What it is
Summer Savory (Satureja hortensis) is in the Lamiaceae (Mint) family. The classic bean herb - peppery and thyme-like, traditionally cooked with legumes to aid digestion.
How to grow it
It wants full sun, water it low, and give it lean, well-drained soil. Target a soil pH around 6.0-7.5. Space plants about 6-8 in apart. Expect roughly 60. Warm-season annual.
How it's used
Summer Savory is used: fresh, dried, with beans.
🔎 How to identify it
- Narrow soft leaves
- Wiry square stems
- Pale flowers
Edibility
How to grow & propagate summer savory
Everything I've worked out about starting this one, keeping it alive through a Texas year, and turning one plant into many — free.
How to propagate summer savory
Almost everything in the mint family roots from cuttings so readily it feels like cheating. Snip a 4–5 inch non-flowering tip, strip the bottom leaves, and either set it in a glass of water on the windowsill or push it straight into damp potting mix. You'll usually see roots in 1–2 weeks. Seed works too, but cuttings give you an exact copy of the parent — which matters when one plant tastes better than its neighbor.
Beginner's path: take more cuttings than you think you need. They're free, they cost you nothing but a few minutes, and the ones that take more than make up for the ones that don't. This is how a single plant becomes a hedge, a row, or a gift for every neighbor on the street.
Growing summer savory in Texas
Give it full sun and lean, well-drained soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.
Time your planting to our long warm season and watch the frost dates at both ends; the live weather tool on this site is built for exactly that.
Once it's rooted in, this is a low-water plant — overwatering does more harm than drought here. Water deeply to establish, then back off and let it prove how tough it is.
Harvesting
Figure on roughly 60 before you're harvesting. Pick herbs in the morning after the dew dries for the strongest oils, and harvest little and often — regular cutting keeps a herb bushy and stops it bolting. The part you're after: leaves.
Making more for free
Save it the easy way — vegetatively. Because you can clone this plant from a cutting, division, or piece of root, you never have to buy it again: keep one healthy mother plant and make all the copies you want.
Part of the free Texas Roots plant database, compiled by Jordan Polasek from his greenhouse in El Campo, Texas. Free to read and share. If it helped, the best thanks is to grow something.