ever again

[Snoop Puss]

Marb, how big is the plant pot in diameter and volume? Rosemary bushes grow huge in the wild. Plot70's is a beautiful example of how they want to grow.

I know lots of people grow plants in containers, but if you want to keep rosemary long-term in a pot, it needs to be a whopping pot eventually.

[Plot70]

I have managed to get a photo up of my rosemary planted directly in the ground.

[Plot70]

I would plant it directly in the ground.
I planted a cutting in a slot between two garden paths. They like the aroma next door and like to brush past it every day.
It has been in flower for weeks.

[ameno]

I am pretty sure it needs some sort of access to rock to get the minerals that produce the aroma.

All those same minerals are in the soil. Soil is made of rock in the first place. And indeed plants can't access the minerals in rock, anyway. It's too solid.
Besides, most if not all aromatic compounds in plants are organic chemicals, anyway. That is, they are made up of varying degrees of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, occasionally nitrogen or sulphur, and nothing else.

It is in the sunniest spot in the garden, and I dont water the dry herb bed at all, only rain. Our soil is neutral, not acid. I have stones and broken pot in the base of the pots so again I cant see why they are failing.

Crocks in the bottom of a container are kind of a white elephant. Experiments have shown that they do no actually help drainage at all. In fact they can even make it worse, as in order for water to pass from the compost into the crocks the compost first needs to reach saturation point.

What matters is how free-draining or water-retentive the growing medium itself is, not what you put underneath it.

[Marb67]

It is in the sunniest spot in the garden, and I dont water the dry herb bed at all, only rain. Our soil is neutral, not acid. I have stones and broken pot in the base of the pots so again I cant see why they are failing.

[mothhawk]

If you are watering enough to keep that fennel lush and healthy, you are way overwatering the rosemary planted right next to it. If the soil around roots never dries out, then your rosemary is too damp. Thats why it needs to be planted in full sun, so its feet are never sitting in damp soil. You need to let the soil get cactus dry before even thinking about watering it.

[Jungle Jane]

The first plant in a pot looks saveable,cut the dead bits off & pot it into a bigger pot,put some stones at the bottom of the pot to help drainage.

[Plot70]

I am pretty sure it needs some sort of access to rock to get the minerals that produce the aroma.

[ameno]

I think you might be coddling them too much, to be honest. Even that raised bed, which you say is gritty soil, looks more like mostly comost.
Just stick one into the ground somewhere sunny, straight into the normal soil.

It might be due to the soil being too acidic with too few minerals.
When I lived down south I took seed from a bush that could be accessed from a public highway and it grew to flowering size and self seeded into a small crack in a tall brick wall and grew on to flowering size with little more than cement with a little bit of moss on the top.
It grows directly in the ground in clay over limestone with no shielding from the weather.

I can't imagine rosemary has a problem with acidic soils, seeing as it grows like a weed where my uncle is in Falmouth, as the soil is pretty acidic there (granite bedrock).

[Plot70]

It might be due to the soil being too acidic with too few minerals.
When I lived down south I took seed from a bush that could be accessed from a public highway and it grew to flowering size and self seeded into a small crack in a tall brick wall and grew on to flowering size with little more than cement with a little bit of moss on the top.
It grows directly in the ground in clay over limestone with no shielding from the weather.